On the evening of October 9 at New York Comic Con, ICv2 founder and editor-in-chief Milton Griepp took to the stage to present his publication's annual white paper on the state of the comics industry. For the roomful of professionals at Javits Center, Griepp's news kept spirits high—in the past year, comic book stores have charted a major comeback.

Using data compiled from Circana BookScan, ComicHub POS, and informational interviews with comics sellers, Griepp painted a picture of an industry entering a new era. Several 20-year trends, including the bookselling channel's tendency to gross the highest numbers and the dominance of collectibles over new comics, appear to be slowing or, in some cases, reversing entirely.

By far the starkest change Griepp noted was a booming 27% increase in comic store sales from January–August 2025 as opposed to the same period last year. "That's an incredible growth rate," he said.

Griepp theorized, based on ICv2's interviews with comics sellers, that a new generation of readers coming of age post-pandemic are craving the in-person community that comics stores foster. Comics may also be appealing to Gen Z as a reliably "inexpensive, high quality" format, Griepp added.

These younger buyers are also avid readers, Griepp said, which upends the previous importance of the collector demographic in propping up comics stores and publishers. "What is selling is inexpensive, reader copies.... That's a huge change from the past, where everything was about what's this worth?" he said. Griepp specifically noted the popularity of DC's new Absolute Universe imprint, which gives DC stars like Batman and Wonder Woman all-new storylines for contemporary readers that are easy to pick up with no prior knowledge of the DC universe.

In the graphic novels space, the success of Absolute's trade paperback anthologies and similar collections, like Image's Invincible Compendium series, has somewhat unexpectedly dethroned manga and compensated for a 13.2% decline in revenue in the category in 2024. Griepp attributed the slight dip in graphic novels sales through book publishing channels, which were down 1.4% in 2024, to manga's waning popularity.

Overall, the comics and graphics novel business is settling around Covid-era highs, Griepp said. The industry saw exponential growth over the first year of the pandemic and has not dropped back down now that normalcy has largely returned, contrary to some earlier fears, Griepp said. He estimated the total value of sales in 2024 to be $1.94 billion.

Even with these promising numbers in view, Griepp said that the future health of the comics market is uncertain thanks to the "disappointing" path of Diamond Comic Distributors' bankruptcy proceedings. The winding legal drama has "tremendously disrupted" the supply chain to retailers and knowledge-sharing among publishers, thanks to Diamond's former status as a data hub for the industry, Griepp said. Despite these challenges, Griepp said that he has hope for the new distribution landscape that will succeed the "sclerotic Diamond monopoly."

The white paper tied off ICv2's Insider Talks event, which called on a handful of creators, publishers, and distributors to chart the trajectory of the comics business.

Notably, Universal Distribution CEO Angelo Exarhakos spoke to the Canadian company's plans to expand into the U.S. comics market after acquiring Alliance Game Distributors in Diamond's bankruptcy proceedings earlier this year. Exarhakos emphasized the power of toys and games—particularly card games like Magic: The Gathering—to draw in new readers and reengage old ones.

Cards and games may be making a comeback, but per another panel featuring Vault Comics CEO and cofounder Damian Wassel and Aethon Books owner and president Steve Beaulieu, moderated by the Beat editor-in-chief Heidi MacDonald, digital comics are still a booming IP pipeline. The panelists argued that the literary role-playing game (LitRPG) category has proven to be hugely magnetic for drawing consumers who previously might have been non-readers to graphic storytelling. LitRPG audiobooks, in particular, are both highly accessible and addictive, Wassel said, with both Vault and Aetheon reporting that at least half and sometimes a majority of their sales come from audio.

Together with digital comics on platforms like Webtoon, which routinely amass millions of readers, and Patreon accounts run by individual creators, audiobooks and e-comics represent a largely untapped market among print publishers, the panelists said, calling the numbers in the digital space "staggering."

Griepp foresees a mutually beneficial relationship between digital and print comics, citing research from his time at Amazon's digital comics platform Comixology which showed that people who read comics on their mobile devices are also more likely to purchase print comics. Griepp contrasted the U.S. market with Japan's, where he said digital manga has "cannibalized" the print market.

The ICv2 white paper showed a wealth of opportunity for publishers, but it's still unclear how or if they'll capitalize on it. For his part, Griepp offered two suggestions.

"For a long time, comic publishers have targeted the hardcore comic consumer, and now they have an opportunity to target these new, younger consumers from Gen Z who will become the basis of the market over the coming years," Griepp said. "One key lesson is accessibility. If you create a book that's easy for people to get into, they're more likely to buy it and tell their friends."

But, ultimately, it's what's on the page that keeps readers coming back for more. Griepp harkened back to the 1980s, when "there were so many [comic] books that came out that are still in print today, because they were such a dramatic change from the past, and they were so rewarding to their readers."

Series like Invincible and Absolute are a start, Griepp said, but he challenged the industry to go all-in on innovation. "How do publishers nurture that kind of creativity and build on that in the future?" he asked the crowd. "It's a new world."