The Village Voice
Comics A.M. | Comics decline again; Village Voice to pay cartoonists
FF #1
Publishing | The direct market experienced another decline in March, with comics sales slipping 2.43 percent from the same month in 2010, and graphic novels plummeting 10.01 percent. For the first quarter of 2011, comics fell 8.57 percent while graphic novels dropped 7.24 percent, for a combined decline of 8.14 percent.
John Jackson Miller notes that DC Comics’ price rollback appears to be having an impact on the overall bottom line: “While unit sales for comics were up by less than 1% in March, led by FF #1, they were down 2.43% in dollar terms. The quarterly unit-to-dollar gap in periodicals was wider, with a sales loss of nearly 1% in units versus a 5% loss in dollar terms. In the past inflationary periods, we always saw the dollar category doing better than units. Now, the reverse is happening.” [ICv2.com]
Publishing | Following widespread criticism, The Village Voice Editor Tony Ortega acknowledges that not paying cartoonists who contributed to the paper’s Comics Issue “was not the best way to help out the cartooning industry.” So he’ll be paying the artists. [The Village Voice]