Let’s get something out of the way early: it appears to have been a great year for comic shops.

While not everyone in the direct market 7 thrived, the retailers featured in today’s look at the year in comic shops 8 were unusually positive about 2025. Many didn’t just have a typically good year; they reached levels that shocked even them.

“2025 was amazing!” Eitan Manhoff of Oakland, California’s Cape & Cowl Comics said. “It was the best year we’ve ever had in terms of sales.”

“We had a record-setting year,” shared Django Bohren of Bellingham, Washington’s The Comics Place.

“2025 was our best year ever, and it wasn’t even close,” added Aaron Trites of San Diego’s Now or Never Comics.

It was more than that, though. To say this check-in with retailers felt different than previous editions is an understatement, as its unfettered positivity even came with unique wrinkles. It wasn’t just that they were selling more; it was that it came with an influx of new customers and a meaningful shift in consumer behavior, at times.

“My favorite thing about 2025 was the big change from ‘collecting/speculating’ in comics to reading them,” said Jen King of Shenandoah, Texas’ Space Cadets Collection Collection. “I love that Wednesday mornings are full of people wanting to chat about what they read last week and are looking forward to reading this one.”

While big sales are good for today, what King noted says something about tomorrow, which might be why retailers seemed so excited about the year. It’s also quite different from what many thought awaited them, as some prepared for a turbulent ride after Diamond Comic Distributors filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy a little over a year ago. But whatever people expected, it wasn’t that, with 2025 instead being a staggering year of robust sales and unforeseen trends — ones that might even hold the potential for more in the future.

While you already know that at least three shops put up record numbers in 2025, there’s something even more impressive about the response from the eleven retailers featured today: everyone’s numbers were up from 2024.

That was true of the biggest accounts, like the Maryland/Virginia-based comic shop chain Third Eye Comics or the two online retailers that are one in Discount Comic Book Service, or DCBS, and InStockTrades (IST). It was also true of shops of every other size and location I talked to. West Coast, East Coast, Midwest, in Ireland or the United Kingdom, big, small, or somewhere in-between — everyone was up.

Leading the way was Space Cadets, as King saw massive growth in 2025.

“Our numbers for the year are up 31% over last year,” King said. “I’m sure some of that is tied to the increase in prices on comics and graphic novels, but we have also seen an increase in average sales. They are now $40 to $50 where before they were $25 to $30.”

The average shop was up just under 21%, at least amongst those who reported numbers. But crucially, it was more than just metrics. The vibes were much, much better.

“The genuine excitement about comics is really the big success story,” said Dan Wallace of Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Impulse Creations Comics & Collectibles. “That’s a strong indicator that (customers) enjoy what they’re reading and will continue to do so for some time.”

Everyone seemed delighted with the results, but that was especially true considering the context of the year. With Diamond’s bankruptcy hitting in January and tariff fears looming over everything, the recipe was there for disaster.

And yet.

“Given all the turmoil in 2025, with the changes in distribution, and DCBS’ decision to not continue with ‘new’ Diamond, essentially removing all offerings of items apart from periodicals and collected editions in July 2025, we are thrilled with how the year ended,” shared Christina Merkler of DCBS and IST.

For all the worry about chaos in the distribution space, it mostly played out alright for shops. As Joe Murray of Newark, Delaware’s Captain Blue Hen Comics put it, “if you paid attention, you could mitigate from catastrophic down to irritatingly inconvenient.” That consistently matched the tone about distribution. It may have been frustrating, but it could have been so much worse.

There were exceptions, though. Jared Myland of OK Comics from Leeds in the United Kingdom said Diamond’s bankruptcy had retailers “relearning our jobs,” even if he mostly deals with Diamond UK, the former arm of Diamond US that’s now fully independent. Diamond UK has struggled at times to diagnose which paths to take, and its delays compound the problem for shops like OK Comics. That means distribution remains a work in progress for him.

“I’ve yet to find an ordering process that suits me, my shop and my customers perfectly,” Myland said.

Challenges like that ensured 2025 was filled with an incredible amount of work, and it extended beyond those frustrations. Tracking which publishers were distributed by who was the world’s worst game show for retailers, several shops made painful transitions to new point-of-sale systems because Diamond’s ComicSuite system stopped being supported, and, hey, just to throw in some fun, multiple shops either moved or expanded. Pair that with typical day-to-day operations, and the year was a grind even with all that success.

“2025 was probably the best and hardest year I’ve had,” said John Hendrick of Dublin’s Big Bang Comics. “The workload was probably the most severe it’s ever been.”

“But it was a year of growth in every way.”