January 8, 2005
CR Week In Review
Top Stories
The week's most important comics-related news stories, January 1 to January 7, 2005:
1. Will Eisner, whose professional career touched on nearly every important phase of the American comic book industry,
passes away at age 87.
2. Michael Jantze
seems to have begun making new episodes of his formerly syndicated newspaper strip
The Norm for an on-line subscription audience.
3. Viz and Tokyopop
end the year with the #1 and #2 books according to Bookscan numbers, despite predictions in the Fall that the strongly-performing
In the Shadow of No Towers was going to finish first. This indicates to me that tentpole/gateway books such as first volumes in popular series may perform slightly better and for slightly longer than analysts thought.
Winners of the Week
Guy Endore-Kaiser and Rodd Perry
not only enjoyed a solid launch on their strip/panel
Brevity, they get to be the answer to the trivia question of
what replaced Garfield at the LA Times.
Loser of the Week
Dreamwave Productions, point studio for an onslaught of comics that sold briefly like hotcakes in the American comic book direct market based as much if not more on their appeal to some weird nostalgia for the cruddy cartoon shows of the current comics-buying public's pop tart-fueled childhood than for their kicky mix of American superhero and Japanese manga art styles,
closed up shop in Toronto.
Quote of the Week
"I suspect that the general consensus among the syndicated community is that the trends are pretty disheartening, I'm afraid. There's a genuine sense that many of today's editors view strips as a nuisance. Strips are routinely shrunk and morphed. Rates of pay remain at 1970s levels and some newspaper groups are even trying to whittle those rates down further." --
NCS President Steve McGarry to Editor and Publisher's Dave Astor.
posted 6:45 am PST |
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