Comics sales are back at 1994 levels, dawg
Industry analyst John Jackson Miller has taken the Bookscan numbers posted by Brian Hibbs, and added them with the Diamond year-end sales charts, and then triangulated them with a cosine angle, trapped the outlines in their own layer, tossed the results with a bit of olive oil and garlic, and presented it all for you to read. The above infographic gives a visual representation of sales for each product (GNs and periodical) in various channels; as Miller points out, library and digital sales are not included and the Bookscan numbers are very low, but the end result is a combined comics market of more than $700 million, which Miller notes, is the first time comics sales have reached this level since 1993 or 1994, the high times of speculation and chromium covers.
Interview: The Odyssey of Neal Adams
Interviewing Neal Adams over at the New Statesman in the run up to this month’s London Super Comic Con, we chatted about his legendary...
REVIEW: A Whirlwind Tour of the DOCTOR WHO OMNIBUS, Volume 1
IDW’s first volume of the collected DOCTOR WHO OMNIBUS is a compact but substantial little tome gathering two long story arcs (“Agent Provacateur” and...
Indie Month-to-Month Sales December 2012
It’s pretty much as you were in a fairly quiet month for new books. Boom’s dollar-book Deathmatch and the return of Hellboy, alongside a new Adventure Time spin-off and Brian Wood’s new book Mara are the notable debuts. Walking Dead, Saga & My Little Pony top the chart again, elsewhere the Image Firsts reprint programme features strongly, and a few long running licensed books end ahead of relaunches.
BookScan: Kids’ comics and The Walking Dead ruled bookstore sales in 2012
It's my FAVORITE day of the year, when Brian Hibbs posts the year-end sales from bookstores via the Bookscan chart. Now we know these numbers are significantly low, but as I always say, they present a metric.
The huge take away? Well, we all knew The Waking Dead was a juggernaut,—sales in this franchise would have made it the #3 publisher all by itself—but after that it's kids comics all the way, led by the maybe-comics of Dork Diaries, but following by Big Nate, Ninjago, Ursula Vernon's Dragonbreath, Drama and so on.
Second Opinion: Batman #17
Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's Batman #17 came out this week, concluding their 'Death of the Family' storyline to universal approval from reviewers. But...
A Con Comes to Grand Rapids
Even as folks tape up their combat boots for the San Diego badge scramble, more modest events are springing up everyone --
even Grand Rapids, MI, which is getting the Grand Rapids Comic-Con on October 12 in Wyoming, Michigan. Organizer Mark Hodges is realistic about this first time show—he expects 2000-3000 people to attend event, to be held at the Home School Building—but can't ignore the visions dancing in his head of a future show that draws 30,000 people, even if he can't afford Ron Perlman this time.
Scott McCloud reveals future book plans
In this week's PW Comics World, I interviewed Jeremy Short—creator of the study on comics comprehension referenced here—about that study and a general overview...
San Diego Comic-Con badges go on sale on February 16th — here’s your video...
This Saturday at February 16, 2013 at 9:00 AM Pacific Time (PT), badges for the 2013 Comic-Con International San Diego will go on sale.
There will be joy, there will be despair, there will be tweets, there will be a video.
Kibbles ‘n’ Bits, 2/14/2013: what time is love?
Rubert Grint to play a superhero, Orson Scott Card to play a supervillian.
Constantine #1 Preview (Or Hellblazer PG-13 If You Prefer)
DC has sent over a preview of the New 52 Hellblazer relaunch, renamed Constantine, possibly after the Keanu Reeves film (which was surprisingly decent). As you can...
Wertham and Are Comics Art? — is it 1981 again?
A must read and a must-read for masochists top our linkage today, both returning to topics that were much on the minds of anyone in comics about 30 years ago — oldies but goodies.
First and most importantly, library professor Carol Tilley has been going through Dr. Fredric Wertham's notes and found out that he was, to use a technical term, full of hooey.























