Robot 6
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Star Trek: Countdown
Passings | Prominent manga creator and essayist Murasaki Yamada died Tuesday in a hospital in Kyoto, Japan. She was 60. [Anime News Network]
Sales charts | Watchmen barely clings to USA Today’s bestseller list, falling 37 places to No. 147. However, the Alan Moore-Dave Gibbons collection again tops Bookscan’s graphic novel chart for April, followed by lots and lots of Naruto.
It’s perhaps interesting to note that Watchmen is the only superhero title in the Bookscan Top 20, and that it, Star Trek: Countdown (No. 10) and V for Vendetta (No. 18) are the only non-manga. [USA Today, ICv2.com]
King City #1
Publishing | Simon Jones considers the big picture in the news of a co-publishing arrangement between Tokyopop and Image Comics for the release of Brandon Graham’s King City. [Icarus Publishing]
Publishing | Bluewater Productions President Darren G. Davis talks about the company’s Female Force line of books. [Graphic Novel Reporter]
Publishing | Arcana Studio founder Sean O’Reilly speaks briefly about submissions and working with creators. [ComicsCareer.com]
Publishing | A handy roundup of links to publishers’ upcoming books listings on Amazon.com. [I Love Rob Liefeld]
Conventions | The National Post continues its preview of this weekend’s Toronto Comic Arts Festival with interviews with creators Ian Sullivan Cant, Jim Ottaviani, Steve Rolston, Faith Erin Hicks, Kid Koala and Carla Speed McNeil. Torontoist also looks at the event. [Toronto Comic Arts Festival]
The Joker, by Robinson
Creators | Geoff Boucher profiles legendary comics creator Jerry Robinson, focusing on the exhibit “ZAP! POW! BAM! The Superhero: The Golden Age of Comic Books, 1938-1950,” and Robinson’s contribution of The Joker to Batman lore and popular culture: “We had no idea, of course, that we’d still be talking about him all these years later. When I think of the money from that movie — a billion dollars…I get a chill when I hear that. We should have copyrighted what we had done. But of course, we didn’t know. We were young and no one could have seen all of this… it was a new industry and we were pioneering a new mythology. We had no past so we had very few rules. We also didn’t expect any of it to last.” [Hero Complex]
Creators | Pádraig Ó Méalóid continues his conversation with Alan Moore, this time concentrating on the writer’s upcoming projects, such as The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic and Jerusalem. [Forbidden Planet International]
Creators | Rick Geary discusses The Adventures of Blanche, adapting classic novels, and the next installment of his Twentieth Century Murder series. [Graphic Novel Reporter]
Creators | Brian Heater wraps up his interviews with Gene Yang and Box Brown. [The Daily Cross Hatch]
Comics | Graeme McMillan looks at some of the high and low points from four decades of Star Trek comics. [io9.com]
Art | Letterer Todd Klein walks through his creation of a new logo for Marvel’s Two-Gun Kid. [Todd Klein]
- May 7, 2009 @ 07:02 AM by Kevin Melrose
6 Comments
Martin Gray
May 7, 2009 at 8:26 am
When will we be free of the constant Watchmen book charts updates? It sold well to comic fans, then it sold better to film fans and now it’s selling less well. The end.
Kevin Melrose
May 7, 2009 at 8:31 am
It’s not the Watchmen book charts; it’s the book/graphic-novel charts. It just happens that Watchmen, and Naruto, appears on most of them.
Shaun
May 7, 2009 at 3:15 pm
While I don’t understand the appeal of manga, I understand that it does have great appeal to many. The Borders near my office has dramatically shrunk the regular comics (for lack of a better term) graphic novels/trade paperbacks area, while the manga portion has grown by about four times what it was. As for the sales list, I’d say it has a lot to do with the lack of quality stuff from the Big Two these days.
Shaun
May 7, 2009 at 3:18 pm
I just had to click on the link to “I Love Rob Liefeld” to see if it was a joke or not. Amazingly, it’s not.
Shaun
May 7, 2009 at 3:33 pm
That Star Trek article was hilarious… I have a few of the old Gold Key issues, and they’re bad (but hilarious). Then again, the Marvel run from the late 70′s/early 80′s was crap too. I still have fond memories of DC’s Trek run, and I still have the books! I should break those out again, as most of them were actually pretty good (esp. anything Peter David wrote). I’d like to get that DVD ROM set that came out last year of every Trek comic published (up until IDW, that is).
Moco
May 10, 2009 at 10:32 am
As a Borders employee, I can tell why the Graphic Novels sections have shrunk and the Manga has grown…sales.
Every day, several people come in, stack the graphic novels up in the Cafe, read them, then leave without buying one.
Do this repeatedly and they start to look shopworn so when the actual paying customer comes in, the graphic novels don’t get purchased.
Manga still sells well to teen girls and boys. They seem to have the dollars to purchase their favorite series.