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There's been some concern over Marvel's sales in the last six months or so. "But AVX is frickin' huge," you say. And it is. But that might be masking Marvel's inability to sell comics that aren't part of a crossover/Event. Marvel's Next event is the pseudo-relaunch of Marvel NOW! and nobody's quite sure what to make of that just yet. Last week, Brian Hibbs penned a column expressing concerns about Marvel NOW!'s viability and the poor general state of Marvel's and non-Event top list and mid-list. I think it's time to compare some of the numbers on this.

A couple of new surveys reveal some interesting book buying trends. In the bad news category, weekly sales are down 32% from 2011but that's mostly due to last summer's Borders sell off, Publishers Weekly reports.

It's a sign of the length of the Comic-Con Recovery Process that even though I thought I could wrap this all up on Tuesday, it's taken me another four days and many many packets of Vietnamese Instant Coffee (Cà Phê Hòa Tan) to have the energy to write my thoughts. If you don't want to read them you can listen to much the same thing in the PW Comics World More to Come podcast. While I'm pretty sure everyone has purged the week of July 11-15th from their mind entirely —and I just about have forgotten it all myself—for the sake of completeness, here's what I thought and observed and smelled and saw and heard:

Recent record-setting prices for original comics art could just be the beginning as the art world continues to perform.

A Lassie animated movie? A new Casper cartoon? It's all speculation, but DreamWorks has just purchased licensing company Classic Media for $155 million. Classic Media, which was founded by ex-Marvel CEO Eric Ellenbogen and ex-Broadway Video's John Engelman in 2000, has long been one of the biggest behind-the-scenes media entities, amassing a huge library of legacy characters including the Harvey and Western libraries, in addition to The Lone Ranger, Lassie, and many many more.

The comment section seemed pretty happy with the announcement that Howard Chaykin was going to be doing Buck Rogers for Hermes Press, so I laid hands on Dan Herman (the Publisher at Hermes) and got a little more information for you.

Tax experts H&R Block hired artist Ron Randall to examine the fiscal profiles of both Bruce Wayne and Peter Parker and the answer MAY surprise you...but not if you read the news.

We're done at BEA and BlogWorld and so on, and getting back up to speed on posting. Huge thanks to Torsten, Todd, Vanguard Steve, and Jessica for keeping the show running while we were away from the computer. We'll have more BEA thoughts tomorrow but in the meantime, not to make anyone jealous or anything, but here's the promo item of the show...and maybe the year, a travel themed giveaway for Lemony Snicket's new series, "ALL THE WRONG QUESTIONS", which has art by Seth...everything from a pen with an octopus to a bar of soap. The first book will have a 1 million copy laydown October 23rd.

That's the question Russo-Canadian cartoonist Svetlana Chmakova—by any standards one of the most successful North Ameircan manga creators—posed to a bunch of us at breakfast during TCAF. And Deb Aoki has responded with a comprehensive five-part series examining the question. Four parts are up thus far. Aoki starts with examining the reasons why manga by non-Japanese creators—whether you call it OEL or Global Manga or Bruce—has a hard time in the market, listing nine reasons. Among them:

Is Kickstarter the next big comics distribution outlet? Some would say it already is. Mark Andrew Smith issues a call to action.

We've been following the curious saga of Platinum Studios for some time now, and now, just as MEN IN BLACK 3 is about to open, it seems the company has suffered a blow by being delisted from the SEC:

As previously noted, we were guests the other night on Comic News Insider's gala 400th episodealong with Ben Templesmith, Chriss Cross, Becky Cloonan, Paul Pope, Emma Hayley, and many more. And we were there to announce a new partnership between CNI and The Beat!