Random Comics News Story Round-Up

* the cartoonist Jeff Smith explains why the folks at Cartoon Books are glad that ICv2.com re-examined the way they were reporting a specific Bookscan list so that it included comics material for young people. The reconstituted list featured Bone prominently.

Something that should make a lot of folks sit up is that Smith states they're still selling 1500 to 2000 copies of the one-volume Bone each month and have sold 140,000 total. Given the size of the book and its availability in other formats, those numbers dropped my jaw for sure. Also, I think I can answer Smith's question as to why the 140k number shows up as 50k on those charts. Jeff, the reason those numbers show up in bizarre, haphazard fashion as it relates to the actual numbers is that those charts seem to do a routinely bizarre and haphazard job when it comes to measuring comics sales numbers. I don't know why that is, so I guess that's not much of an answer, but I can assure you this isn't an isolated phenomenon and it isn't something you're doing.

* another massive and long-anticipated book drops, joining Yoshihiro Tatsumi's A Drifting Life: this time it's Humbug.

* the comics business news and analysis site has a succinct post up describing the deal by which Marvel has re-upped with Hasbro. In terms of the company's overall post-'90s bankruptcy success, Marvel's ability to forge amenable licensing deals with various category leaders and near-leaders has been the Dave Prater to the Sam Moore that is their success in movies.

* here's a nice report on Art Spiegelman's keynote address at the ICv2 Graphic Novel Conference some days ago now.

* I hadn't read anyone laying the blame for MAD's recent cutbacks as squarely at the feet of DC Comics as Glenn Hauman has here. I'm not sure if it's fair or not; I know very little about that specific situation. One thing struck me: I'm probably in a tiny minority on this, but one of the underlying issues in these MAD articles seems to be its value as a "brand." I'm not a surly teenager. I'm fine with the fact that these things have a kind of detachable, transferable value. However, what I personally find worthwhile about MAD is the magazine, not its brand. Does that make sense? Like if MAD were still going quarterly but they had a rockin' web site, or that TV show of theirs were still going and this time around was a humongous ratings hit instead of a solid performer, I would still feel the exact same sadness about the magazine going quarterly. I mean, I don't look at National Lampoon Presents Dorm Daze at the video store and think "All right! An opportunity for further engagement with the magazine that brought me Shary Flenniken and Michael O'Donoghue!" Then again, maybe I'm just old.

* this article suggests that there may be issues with new terms being discussed for implementation by Facebook, basically as they extend to Facebook's potential ownership of original content.

* finally, Steve Duin's post about missing Eddie Campbell's blog posts made me laugh, because I also get sad and slightly worried when a cartoonist stops posting regularly, if only for a while, even though I should know better.
 
posted 6:30 am PST | Permalink
 

---

 
Daily Blog Archives
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
 
Full Archives