Legion sales data for issue 8

Comichron has done their number crunching dealy thing with Diamond and Lunar/UCS data and produced relative sales charts for August 2020, which includes Legion #8. Recall from last month that while we still don't have actual sales numbers yet, we do have rankings relative to all the other books from all distributors combined.

Issue 8 was part 1 of the all-star artist lineup. How did that impact sales? Let's see...

For August, LSH v8 #8 was the overall #46 book for the month and the #22 book for DC, selling 84 copies (both covers combined) for every 100 of Avengers #35 (recall that Avengers or JLA is their index book). Normally around #17-18, there were three new #1s on the list (3 Jokers and two Death Metal), plus Wonder Woman snuck ahead with the movie covers. This issue was the first of the series in which the variant cover was on regular cover paper and not cardstock.

Batman 3 Jokers was reported by Jim Lee to have sold over 300,000 copies, making it the #1 book overall for the month. It sold 656 copies for every 100 copies of Avengers #35. A little math shows that if 656 copies of B3J per 100 copies of Avengers is equivalent to 300,000 sales, then 84 copies of LSH is equivalent to around 38,000 copies sold - which would make it the highest selling issue since #1. Maybe the all-star artist thing really did bump up sales a lot! 

Other books that sold higher than LSH in August: 10 different Bat-books (Batman, Joker, Harley, Batgirl, Nightwing), 3 Death Metal, 2 each of Justice League, Flash, and Superman, and 1 each of Batman/Superman and Strange Adventures (the usual suspects).

(Incidentally, DC had the top 5 books for the month, which only happens occasionally; most recently, March 2019 which had Detective #1000 and Doomsday Clock, and back in 2011 with the intro of the New 52 line.)

So here's what our table looks like now, with the limited insight into sales:

LSH v8 sales and rank

Issue	Total sales (all covers)	overall #	DC #	#1 book
1	75,611	10	3	138,434
2	35,653	50	17	117,926
3	34,732	44	15	167,377
4	30,675	51	18	190,568
5	29,058	59	18	142,089
6	TBD	23	17	TBD
7	TBD	41	18	TBD
8	Est. 38,000	46	22	Est. 300,000

More data as it becomes available....