§ DC continues its week of announcements. Yesterday it was War of the Supermen, and this time the internet greatly took exception to the cover, by JG Jones. Chris Butcher: The 5 Things Wrong With DC’s War Of The Supermen #0 Cover. Butcher cites such elements as Superman’s expression, Supergirl’s vacant look, a bad scan, and logo deficiencies. But really, all you need to read is this poster at DC’s own Source blog:
That cover is atrocious. Does Superman have the runs or something?
Funny, but upon inspection, what has really got Superman all het up appears to be a prolapsed uterus.
§ Not to be left out, there was a Wonder Woman announcement, as well. It seems the Amazon’s monthly comics will resume numbering with issue #600 in the summer.
§ David Brothers profiles and praises the most successful comic book of all times, ONE PIECE:
A few days before I received my copy of Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece: East Blue 1-2-3, Shueisha announced that One Piece volume 56 had a print run of 2.85 million copies, the largest first edition print run in manga history. A couple days after I finished reading its 600 pages, a chart detailing the best-selling manga in Japan by series for 2009 dropped, revealing that One Piece sold 14,721,241 copies over the course of the year. To put this in perspective, according to Brian Hibbs’s Bookscan analysis for 2008, the total units for comics sold in America last year was 15,541,769. The top 750 sold 8,334,276 total copies.
§ Brooklyn Comics and Graphic Festival wrap up: Austin English for Sparkplug Comic Books
A few days before I received my copy of Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece: East Blue 1-2-3, Shueisha announced that One Piece volume 56 had a print run of 2.85 million copies, the largest first edition print run in manga history. A couple days after I finished reading its 600 pages, a chart detailing the best-selling manga in Japan by series for 2009 dropped, revealing that One Piece sold 14,721,241 copies over the course of the year. To put this in perspective, according to Brian Hibbs’s Bookscan analysis for 2008, the total units for comics sold in America last year was 15,541,769. The top 750 sold 8,334,276 total copies.
§ Brooklyn Comics and Graphic Festival wrap up: Austin English for Sparkplug Comic Books
Frank Santoro on what the children were looking at from his big box of back issues:
Kirby monster comics. They were buying Kirby monster comics. Or at least this one pack of kids were. Like 3 of them. They were like 10 or 12 years old and they bought up all my Kirby monster comics. All day. They’d rifle through the boxes every half hour or so and buy a new one. All three. So six an hour for four hours is a pretty good haul.
§ Rick Veitch compares before and after on some art corrections from a Fantastic Four comic.
§ Charles Hatfield is left with questions after reading The Art of Harvey Kurtzman.
§ Please, Brian Chippendale, PLEASE review another comic.
§ Mystery headline of the day from news feed: PM as Tarzan, lonely Turnbull: cartoons
I just want to know why Superman is yelling in space considering it’s mostly a vacuum. On the other hand, at least he’s not crying…
DC is making all these announcements without a publisher in place. Is some exec an acting publisher, or don’t they need one?
SRS
That Superman Free Comic cover is a strange one, alright. Note that the colour of blue on Superman’s torso tights ( shirt?) doesn’t match the blue of his leg tights ( leggings?) And the facial expressions are kind of grotesque. Oh well, it’s free.
Yeah it’s not the best cover to really ‘grab’ someone.
A small correction: I wrote that review of THE ART OF HARVEY KURTZMAN, not Charles Hatfield. (Though I often wish I wrote as well as Charles does…)
I get it! It’s the look of people charging — flying, rather — into battle!!
Evan Dorkin’s comments in reply to Chris Butcher are NSFW. Assuming that you’re not supposed to be laughing aloud at work.
Does Superman have the runs or something?
No, that is the male version of the porn face. Same goes for the guy on the far right-hand side.
I’m not sure that One Piece is the most successful comic book of all time. The figures I’ve seen indicated it’s sold over 170 million copies world-wide, whereas Asterix had sold 350 million copies by this fall. (Though I’m not completely sure the 170-million-figure really is world-wide rather than Japan only – sources are rather mixed up.) Of course, Asterix does have a forty-year head start…
Erk – that should be *325* million copies of Asterix albums, not 350. Apologies for the brain-blip.
Asterix total sales numbers are usually given as something between 300 and 350 million, so either could be true. I do think they are close to the higher number, though.
Either way, it easily outsells One Piece. OP has sold over 150 million copies in Japan, but foreign sales are comparatively pityful (Naruto is the current big worldwide sales manga, but his japanese sales are much lower than One Piece’s). Dragon Ball is the manga that could beat Asterix, having total worldwide sales closer to 300 million, but the series has been published to the end pretty much on the entire world, so current sales are very small compared to the annual sales of One Piece or even Asterix.
Best,
Hunter (Pedro Bouça)
Thanks for the better info, Hunter! I wasn’t aware Naruto was bigger than One Piece world-wide – I know it’s so by far in the U.S, but I had some idea that it was otherwise in Europe. (Here in Sweden One Piece is the biggest, not that our copies would contribute much to the overall figure!)
That pretty much makes Asterix the world’s biggest comic, doesn’t it? At least among those with only one single creating team and just one main title, collected in books. And yet it sells little in the U.S and has never cracked the Japanese market…
I guess a lot of people are fond of indomitable, free-spirited characters who like throwing big parties, be they Gauls or pirates. ;)