The News Blog of Comics Culture
Sometimes it feels like people forget that different comic shops have different sales patterns, what with all the comments on the various industry websites. Challengers Comics + Conversation, a shop in Chicago with one of the higher profiles in that area, has released the top 200 sellers for 2011 in the both the monthly issues and graphic novel categories.
The world may be ending in 2012, but that doesn’t mean that people don’t have some things to keep them busy until then. In our annual year-start tradition, we asked comics industry professionals — creators, publishers, librarians, retailers, journalists — about the year past and the year to come. While a few huge stories seemed to dominate last year — reboots and digital — there was much more to it. And 2012 is wide open.
Along the way, we have some previews and news tucked away in those “2012 project” descriptions. Before the end, well all have something to read.
Many thanks to all who took time from the busy holiday season to answer our survey. And here’s to a great 2012 for all!
Remember when Dave Johnson started that blog devoted to cover design — with actual criticism for covers that don’t work? Well, he’s still at it with both picks and pans. You’ll have to go to the blog to find out of which cover Johnson wrote this:
By Paul Mellerick
The one-two-three of Buffy, Walking Dead and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles continues to dominate the top of the indie chart, but Boom’s new Peanuts comics, containing new strips not by Schulz, gets the number four spot. Other than that it’s a quiet month, although there are 21 debut series, specials and one-shots across the list.
Now into month three of the New DC, overall it appears that the much vaunted extra sales that were rumoured are just that, rumours. Most books are still firmly on a downward heading, with many titles at the lowest sales in their history, and those that are stable have a history of being stable. A lot of this month’s new books have started well, but none have unusually high sales, bar maybe the first part of Kiss vs Archie.
123 indie books charted this month, only 4 less than 2 months ago, but with the bottom book selling almost a thousand copies more, 4,330 to 3,341. This seems largely due to new books, with 22 debut comics on the chart this month. The bottom book sold 4,330 compared to last month’s 5,167, but there were only 87 indie titles last month, and this month’s number 87 sold 6,299.
In total those books sold approximately 1,099,699, up on last month’s 921,878, but this month’s top 87 sold 915,559, so like for like sales are pretty close. Still, average sales are 8,940 per book, down from last month’s 10,596. As usual, UK and European sales from Diamond UK are not reported in this chart.
In case you haven’t noticed their fantastically stylish ads running in the sidebar. Comicraft is wrapping up their New Year’s Day font sale right about now — hurry over and pick up some serifs to keep your comics looking classy.
The Year in Review: 2011
I look back and recall the interesting events of 2011. What’s my choice for the biggest event of 2011? Read and find out!