Retailing & Marketing

Despite the jitters everyone is having about the Big Two's periodical publishing programs, as we reported the other day, graphic novels did pretty well in 2015, with sales up 22% in bookstores. Calvin Reid follows up on this sanguine report with an interview with Diamond Book Distributions Kuo Yu Liang, who says 2016 will probably be their best year ever.:

We've been keeping an eye on threats of eroding comics sales that may spell trouble ahead for the comics industry, and it isn't just...

 The Comic Den, a 25-year-old comics shop in Kew Gardens, is closing down at the end of the month for troubling reasons: “The new generation...

Recently I posted a news item about the new Badger book from Devil's Due having low orders. Writer/creator Mike Baron reached out to me...

  Kennel Block Blues by Ryan Ferrier (Sons of Anarchy, Curb Stomp) and artist Daniel Bayliss (Jim Henson’s The Storyteller: Dragons, Translucid) is a new...

We talk to someone who's been waiting for Secret Wars to end before picking up any new Marvel titles. How has he been biding his time?

What does DC need to do to change its fortunes in the year to come?

Based on the astounding social media attention to my last post about Ariell R. Johnson and her Amalgam Comics & Coffeehouse in Philadelphia, it seems you want more Ariell. So I am very happy to oblige with the above video of Johnson talking at the Ignite Philly event last fall. Johnson talks about her own life as a nerd, who was the black Thundercat and her discovery of Storm, the first black superheroine she encountered: "When I found out about Storm I gripped on tight to her and never let her go."

I can't think of a better story to end this year with than that of Ariell R. Johnson, reportedly the East coasts first black...

2015 was a great year for comics, but comics sales were generally up in single digits, which is not a bad thing, but less...

It's obvious to anyone who's been looking at the sales charts of late that DC is having something of a sales problem, with levels...

The November sales estimate headlines are all about how the market is up, owing to Dark Knight 3, Vader Down and a metric ton of Marvel’s relaunched #1’s. You expect a certain amount of that. Stunts sell, as long as the publishers don’t over-extend the market for variant covers (and they sure seem aggressive in emphasizing those instead of the content in between the covers). What you’d miss out on if you only read the headlines is that Marvel’s #2 and #3 issues aren’t getting a ton of traction relative to those gaudy #1 sales totals.