Stats Week: Amazon Top 50 for 2012

Here are the top 50 comics from the weekly Amazon Top 50 posts of 2012:

1. Diary of a Wimpy Kid 6: Cabin Fever
2. The Walking Dead Compendium Volume 1
3. Diary of a Wimpy Kid 7: The Third Wheel
4. The Wimpy Kid Do-It-Yourself Book (revised and expanded edition)
5. Diary of a Wimpy Kid 5: The Ugly Truth
6. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
7. Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Promise Part 1
8. Darth Vader and Son
9. Diary of a Wimpy Kid 4: Dog Days
10. Dork Diaries 4 (Kindle)
11. Batman: The Killing Joke
12. Watchmen
13. The Walking Dead, Vol. 16: A Larger World
14. The Walking Dead, Vol. 15: We Find Ourselves
15. The Walking Dead Compendium Volume 2
16. Dork Diaries 1 (Kindle)
17. Big Nate and Friends (Kindle)
18. Dork Diaries 4: Tales from a Not-So-Graceful Ice Princess
19. The Walking Dead, Book 1
20. Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Promise Part 2
21. How to Tell If Your Cat Is Plotting to Kill You
22. Dork Diaries 3 (Kindle)
23. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
24. Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Promise Part 3
25. Diary of a Wimpy Kid Box of Books (1-5)
26. Batman Vol. 1: The Court of Owls (The New 52)
27. Dork Diaries 5: Tales from a Not-So-Smart Miss Know-It-All
28. Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History
29. Batman: Year One
30. The Walking Dead, Book 7
31. Big Nate Out Loud (Kindle)
32. The Walking Dead, Book 2
33. Big Nate: From the Top (Kindle)
34. The Walking Dead, Book 5
35. Batman: Knightfall, Vol. 1
36. Building Stories
37. The Walking Dead, Vol. 17: Something to Fear
38. Big Nate Makes the Grade (Kindle)
39. Dork Diaries 5 (Kindle)
40. The Walking Dead, Book 3
41. The Walking Dead, Book 8
42. V for Vendetta
43. The Walking Dead, Book 6
44. Dork Diaries 2 (Kindle)
45. Batman: Earth One
46. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
47. Diary of a Wimpy Kid 7: The Third Wheel (Kindle)
48. The Walking Dead, Vol. 1: Days Gone Bye (Kindle)
49. The Complete Persepolis
50. The Walking Dead, Vol. 1: Days Gone Bye

Methodology: I took my weekly (compiled on Friday) lists of Amazon Top 50 Comics & Graphic Novels, and for each week assigned a comic a numerical score equal to 51 minus its ranking; e.g. the #1 book got 50 points, the #2 book got 49 points, the #3 book got 48 points, etc., all the way down to the #50 book getting 1 point. I poured everything into a spreadsheet, and voila. You can download a spreadsheet with all of the data here.

Commentary:

• Once again the book that was at #1 on the first week of the year ends up as the #1 book for the whole year, as it has been since I began these charts. And once again it is a Diary of a Wimpy Kid volume. That bodes well for the seventh Wimpy Kid volume for 2013...
• There were 275 different comics that made the Top 50 for at least one week during 2012; that's down from 324 in 2011.
• It was a good year on the Amazon chart for Diary comics (both Wimpy Kids and Dorks), The Walking Dead, and Batman.
• I never thought I'd see the day that a book by Jeffrey Brown was a top ten seller. But it turns out that Darth Vader and Son was a perfect match for him. There's a sequel, Vader's Little Princess, due out this coming April.
• Eleven of the Top Fifty are Kindle editions this year. That's up from just three last year, and looking at the charts for January I will not be surprised if that number goes up again for 2013. A lot.
• Four books made the chart all fifty-two weeks of the year: Wimpy Kid 6, Walking Dead Compendium 1, Wimpy Kid 5, and Batman: The Killing Joke.
• The only DC New 52 collection to make the Top 50 for the year is Batman. In all, eleven of the New 52 collections made an appearance on the chart throughout the year, though four of those only for one week. The others were: Justice League (#72), Action Comics (#146), Animal Man (#149), Detective Comics (#156), Batman and Robin (#161), Aquaman (#198), Batman: The Dark Knight (#220), Green Lantern (#227), Catwoman (#247), Swamp Thing (#256).
• Marvel continued their woes on the Amazon Charts this year: Their top rated book, Avengers vs. X-Men, placed at #89. This despite the fact that The Avengers was the #1 movie of the year  and media tie-ins tend to give boosts to other comics properties, as witnessed by the boosts given to Batman and The Walking Dead.