Numbers crunching: Although Newsarama is shying away from giving estimated sales figures for Diamond's Top 300, ICv2.com stays the course by releasing the numbers for February. The retailer site notes in its overview that sales were seasonally lower, "with 16 of the top 25 books down vs. January." ICv2 also offers this uncharacteristically upbeat assessment: "Although it seems like a long slide for comic sales recently, it's worth comparing sales in 2004 to orders one year ago, in February 2003 ... when the cut-off after the top ten comic titles, for example, was considerably lower than it was this year (even accounting for the difference between orders and shipments)."

For fans of manga and trades, the newly expanded graphic novels chart may be of particular interest. It's nice to note that, after all this time and with no movie tie-in, Watchmen still sold an estimated 841 copies in February.