memoirs
Comics A.M. | Amazing Spider-Man #700 racks up $1.6 million
The Amazing Spider-Man #700
Publishing | The Amazing Spider-Man #700 led the pack in the December comics numbers with 200,000 copies selling to comics shops, and with a cover price if $7.99, it racked up a cool $1.6 million in sales. Avengers #1 sold 186,000 copies but at a more reasonable price, so the dollars didn’t pile up as high for that one. ICv2 also has the December charts for the Top 300 comics and graphic novels in the direct market. John Jackson Miller takes it to the next level with sales estimates for the top 1,000 comics and trades of 2012. [ICv2]
Publishing | At the other end of the scale, Rob Clough talks to Chuck Forsman, the guy behind micropublisher Oily Comics. [The Comics Journal]
Comics A.M. | New York Comic Con three-day tickets go on sale
New York Comic Con
Conventions | Three-day tickets went on sale this week for New York Comic Con. Confirmed guests so far include Geoff Johns, Jim Lee, Mike Mignola and Josh Gates. [Collider.com]
Publishing | The revelation that DC’s newly reintroduced Green Lantern Alan Scott is gay has moved Christian comic publisher Art Ayris, who is also the executive pastor of a Baptist church, to announce that his company Kingstone Media won’t be including gay characters in its lineup: “If Kingstone is the only comic book company in America doing it, we will stand for the things God says are godly and stand against things that clearly fall under the category of sin.” [Baptist Press]
Retailing | The Avengers movie seems to be bringing new customers into comics stores looking for Marvel titles, at least in Maryland. Pullbox requests for Marvel comics are also up, suggesting some of the uptick is from existing customers. [The Star Democrat]
Skyhorse to publish Tangles graphic novel
Friday’s New York Times had a fascinating article by James Warren about Comics & Medicine: The Sequential Art of Illness, a conference that was held this past week at Northwestern University in Chicago. The article mentioned a number of comics and graphic novels that deal with medical issues, including slice-of-life stories of working in the medical field, instructional manuals, and accounts of living with an illness. One of the latter that caught my eye was Sarah Leavitt’s Tangles, which deals with her mother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s disease—a story that is all too familiar to readers of my generation (including myself). The graphic novel was published in Canada, but later on Friday, Skyhorse Publishing announced via Twitter that they will be publishing it in the U.S. as well. Skyhorse is an independent book publisher with a wide repertoire, from the looks of their website, and they are distributed by W.W. Norton (which also distributes Fantagraphics books), so Tangles should be easy to find when it is published.
For more on the conference, which included guest appearances by Scott McCloud, Phoebe Gloeckner, David Small, and Paul Gravett, check out the blog of Mom’s Cancer creator Brian Fies, as well as Publishers Weekly’s writeup.