ICv2.com: Manga Takes 13 Of 20 Slots In July’s Bookscan Comics Numbers

The Bookscan numbers tend to be unreliable in numerical form -- too many publishers are able to provide another, more convincing number that has little to do with the Bookscan number -- but there's always some usefulness or at least fun to be had in checking out the charts and musing on certain trends of one kind or another. I look at this chart and I see a lot of different things. Manga dominates. Naruto dominates the manga. Only three manga series with a volume number in the single digits makes this chart. DC has a strong enough book program that everything you'd expect to chart charts. Marvel continues to lope along seemingly without much of an effective and organized program and why they continue to leak pus from this area of comics is beyond me. Asterios Polyp did well but didn't kill, although 1) it's exactly the kind of book Bookscan seems to have trouble tracking and 2) I imagine sales should be generally strong for that one through the rest of the year and stronger than expected through premiere DM accounts. It's nothing that would surprise the average informed comics fan.

By the way, if you're never read Naruto, make that your next stop in the bookstore when you have twenty minutes to blow and are looking to spend it in a poofy chair not exactly buying something. It's a remarkable comic in some ways, one of the ten important comics of this decade, and I think it's building one of those "massive hit without quite being a huge mainstream hit of the kind my mom recognizes" reputations that should extend its life for a decade or two past whenever the series concludes. You probably won't get the specifics of characterization and pacing diving right in, but pay close attention to how action is portrayed -- I think that's its genius.
 
posted 8:25 am PST | Permalink
 

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