Comics

Mark Millar has staked a place out for himself as both a franchise comics creators, able to sell books on his name alone, and someone who isn't afraid to hold a renegade opinion -- and he is prepared to defend his answer with his own logic, which may or may not conform to what is generally considered common sense. Thus this long piece in which he says day and date digital is not a good thing for comics, suggesting that a theatrical to dvd type model make more sense -- print being the theatrical release, digital being the DVD. Digital readers "aren't as hardcore as the first group, but they're a great place to recoup any money lost in the initial phase. Digital comics are like TV rights to me in that they're the tertiary phase of all this. These are for the most casual, mainstream readers or viewers and much cheaper than the primary or secondary waves. They're a great way of pulling people in for the next product coming out in theatres or in comic stores, but absolutely not the bedrock of your business."

Continuing the quest for a follow-up to Smallville, Booster Gold is the latest DC superhero to get a TV development deal, this time at the SyFy channel, under Greg Berlanti's production banner. The script is being written by Andrew Kreisberg, formerly of Fringe. Booster Gold appeared on the final season of Smallville, so he isn't a complete TV virgin.

The business side of Marvel has been quite a wild ride lately. First you had layoffs. Then you had cancellations. Then iFanboy wrote a piece about what other titles were falling into roughly the same sales range on the Diamond estimates, and could conceivably be in danger of cancellation. Then Ivan Brandon got worked up about such talk of sales levels and cancellation. Right on cue, a title on the iFanboy watch list (Daken: Dark Wolverine) got cancelled. Bickering ensued. Now Kiel Phegley is stepping back and taking a more measured look at Marvel's line and business factors than we've seen, thus far. I'd like to add a few factors into the discussion of what goes into deciding a book's fate.

We're not going to plagiarize ALL of Dave Johnson's cover comments...only several of them. He's at it again this time with some cover PICKS:

Remember good old Vertigo, the imprint where all the top writers for the New 52 got discovered and DC graphic novel book store sales were practically invented? Well, they are still at it! Plucky old Vertigo. And just to prove they still have what it takes, they have announced their book collections for the second half of 2012, including some truly awesome stuff, like a HUGE one-volume edition of THE INVISIBLES by Grant Morrison and his all stars (Quitely, Jimenez, Thompson, Weston, Buckingham etc., etc., etc.) that will weigh in at a mere 1536 pages and $150. Frankly, we didn't know they could print books that big and wide. Given that THE INVISIBLES is one of our favorite mainstream comic of the 90s, we are there. Make room, make room! They also announced two NEW gns, including Get Jiro! by Anthony Bourdain, Joel Rose and Langdon Foss, planned for June and Right State, just announced by Mat Johnson and Andrea Muti.

October was a first litmus test for the good "New 52" relaunch numbers, as it was the first month that allowed retailers to react to customer feedback on DC's "New 52" initiative in a meaningful way. As a result, Marvel won a little less of the market share than usual got really spanked by DC in October, which took the Top 6 spots, along with a whopping 17 out of the Top 20 (and 32 out of the Top 50, and 60 out of the Top 100), as well as 50.97 percent of the unit market share and 42.47 percent of the dollar share. DC's average periodical numbers were down a bit from September and are now in the exact same area as right after the line-wide "One Year Later" event in May 2006, which had been DC's high-water mark before the current relaunch. Back then, the average new DC comic book (not counting the now-defunct WildStorm) sold an estimated 50,519 units, the average new DC Universe comic book 59,505. In October 2011, now, it's 51,280 and 59,146, respectively. These numbers don't suggest we need to build a new ball park quite yet, but DC certainly did a great job of filling up the old one in a way that hasn't happened since, well, 2006. While a slight drop-off from September was to be expected, it turns out to be very slight indeed, because 16 of the "New 52" titles didn't drop at all, but rather increased in sales. They're led by Animal Man, which, on the back of good reviews, saw an impressive second-issue increase of 16 percent. And even most of the rest of the bunch displays much slighter drops than we're used to, for that matter. Only 16 of the percentage drops are in the double digits, and only four of those -- Action Comics, Men of War, Superman and Blackhawks -- are in the area you'd usually suspect. As a result, the average second-issue drop for the "New 52" is a tiny 5.2 percent -- a dream figure by any standard. (Also, it's worth noting that many of the books with the bigger second-issue drops came out in the last week of October. Technically, this means that they were disadvantaged, because all subsequent re-orders slipped into November. On the other hand, the first issues of those titles shipped in the last week of September, too, of course, so it should have evened out. In any case, we'll get a clearer picture of what's going on with the November chart.)

Shipping time is nigh and deluxe giftables are pouring into our inbox. Here's one from Skybound at Image, a deluxe, leather bound, slipcased hardcover edition of THE WALKING DEAD – RISE OF THE GOVERNOR novel written by Robert Kirkman and co-writer Jay Bonansinga with spot illos by Charlie Adlard. "Many have asked me whether I will ever write a prequel about the lives the character lead before," said Kirkman in a statement. "Well, that's basically what we're doing with these novels. And we wanted to offer the fans a special edition before the holidays." The book -- first in a planned trilogy or prequels based on series characters -- explores the origins of the Governor, the most hated villain in the whole series. The book ships on December 7 and retails for $74.99. A signed limited edition is also available for $124.99.

While Frank Miller's outburst against the OWS protesters might not have been the smartest PR move for him, he was right on the money about one thing: as a cartoonist, he was well qualified to comment. Graphic novels and comics have inspired a lot of the OWS protesters' iconography.

Editorial cartoonist Nick Galifianakis (Carolyn Hax) has come up with a lovely contribution for TEAM CUL DE SAC, the book benefitting Richard Thompson and his battle with Parkinson's disease. The piece provides a lovely tribute to the entire heritage of editorial cartooning.

X'ed OUT was one of 2010's best comics, a fantasmic, multi-leveled horror fantasy by the man who practically invented the category, Charles Burns. It was also an interesting experiment for publisher Pantheon, as it was at a slender 56 pages really only the first chapter in a story. The second part has been long in coming, but Entrecomics has posted what appears to be the cover to part two, THE HIVE. Dunno if it's the real thing or not, but hopefully the next part is coming in 2012.

The Wimpy Kid is the new Twilight. The latest book in the series, Cabin Fever, sold over one million hardcovers in its first week on sale. Sales were 25% higher than last year's November release, The Ugly Truth. RE: the recent sales figure discussions -- with numbers this good, there's no reason not to trumpet them aloud.

We all know DC signed a deal to give Amazon digital exclusivity to 100 graphic novels (and it kind of blew up in their face). You were probably thinking that you could read one of those DC digital graphic novels, like Watchmen, on any device that runs a Kindle app. (Bleeding Cool has a tweet of Warner Bros. saying just that.) It turns out, this is not the case. As DC's Hank Kanalz says, "You can't do that today but that’s the intention going forward. Like other other Amazon digital editions, readers will be able to read their graphic novels on any device."