Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* Valentine's Day is apparently a bad day to be one of the comics-reading, fantasy-indulging cloistered single males that live in Taiwan, which I mention here because the name "Home Boy" makes me laugh.

* here is an interesting sales analysis of the Direct Market concentrating on how individual comics increase or decrease in sales. I'm not sure I understand it thoroughly, nor am I quite wrapping my mind around its explanation of how the market grows while most series are selling worse than they did the previous month, but it's a compelling take on things.

* Newsarama has a short interview up with Dan Didio about DC launching a third weekly, year-long limited series this June, to be called Trinity. The first DC series of this type, 52 was an excellent performer for the company; the second one, Countdown was a solid performer sales-wise but a disappointment when compared to 52 both in terms of sales and general reactions to the content. The weekly books have become important for a sales-struggling DC whose last major attempt to roll the sales momentum and excitement from a top-selling event series into increased interest for their regular line of comics pulled a Vinko Bogataj. If nothing else, even the poorer-selling second series when bunched together into one month's worth of comics is a blockbuster's worth of units moved. Judging from Didio's statements, while 52 was more of a stunt in and of itself and the second one was tied more directly to a forthcoming line-affecting "event," this one seems designed right up to the title to buttress the major ongoing storylines for its "big three" characters of Wonder Woman, Superman and Batman.

The same site has a similar piece up about a transitional book between the current weekly series and the event series, which also sounds like it will be used to provide a narrative baseline for all of DC's superhero books.

* this light-hearted feature on superheroes that didn't quite seem to work reminds me that the nearest retailer to me reports that G4 is the biggest drive of non-regular comics reader traffic to his store, which is something I'd never heard before.

* not comics: an Annie Awards report.

* not comics: Sammy Harkham, cinema owner.

* barely comics at best: more Lars Vilks, of "Muhammed's head on a dog's body" fame.

* Dick Hyacinth continues discussing his meta-list of compiled critics' take on 2007's best books, which means that there's discussion of some of the best books of that year that continues into the commentary thread. An interesting comment or two there: you can't really compare this kind of list 2007 by projecting such a list back into 2000, because the critical landscape is completely different now. Also, Jog mentions that either Black Hole or Epileptic was at the top of lists in 2005. I don't disbelieve him, but my memory is that neither one of those books fired the imagination of American writers about comics, and Epileptic in particular didn't seem to hit with most devoted comics readers, period.

* the writer Clifford Meth sent the site e-mail suggesting that some widely-disseminated (including by me) information on Marie Severin based on his original post didn't quite capture the spirit and intention of that piece -- you should all go read it yourself.
 
posted 8:30 am PST | Permalink
 

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