clear Analysis and interpretation of physical and digital sales.

One Piece dominates both markets because it maintains unbelievable popularity across both distribution channels.
Dragon Ball Super’s print production suffers from diminished growth because digital influence remains smaller than previous instalments of the franchise.
Naruto keeps its fanbase intact because it finished its storyline while expanding globally in both digital and offline realms.
Hunter x Hunter’s content relaunches draw distinctive peaks in reader engagement because of its dedicated community fanbase.
Solo Levelling’s digital-first publication has established itself as the most successful webtoon which transformed worldwide digital content popularity.
Batman, Spider-Man and X-Men continue to thrive in print since the 1960s while adding digital subscribers to their existing audience base.

The above shows how the age of franchises alongside the publishing format and digital capabilities that come with it, determine the sales performance of products. An example of this is seen through One Piece and Batman lasting throughout every publishing platform.


Sales and Popularity analysis

In general, Manga popularity is shown to be quite significantly higher (as seen by the Manga Vs Comic Searches graph), however, this doesn't necessarily mean higher sales (Popularity vs Sales chart). For example, Naruto has rather significantly higher searches than both Batman and Superman, suggesting that it's more popular but it has lower sales than both. This is likely because of the fact that Naruto and manga, in general, are finite, contained stories whereas comics are ongoing and constantly being rebooted. The Naruto manga started in 1999 and ran until 2014 whereas Superman, for example, first debuted in 1938 and still has comics being made today. This presents a challenge in determining how much popularity affects sales.

To combat this challenge we can look at the most popular manga vs the most popular comic, One Piece vs Spiderman. One Piece began in 1997 and Spiderman's first comic came out in 1962, with both still publishing new issues/chapters today. Despite Spiderman releasing many years prior, One Piece has significantly more sales, at 510 million to Spiderman's 384 million, and is more popular judging by total searches, 5.7 Million to 4.9, supporting the idea that sales correlates to popularity.