One year after being rocked by the bankruptcy of Diamond Comic Distributors, the comics industry is actually in a surprisingly healthy place—at least that was the message at the 2026 ComicsPRO meeting, an annual gathering of comics publishers and direct market retailers.
After a year of both tumult and triumph, a number of new players and partnerships were announced during the four-day gathering held February 18–21 in Glendale, Calif. The event also featured plenty of star-powered signings, parties, presentations, and a flurry of deal-making.
Joe Murray, the owner of Captain Blue Hen Comics in Newark, Del., and the president of ComicsPRO, the retailer organization that puts on the conference, spoke to the industry’s resilience in his opening remarks. The comics industry, he said, has survived two supposed extinction level events—Diamond shutting down distribution during the early days of the pandemic, which then led to Diamond’s bankruptcy five years later—and come out stronger than ever.
Sales to comics shops hit a new high in 2025 at $2.2 billion, led by an influx of new readers drawn to DC’s Absolute Batman and other relaunched titles, according to industry analyst Milton Griepp. Sales in comics shops are growing even faster than in bookstores, Griepp said, with direct market sales up nearly 30% last year.
Absolute Batman’s rising tide has lifted a lot of boats, according to Filip Sablik, publisher of Ignition Press, a start-up that pleased attendees with an In-N-Out Burger food truck on Wednesday night. Ignition launched a line of periodical comics last year in the middle of the Diamond disruption, but has still seen sales growing on many titles (especially The Beauty, which has been adapted into a popular FX series). This growing audience for comics, he said, is due to “the Raina Telgemeier and Dog Man generation coming into the market.”
The strength of the direct market, it seems, is enticing book publishers to find new ways to reach comics shops. At the conference, Lunar Distribution announced that they would become a wholesale distributor for manga from Yen Press and Viz Media (distributed by Hachette Book Group and Simon & Schuster, respectively). While details were scarce, the move would make both publishers more visible to comics shop owners.
And getting in front of more direct market retailers is a very good thing, according to Abrams ComicsArts director of marketing and publicity Jacqueline Cohen. Following a move to Lunar, Abrams’s line of graphic novels had a sales boom in 2025, Cohen said.
“When we got our front list in front of retailers, it made a big difference,” she told PW. “It was a significant enough amount that our CEO realized how important the comics market is.”
Penguin Random House also continues to expand its comics distribution business, as both Oni Press and Drawn & Quarterly have moved there. Boom! Studios, acquired by PRH two years ago, is also making moves, announcing a new marketing slogan—“Comics for you!”—to cover a wide-ranging line that includes everything from Mighty Morphin’ Power Ranger comics books to a graphic novel adaptation of A Confederacy of Dunces.
Meanwhile, DC announced more titles for its Absolute line, shared a timeline for future titles in their Next Level revamp, and celebrated the successful relaunch of the famed Vertigo imprint—all of which was met with enthusiasm from retailers. By contrast, Marvel’s presentation—which was heavy on Doctor Doom ahead of December’s Avengers Doomsday—largely left retailers underwhelmed. (The biggest applause during the presentation from SVP of sales and marketing David Gabriel came when he announced that their blind bags would no longer contain regular variant covers.)
Robert Kirkman, chairman of Skybound Entertainment, compared the success of Amazon Prime’s adult animation adaptation of Invincible to the very successful manga-to-anime pipeline common in Japan in his keynote speech. While praising the splash made by updating legacy brands like Batman and Transformers, he urged retailers to support new ideas and projects.
“I think we could do better at nurturing the new books that today will become the reliable mainstays of the future,” he said. To that end, he announced his own new superhero series, Terminal, cowritten with Joe Casey with art by Art Adams, David Finch, and Andy Kubert.
This was ComicsPRO’s second year in Glendale, and the location near Hollywood and DC offices drew many local creators and significantly upped the star power. In addition to Kirkman, Image cofounder Todd McFarlane also signed, as did actor turned comics writer David Dastmalchian. DC publisher Jim Lee and legendary artists Frank Miller and Klaus Janson stopped by to kick off a year of celebrating the 40th anniversary of The Dark Knight Returns, Miller’s seminal take on Batman that has influenced movies and comics ever since.
Since its launch more than two decades ago, ComicsPRO has grown from two and a half days of presentations and roundtables to four days packed with all that plus panels, seminars, and parties. Murray noted that both presentations and roundtables had more applications than they had room for, and a whole indie comics event was added to Wednesday night to accommodate all the local creators who wanted to get their work in front of retailers. The location of next year’s meeting has not yet been announced.
“We're going to have to take it to a next level somehow, and evolve, which is not without its risk,” said Murray, who said the organization is considering adding a fifth day, though it would be hard for retailers to stay away from their shops for that long. Still, Murray was proud of the way the event has brought people together in the post-Diamond world: “We’re pollinators—we’re here to help people make connections.”
