CBR senior staff writer Brian Cronin has been writing professionally about comic books for over fifteen years now at CBR (primarily with his “Comics Should Be Good” series of columns, including Comic Book Legends Revealed). He has written two books about comics for Penguin-Random House – Was Superman a Spy? And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed and Why Does Batman Carry Shark Repellent? And Other Amazing Comic Book Trivia! and one book, 100 Things X-Men Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, from Triumph Books. His writing has been featured at ESPN.com, the Los Angeles Times, About.com, the Huffington Post, Vulture and Gizmodo. He features legends about entertainment and sports at his website, Legends Revealed and other pop culture features at Pop Culture References. Follow him on Twitter at @Brian_Cronin and feel free to e-mail him suggestions for stories about comic books that you'd like to see featured at brianc@cbr.com!
Superman was a major financial success for Warner Bros. in 2025, with the studio having such a big year that the formerly struggling company now has two conglomerates fighting each over to see who can purchase it. However, perhaps the most surprising thing was that as good of a year that DC Studios had on the big screen with Superman (and on TV with Peacemaker), it might have had its biggest success with DC Comics!
DC Comics Senior VP and General Manager, Anne DePies, spoke to the Hollywood Reporter about the great success that DC Comics had with its comic book line in 2025, and DePies revealed that the company was seeing sales that the company hadn't heard of in decades.
The Absolute Line led the way in 2025
Not including sales in December, DC's Absolute Universe of titles has sold over 8 million copies in 2025 (so, again, not even a full year's worth of comics). Of that 8.2 million in sales, about 35% of the sales belonged to Absolute Batman.
Absolute Batman #1 continues to be a big seller for DC, with it now hitting its 10th printing (and there may be more printings after this). However, it is surprising to see Absolute Batman has only continued to build during 2025.
Absolute Batman continued to thrive well into 2025
Image via DCAbsolute Batman #15, the issue that revealed the origin of the Joker, did remarkable sales of over 300,000 copies. For a comic book to be selling over 300,000 copies 15 issues into the run is an amazing success. However, for as big of a success as Absolute Batman is, do note that Absolute Batman had only 35% of the overall Absolute sales, meaning that the other Absolute books were doing excellently, as well.
Even the lesser-known Absolute titles did well
Image via DCThe biggest surprise had to be that Absolute Martian Manhunter was a sales success, as well, with the Deniz Camp and Javier Rodriguez title, which did a dramatic revamp of one of DC's lesser-known (but still classic) heroes, also sold over 100,000 copies.
DePies noted, “It’s a fresh look that inverted the fundamentals of our characters, and it’s an update that surprised our fans." She added, more generally about the Absolute line, "The tightness of the line gives retailers and fans something to wrap their heads around. It’s not so overwhelming that we are changing everything at once. That made a big difference. We knew it was going to do well, but we didn’t know it would do this well.”
Outside the Absolute line, DC was having other successes
Image via DCDC wasn't just doing big numbers with its Absolute Universe line, though, as Matt Fraction and artist Jorge Jiménez's Batman #1 sold over 500,000 copies, and they recently announced that sales went UP on the fifth issue from the fourth issue.
DC's top five highest selling titles for the year included Batman #1, Absolute Batman #15, but then also Batman #158 (the start of the sequel to Hush by Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee, DC KO #1 (its current crossover event), and Batman/Deadpool #1, its crossover with Marvel Comics.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
English (US) · 