Comics

Our wish for actual sales number released by an actual comics publisher were finally granted! And in The Hollywood Reporter, no less. DC released sales for its top three books of the year:

DC's Earth One line has always been a little mysterious. It was started as a repository for some early trial runs at an Ultimate DC line, but then SUPERMAN: EARTH ONE became a massive hit in bookstores. Stablemate BATMAN: EARTH ONE by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank has been waiting in the wings since the line was announced in 2009. But 2012 will be the year! Although a release date wasn't mentioned, perhaps the book will be marketed in Daily News by comparing it to Hunger Games, just as SEO was compared to Twilight.

A new website from Yoe Books highlights their amazing titles!

This was alluded to in our 2011 Survey, but now it's official: the great Peter Bagge has a new series coming out from Dark Horse in April. Called RESET, it's about a man who has a second chance at living his life. Will it get better or worse? AWESOME BONUS SAUCE: Variant covers by Matt Kindt!

Last year Dean Haspiel kick-started the creative juices of the new year with an essay called "Dear Content Maker" that confronted some of the excitement and uncertainties of the new horizons. Since then he's launched a new website -- Trip City -- and kept juggling all the balls a creator needs to. This year, he has a similar call to arms that surveys the current landscape called "Publish or Perish", named after a tweet by Jimmy Palmiotti:

With all the popularity of High School Musical/Glee/American Idol and other performance-based media these days, comics have been tiptoeing around this genre. There was Siena and Mark Siegel's To Dance; and Raina Telgemeier's upcoming DRAMA!, due this fall. And here's a new one from Papercutz, Dance Class: So You Think You Can Hip-Hop by Béka, aka Bertrand Escaich and Caroline Rogue. Aimed squarely at tween girls, it's another French pick up for the publisher, and it looks pretty charming.

FATALE #1, the first issue of Ed Brubaker and Sean Philips' new Image series, has sold out at Diamond and has a second printing on the way. And of course it will have a variant cover.

Tony Millionaire reposts this full page wonder from the LA Weekly when alt.comix strips were an important feature and people actually read alternative newspapers.

As we've mentioned here several times, there have been no more important graphic novels published in this century than PERSEPOLIS by Marjane Satrapi and FUN HOME by Alison Bechdel. Both found large audiences well beyond the traditional ones for comics, and both have become oft-imitated -- but never duplicated -- by book publishers trying to cash in on the "graphic novel" trend. (The number of graphic autobiographies exploring ethnic roots alone is staggering.)

Although you'd think he was busy enough drawing THE WALKING DEAD every month, artist Charlie Adlard occasionally has time to toss off something like CURSE OF THE WENDIGO (reviewed here) a horror comic written by French screenwriter Mathieu Missoffe and released in France in 2009. The story is set in World War I and finds French and GErman soldier teaming up to fight a greater horror. An American edition is out today from Dynamite, and here's a preview:

Adi Granov has supplied the cover for the 2012 edition of MONSTERS & DAMES, the art book crated in conjunction with the Emerald City Comicon each year. The cover provides both a monster and a dame, so it is well within the theme. Check out the link for much more art. This year's ECCC will be held March 30-April 1st in Seattle, WA.

A new comic strip debuts nationwide (yes, newspapers are still being sold) and it's quite good!