2011 October
Batman #1 leads DC Comics domination of September’s Top 20
Strong sales of the New 52, its heavily promoted line-wide relaunch, made DC Comics the leading direct-market publisher in September, edging out Marvel in market share and dominating the Top 20 titles for the month.
DC carved out a 35.74 percent of the market in dollars and 43.04 percent in units sold, versus Marvel’s 35.7 percent and 37.88 percent, according to figures released this morning by Diamond Comic Distributors. The $2.99 cover price for the vast majority of DC’s line — the 40-page Action Comics, All-Star Western and Men of War were $3.99 — prevented the dollar share from being larger.
The publisher claimed 17 of the Top 20 spots, led by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Batman #1 at No. 1. It was followed by Action Comics #1, by Grant Morrison and Rags Morales, which, because of its cover price, was actually the top-selling comic in terms of dollars.
Marvel entered the list at No. 8 with Fear Itself #6, followed by Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #1 at No. 9, and The Amazing Spider-Man #699 at No. 18.
While many will undoubtedly see this as further evidence that DC’s relaunch gamble has paid off, Warren Ellis was quick to throw cold water on those market-share numbers, writing, “So DC Comic’s media-blitzed massive relaunch of its entire line in September got them this: A half-point lead in dollar share over Marvel Comics (who had one high-profile launch in the September frame). A five-point lead in units sold over Marvel Comics. But all those units DC sold are returnable.
“Thank god all those DC execs told everyone they weren’t interested in market share. Otherwise someone might have come away with the notion that DC really intended to give Marvel a fight in the marketplace and make Marvel sort their own shit out. What a stroke of luck for everybody.”
- October 7, 2011 @ 06:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Grumpy Old Fan | Party’s over: DC Solicits for December 2011
Showcase Presents The SPOOOOKY
In many ways, for longtime DC superhero readers, this is the first week of the rest of our lives. This is the week the first batch of New-52 second issues come out, and as such, this week the New 52 stops being a September-specific gimmick. We all know the second issue is where the rubber meets the road. Accordingly, in conjunction with a look at December’s titles, here’s where I am after a month of first issues.
Back when the September solicitations came out, I listed 37 books that I was planning at least to try:
Action Comics, All-Star Western, Aquaman, Batgirl, Batman, Batman And Robin, Batwing, Batwoman, Blackhawks, Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, Catwoman, DC Universe Presents, Demon Knights, Detective Comics, The Flash, Frankenstein: Agent Of SHADE, The Fury Of Firestorm, Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, Green Lantern: New Guardians, Grifter, Justice League, Justice League Dark, Justice League International, Men Of War, Mister Terrific, Nightwing, Red Lanterns, Resurrection Man, Static Shock, Stormwatch, Supergirl, Superman, Swamp Thing, and Wonder Woman
- October 6, 2011 @ 03:00 PM by Tom Bondurant
Quote of the day | Jason Latour on superheroes as ‘product logos’
“I can tell you for a matter of fact that when I draw work-for-hire stuff, I get into the idea that I’m drawing Wolverine, the guy from the stories I love. I’m continuing his tale. I don’t think that I’m drawing the dude on the underwear. I legitimately love Wolverine as a character. [...] I heard Ed Brubaker say that he treats all of his stuff like it’s creator owned stuff. That’s the only way I can do it. I feel like I’m wasting my life otherwise. Listen, I have seen Wolverine juice boxes. I know that ridiculous thing exists. But the fact that it does, in some way, makes me feel like I’m getting away with something. Like knowing the depraved person I am and that I put all of my energy into drawing this Wolverine story, and then I turn around and see some kid with a Wolverine toy, and that seems subversive to me. I slipped some possibly bad, possibly raunchy art, into that kid’s life. You just get caught up in it while you’re working on it. If you care, it’s really hard to think of it as underwear. And sure, it’s overwhelming and sickening to walk into a Walmart and see nothing but Spider-Man bed sheets. Sometimes, under the right light, that’s kinda cool, though.”
– writer/artist Jason Latour, talking at length with Michel Fiffe about, among other things, working on characters that are licensed to sell toys, underwear and, yes, juice boxes
- October 6, 2011 @ 02:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
Romanian comics contingent coming to NYCC
Almost Three Minutes Of Romanian Comics from Miki Maus on Vimeo.
Next week’s New York Comic-Con is playing host to a contingent of Romanian artists making their first-ever appearance at the convention.
Situated in Booth #2018, “NO SCHOOL: New Romanian Comics” is an exhibition put on by the Romanian Cultural Institute and will feature appearances by artists Sandu Florea, Matei Branea, Alexandru Ciubotariu and Milos Jovanovic. Each will have their own books for sale, as well as an interesting magazine called Hardcomics, collecting the best of Romanian funnies from 1891 to the present day. Check out this video put together above, and if you’re on the con floor of NYCC stop by and tell them Robot 6 sent you.
- October 6, 2011 @ 01:01 PM by Chris Arrant
A Month of Wednesdays: Sara Varon, Kate Beaton and more September comics
Bake Sale (First Second) Sara Varon trades in the anthropomorphic animal characters of her previous comics Robot Dreams and Sweater Weather (and her children’s picture book Chicken and Cat) for a new source of character design: anthropomorphized foodstuffs.
I really enjoyed the waves of cognitive dissonance I got from seeing Bake Sale’s star Cupcake, a cupcake, making cupcakes, and other such weirdness as an animated chicken leg walking its dog in the park, a bag of sugar excitedly ordering brownies and, perhaps most disturbingly, seeing Cupcake chopping up a carrot for his carrot cake…only to visit a restaurant a few pages later and placing an order with a carrot, named Carrot! (Also, there’s a panel where Cupcake learns his place in the band has been filled by a potato, and responds, “A potato?! Everyone knows potatoes have no rhythm!” Why is Cupcake so racist against potatoes? And I’m pretty sure he’s eating mashed potatoes with his meatloaf sandwich in that scene…)
Another difference between Bake Sale and Varon’s previous works? I was able to read it without bawling my eyes out (as I did with Robot Dreams) or even getting a little choked up (as with Chicken and Cat). Which isn’t to imply that her latest is lacking in emotional content—Varon’s cute, simple cartoon characters are remarkably communicative of complicated feelings, and her visual storytelling is masterful. There remains an almost elegiac quality to it.
- October 6, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by J. Caleb Mozzocco
Dash Shaw illustrates, animates a Blind Date episode, for some reason
Never let it be said that Dash Shaw isn’t an artist who follows his bliss. The video above represents the fourth time Shaw has drawn a faithful adaptation of a segment from the kind of gross reality show Blind Date, in which more or less attractive young people are brought together to do something “fun” and either get along terribly or end the evening swapping spit or, y’know, whatever. The amusing part of doing this as a video is that you can hear the original audio the whole time, and trust me, the sound is worth the price of admission alone toward the end there. How does the date go? Let Shaw show you!
- October 6, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by Sean T. Collins
Gaze in wonder at Brandon Graham’s Habibi fanart
King City cartoonist Brandon Graham dropped this beauty on twitpic the other day — it’s a lovely tribute to Craig Thompson’s Middle Eastern epic Habibi, centered on the book’s female lead Dodola. It’s funny: I never would have thought there’d be much visual kinship between Thompson’s lush brushwork and Graham’s thin lines, but both artists have a curvilenear sweep to their work that turns out to make their styles mesh beautifully. And obviously, Graham can pack in the Thompson-esque ornamentation like whoa.
The best thing about the illustration is that no matter what you like about it, you can find more of that thing someplace online today:
- October 6, 2011 @ 10:00 AM by Sean T. Collins
Is DC’s New 52 more diverse?
Static Shock #1
The diversity of the new DC Universe has been the subject of a lot of conversations since the New 52 was first announced. DC made diversity a component of its marketing for the new series, and whenever the question comes up, it’s something the company claims to realize is important. Take for instance Dan DiDio’s interview with The Washington Post, where DC’s co-publisher said, “One of the things we looked at was that we wanted the DC Universe to be reflective of our reading audience, and by doing so it was important for us to look at characters like Batwing. We wanted to have a strong black character.” Or his and Jim Lee’s “We Hear You” post, where they wrote, “We’ve heard from fans about a need for more women writers, artists and characters. We want you to know … that we hear you and take your concerns very seriously.”
That post is important because it’s a reminder that this is something they’re still struggling with. While DC certainly has had issues around diversity and sensitivity in the past, I’m willing to take at face value their claims that they’re working to correct it. Lee and DiDio wrote, “We’re committed to telling diverse stories with a diverse point of view. We want these adventures to resonate in the real world, reflecting the experiences of our diverse readership. Can we improve on that? We always can — and aim to.” Continue Reading »
- October 6, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by Michael May
Sailor Moon fans push back on manga piracy
Until Kodansha’s recent re-release of the first volume, Sailor Moon had been out of print in the United States for six years. What’s more, the original English-language edition suffered from many of the sins of early manga — bad translation, flipped pages, etc. Since it is, despite this, one of the most popular manga of all time, it’s not surprising that there are scanlations of it all over the web.
But when a Sailor Moon fan site linked to scans of Kodansha’s new edition, readers who clearly had no problem with posting scanlations were strongly critical of the site owner for linking to rips of an American edition. Here’s a comment that sums up much of the discussion:
This is so sad! The new books are really beautiful and it’s shame to rip them off this way. I understand why the Tokyopop translations were circulated because the copyright expired but this is very different. Really disappointing and I have to say I hope you remove them from your site.
But the person who posted the links, Elly, shoots right back:
- October 6, 2011 @ 08:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Comics A.M. | Digital comics milestone; Kickstarter’s patent battle
comiXology
Digital comics | Following the entry this week by Image Comics into same-day digital release, 40 percent of the comics that debuted in print Wednesday were also available digitally through comiXology. Asking whether day and date comics are “hitting a tipping point,” retailer news and analysis site ICv2 notes: “Publishers are gaining confidence in the concept as evidence grows that day and date releases do not negatively impact print sales. DC’s bold move to convert its entire line to day and date digital with the New 52 has been the clearest indication yet that digital sales are not cannibalizing print.” [ICv2.com]
Legal | Kickstarter, the two-year-old crowd-funding site used by a variety of artists to fund projects, has asked a federal court to declare invalid a patent held by Brian Camelio, who founded ArtistShare in 2000. Camelio, a composer and former studio musician for the rock band Journey, has obtained a patent for a process that resembles Kickstarter’s own crowd-funding model. According to PaidContent, “Kickstarter ask a federal court to declare that the patent is invalid and that the company is not liable for infringement. If the patent, described as ‘methods and apparatuses for financing and marketing a creative work,’ is valid and Kickstarter is infringing, the site could be forced to shut down or pay significant damages.” [PaidContent]
- October 6, 2011 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
Haven director confirms distributor is closing, but says he’ll return
Haven Distributors
Lance Stahlberg, director of Haven Distributors, has confirmed to Robot 6 that the independent-comics distributor will shutdown at the end of the month after more than three years in operation. He also pledged that, “I do intend to come back.”
Haven was launched in March 2008 by Chicago-based publisher Rogue Wolf Entertainment a month after it purchased the assets of longtime reorder distributor Cold Cut. Stahlberg, who was vice president of Rogue Wolf, became first chief operating officer and then director of Haven, which signed agreements with such publishers as BOOM! Studios, SLG Publishing, Top Shelf Productions and Red 5 Comics.
On Tuesday, Stahlberg sent an e-mail to retailers stating that he will continue to take orders through Oct. 23 and will fill all orders for October-shipping releases. He also said that most of the back stock had been marked down for liquidation.
In the e-mail, sent to Robot 6 by a third party but confirmed by Stahlberg, he emphasized that he isn’t the owner of Haven Distribution, and he added:
That’s an important distinction to make because I feel that closing the company is a very foolish move on the owner’s part. I still get regular requests for books that our competition claims is out of stock, or failed to carry at all. I still get new customer account requests.
To that end, it is my intent to return to the distribution business at some point in the (hopefully near) future with a business partner who shares at least some of my commitment to the comics industry and shows the desire to properly finance the operation and provide the resources it needs to succeed.
Stahlberg declined to name Haven’s owner to Robot 6, but he did say, “All I can say is, he is not a comics guy.”
- October 5, 2011 @ 04:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Marjane Satrapi’s Chicken with Plums: The Movie
France gets some cool comics movies. Last year there was The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec; now in a couple of weeks they’ll have Poulet Aux Prunes, an adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Chicken with Plums.
Oddly, Satrapi’s story of a relative of hers who decides to kill himself after his wife destroys his cherished tār looks like it’s played for laughs in the film. The trailer below shows some surreal fantasy sequences in which Nasser Ali Khan imagines various ways of committing suicide. It’s been a couple of years since I read the book (I reviewed it for Robot 6 at the time), but though I remember its using humor, it’s certainly not the comedy that the trailer makes it out to be. While the suicide plan sounds extreme and ridiculous at first, there’s a hidden reason for it that makes sense once it’s revealed. Discovering the answer to that heartbreaking mystery is one of the book’s most captivating and powerful elements and I dearly hope the film doesn’t sacrifice it for laughs. Satrapi both co-wrote and co-directed the film, so there’s reason to be optimistic.
- October 5, 2011 @ 03:00 PM by Michael May
Marvel teases ‘It’s coming’ at New York Comic-Con
An ominous-looking postcard from Marvel arrived today at the Comic Book Resources offices teasing “It’s coming.” What It might be is anyone’s guess, but the note on the back from Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso promises we’ll find out more Oct. 15 at the “Cup O’ Joe” panel at New York Comic-Con.
Comic Book Resources will, of course, be covering the entire four-day convention, which kicks off Oct. 13 at the Jacob Javits Center. Marvel also encourages those who can’t attend to catch the announcement live at 5 p.m. ET Oct. 15 at Marvel.com/itscoming. “Because trust me,” Alonso writes, “you won’t want to miss this.”
- October 5, 2011 @ 02:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
New 52 Pickup | Week 6
We’ve passed the first round No. 1 issues for DC’s New 52, and now it’s time to get to the real meat of the stories with Issue 2. This week’s pull had six continuing titles from Round 1 with some strong contenders for the final surviving title.
Also, some might be interested in the results of the wildcard selection from last week. There was overwhelming support for Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E., so I’ll give that book another shot. I’d like to note that every book got at least a little love, with O.M.A.C. and Nightwing receiving a number of shout-outs in the comments. Expect Frankenstein to pop up later this month.
Also, I’m going to try something a little different from this month on: Each book will still get a short review, but the pull list won’t be fully evaluated until the end of the month.
Finally, two No. 1 issues for two miniseries dropped today, Huntress and Penguin: Pain and Prejudice. Both are a lot of fun and definitely deserve a look.
With that, let’s get to the six No. 2 issues on the pull this week!
Warning! Spoilers ahead!
- October 5, 2011 @ 01:00 PM by Steve Sunu
Your Wednesday Sequence 27 | Frank Miller
Wolverine #3 (1982), page 9. Frank Miller.
For all that Frank Miller deserves as much credit as any other American cartoonist for bringing Japanese comics to these shores, the intersections between his own comics and manga are somewhat surprisingly limited. It’s obvious from a flip through a vintage Miller comic that he’s fascinated by the work of Goseki (Lone Wolf and Cub) Kojima and Katsuhiro (Akira) Otomo — but beyond that powerful one-two punch, and maybe a bit of Golgo 13‘s Takao Saito, the chain of Japanese influence on Miller’s prime-period work is either subtle or nonexistent. Which doesn’t have to be any kind of problem; after all, the Miller of the early-mid 1980s was conducting a balancing act with the cartooning mannerisms of three continents, unifying the systems of visual codes used by comics from America, Europe, and Japan into a single style before anyone else even thought to do it. But it’s nice to see Miller go for a more purely Japanese moment on this page, one that calls back a lot further into that artistic tradition than his usual action manga debt-paying goes.
- October 5, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by Matt Seneca