The News Blog of Comics Culture
TweetC2E2 is on this weekend and we’re liveblogging the Dark Horse panel. Get ready to start hitting refresh. Scott Allie is on the stage and talking about a horror line New Orleans is a Werewolf Town Alexi DiCampi doing a grindhouse horror title. David Lapham on Del Toro’s Strain comic – second arc Steve Niles [...]
While Walking Dead and Saga lead the chart again, the big story this month is Jonathan Hickman’s East of West, blowing expectations out of the water with a strong debut. There aren’t that many new titles this month, although Image have four strong debuts, headed up by the infuriating Sex (you’ll see). Elsewhere it’s largely a month of consolidation, with many titles holding within a few percentage points of last month’s sales.
Instead of Kibbles ‘n’ bits, we present a bunch of things I had tagged that I never got to write up in all the excitement. The news never sleeps!
Tweet The matter of “Who censored Saga #12?” has been termed a fiasco by some, and that’s probably the right word. While I certainly didn’t foresee the shocking swerve that saw comiXology revealed as the actual entity that thought those two tiny BJ/bukakke panels weren’t Apple-friendly, in private conversations yesterday, I had begun to suspect [...]
TweetNews of Apple’s decision to ban SAGA #12 from any app-based storefronts spread like wildfire yesterday, prompting outrage and head shakes from those who believe having a single corporation controlling our access to entertainment—no matter how sexy and sleek that corporation—may not be a good idea. First, some of the oddities of the matter: As [...]
Tweetby LTZ A while back, the Beat’s own Henry Barajas – tireless observer of Kickstarted comics that he is – took some time to preview a crowd-funded book by Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, Jimmy Broxton, and Juan Santacruz. Sex and Violence, Vol. 1 was laid bare (spread-eagle, perhaps) to its supporters this past week, after [...]
Time to break in those shoes and hydrate — big con season is back starting today with the Emerald City Comic Con. The tribe has already gathered, if our twitter feed is any indication, and a plethora of exclusives and signings will be available. ECCC, as it’s known, has definitely become one of the finest regional cons on the circuit and we expect to hear a lot of news as everyone explains what they did on their winter vacation.
Tweet§ Matt Thorn at TCJ on the life of Barefoot Gen creator Keiji Nakazawa: Nakazawa hated platitudes and whitewashing. He generally avoided the annual peace memorial observances in Hiroshima, considering them pointless. “They never demand accountability. They make their call for peace, they ring their bells. That’s not what it’s all about. You need anger.” [...]
Walking Dead continues at the top, although it’s likely to get pushed down a little by the upcoming juggernaut of, um, My Little Pony. The usual suspects are joined this month by Grant Morrison’s Happy, and X)-Manowar and Spawn push back into the top part of the indie chart. However, things are not good further down the chart. There are a lot of longer-running titles, from the likes of Aspen, Top Cow and Dynamite amongst others, that seem to be selling fractions of what they once sold, and that maybe need to be retired in favour of new concepts. The retailers and more importantly customers seem to be voting with their dollars in that respect, and some dead horses are being hopelessly flogged towards the lower end of the chart.
Walking Dead continues its reign at the top of the indie chart, if not quite at the figures it sold last month, with Saga, Buffy and surprise-hit Doctor Who/ Star Trek following up. Valiant’s latest hit, Archer and Armstrong is well up there as well. Buffy spin-off Spike, a new Star Wars title, an RPG adaptation and are the only other high charting debuts. Elsewhere, all-ages books continue to show stronger than average sales, headed-up by the bonkers Adventure Time.
Tweet This day started at 7 am, for a 7:45 arrival at the Javits Center. Was I insane? No, just dedicated. Diamond Books had arranged a meeting with publishers to discuss trade journal review procedures. Myself, and Henrietta Thornton and Martha Cornog from Library Journal were on hand to school representatives of Archaia, Image, Dark [...]
TweetBy Steve Morris Artist Jamie McKelvie and writer Kieron Gillen have taken the spotlight today, with several pieces of news – both good and bad – coming from their camp. The good news is that Marvel have just released a teaser which lists them as the creative team for a story in their upcoming ‘Point [...]
The programming schedule for this year’s New York Comic Con has just been released…but in a hard to read format. As we have in past years, organizers have supplied a complete text document of all the programming. You’ll note that there is a ton of great programming, but some of it is late at night — 9 pm Friday for “The Truth about the Hobbit”? Some of us like our nerd stuff AND have a social life!
Enjoy:
By Paul Mellerick
For a rare change we get the number one book this month, as Walking Dead #100 breaks records all over the place. Saga and Buffy are still doing decent numbers, while the third Valiant relaunch, Bloodshot does very well too. Elsewhere, Adventure Time and the Trek / Who crossover continue to punch above their weight, while new licensed Transformers and Crow titles launch strongly for IDW.
145 indie books charted this month, up on last month’s 135. The bottom book sold 4,187, up on last month’s 3,302. They sold approximately 1,717,229, up on last month’s 1,344,491, the difference being almost entirely made up of Walking Dead #100. Average sales are 11,842 per book, also up on last month’s 9,959, but without Walking Dead it would have been 9,448. As usual, UK and European sales from Diamond UK are not reported in this chart.
Out of the 145 books, 27 went up in sales, a little less th
§ Okay, okay: Joe Casey clears up that whole Butcher Baker controversy we told you about last week. It seems there WILL be a collection, and the series really was meant to stop at issue 8 (which just appeared after a long gap.) It was Casey’s plan to give readers a jolt by leading them to believe this was going to go on a while and then KA-BLAM!
Yeah, it was always meant to be eight issues and done. It’s one story. Actually, I kinda felt like readers might’ve been keying into the fact that it might not be an ongoing, infinite series simply because, even at issue #5 or #6, I still wasn’t giving them any kind of temporary closure moments, as you tend to do on a monthly book. You’ll build in those minor end points every two, three or four issues. It’s part of the accepted macro-structure of a series that’s meant to deliver “continuing adventures” or however you might want to frame it. “Butcher Baker,” in its execution from month to month, was much more novelistic in its shape.
But it all comes down to the way stories are delivered. When you’ve got an audience that’s as savvy as most audiences have become, it’s tough to shake them out of their complacency and really take them on a ride. Even movie audiences are now “trained” to have an inherent sense of a movie’s shape. They know it’s going to be roughly two hours long, a lot of them even have a sense of the Hollywood three act structure, so most of the fun of being told a story is already significantly affected by all of that “pre-knowledge.” Well, I wanted to see if I could mitigate some of that. Shit, I hope it worked…
Why Maggott Isn’t the Worst X-Men Character of All Time
TweetA few days ago Brett White wrote a passioned defence of teen hearthrob X-Men character Maggott on CBR. Many would mock him for such a claim, and poke him with brightly painted sticks – but no! Put down those ribbon sticks. Maggott is a character worth defending, and I’m going to give some of my own [...]