Comix Experience Top Selling comics 2007

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on December 31, 2007

Categories: Retailing/Industry

Same as the last list, except this time we’re talking comics. Like the previous, this is actually from August on, and missing the last 4 hours of sales for the the year… People like Joss Whedon!!! Rank Title Issue # 1 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 6 2 Dollar Book 3 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 7 4 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 8 5 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 9 6 ASTONISHING X-MEN 22 7 ALL STAR SUPERMAN 9 8 ASTONISHING X-MEN 23 9 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 5 10 Quarter Book – Single 11 Quarter Book – 10 for a Buck 12 WORLD WAR HULK 4 WORLD WAR HULK 3 14 JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA 12 15 ANGEL AFTER THE FALL 1…  Read More…

Comix Experience Top Selling Books 2007

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on

Categories: Retailing/Industry

Hurray for the POS system, I can “effortlessly” extract this information (well, it took 10 minutes to reformat it, and add the ranking numbers)! And, well, it isn’t all of 2007 — it is only from when we installed the POS… therefore from August onwards. And, I’m cheating a little — there’s still four hours left in our shopping year, so some of these COULD adjust upwards a tiny smidge… Still, this is what it looks like (lets hope that blogger doesn’t gut the formatting….): Rank Title 1 LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN THE BLACK DOSSIER HC 2 WALKING DEAD VOL 07 THE CALM BEFORE TP 3 SCOTT PILGRIM VOL 04 SCOTT PILGRIM GETS IT TOGETHER GN 4 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE…  Read More…

Shipping 1/4/2008

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Posted by: admin on

Categories: Shipping Lists

Again, comics arrive on FRIDAY this week. Man, we went from last week’s Biggest-Shipment-Of-The-Year, to this week’s Smallest, *sigh* ALL NEW ATOM #19 ANITA BLAKE VH GUILTY PLEASURES #7 (OF 12) ANNIHILATION CONQUEST #3 (OF 6) BIG PLANS #3 BLACK DIAMOND #6 (OF 6) BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #10 COUNTDOWN LORD HAVOK AND THE EXTREMISTS #3 (OF 6) COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS 17 COUNTDOWN TO MYSTERY #4 (OF 8) DETECTIVE COMICS #840 DOCTOR WHO CLASSICS #2 DOKTOR SLEEPLESS #4 DYNAMO 5 #10 END LEAGUE #1 EXILES DAYS OF THEN & NOW GRAVEL #0 HACK SLASH SERIES SEELEY CVR A #7 HEDGE KNIGHT 2 SWORN SWORD #4 (OF 6) HOWARD THE DUCK #4 (OF 4) JONAH HEX #27 JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED…  Read More…

More of Hell’s Mirrors: Jog swings down on his silken cord for 12/28

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Posted by: Joe McCulloch on

Categories: Reviews

For the record, my experiment in reading only Grant Morrison’s bits of the recent The Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul Bat-crossover wound up reconfirming that Morrison can write some decent, undemanding Big Superhero action – something I probably didn’t need reconfirmed, but it wasn’t unpleasant or anything. It seemed a bit like a constrained JLA. Batman #672: As for post-crossover accessibility, this issue pretty much picks the story up from where it left off pre-Ra’s (and pre-J.H. Williams III, for that matter), although there’s always the chance that Morrison might string everything together later on. Or he’s already subtly playing off of events in comics I haven’t read. Certainly for me this run is already past the point where looking…  Read More…

Diana Goes Digital #2: Our Princess Is In Another Castle

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Posted by: admin on December 30, 2007

Categories: Reviews

In connection with this week’s featured webcomic, Dan Miller’s KID RADD, I want to talk about cross-genre appeal. It seems to me that this particular creative strategy never works out well for the mainstream companies: I’m sure we all recall such catastrophic experiments as I HEART MARVEL and DC’s line of ill-fated horror film adaptations. The failure was two-fold there – not only did the core readership stay away, but fans of those other genres such as romance and horror weren’t interested either. That raises an interesting question: can comics accurately capture the cross-genre effect at all? Does MARVEL ZOMBIES scare you? Does it have the same effect as NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD? Or, to make the comparison fairer,…  Read More…

Johanna’s Last Marvel Review of 2007: Hulk/Fin Fang Foom, She-Hulk, Order

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Posted by: admin on

Categories: Reviews

Hulk vs. Fin Fang Foom — I’m surprised no one’s thought of pitting the two green laconic purple pants-wearers against each other before. I was looking forward to a fun slugfest, but I was even more surprised that Peter David’s put in a story. In a situation reminiscent of The Thing, a group of Antarctic scientists discover Fin Fang Foom under the ice. The art team of Jorge Lucas and Robert Campanella do a terrific job of capturing the original beetle-browed Hulk look. I’m ordinarily not a fan of Kirby lookalikes, but it’s the perfect style for this kind of no-holds-barred adventure. David’s Hulk is simple but poignant in his desire to simply be left alone. Instead of some long…  Read More…

WARNING HOT HOT SPOILERS CONCERNING YESTERDAY’S LATEST ISSUE OF "THE PUNISHER" ARE FAST APPROACHING PLEASE REACT ACCORDINGLY: jog12/28reviews

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Posted by: Joe McCulloch on December 29, 2007

Categories: Reviews

But the first book up for review today is something different. I notice from the legal indicia that the title is still ‘officially’ Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes, but I decided to go with the cover title since it establishes a clean break for the new creative team (and a lack of Supergirl). So -  Legion of Super-Heroes #37: This one marks the return of veteran LSH writer Jim Shooter, who’s done some other things since his last run. Being such a special occasion, I decided the time was right to sit down and finally read a full issue of this series – I figured it’d be a good opportunity to see if as unwieldy a thing as LSH…  Read More…

One Day At A Time

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on

Categories: Reviews

First off, as you may have read a few other places, Paul “Zeus” Grant died a few weeks ago. That probably means very little to most of you, but for those of us early adopters of comics-talk on the internet its kind of a big thing. Zeus was a key part of Doug Pratt’s Comics forum on the old CompuServe, back in the days of dial-up, and no-picture intarwubs. That’s where “The Savage Critic” original came from, that old CompuServe forum, and Zeus was one of the biggest boosters of me writing on the net about our beloved funny books. Zeus was a big man, and a happy man, and he burned with passion for funny books, in a really…  Read More…

To the end of taste: Douglas reads Carl Wilson’s new book

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Posted by: admin on

Categories: Reviews

I figure if movie reviews are fair game here, so’s a review of a book with “lots of little words and no pictures,” as Fred Hembeck once put it–especially when it’s a book as relevant to criticism and savagery as the Excellent book I just read, Carl Wilson’s Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, and especially at the let’s-recap-our-judgement moment of the end of the year. Wilson’s book never mentions comics, but it has everything to do with why people (including me) get so vehement about loving one cartoonist, or kind of comics, and hating another. It’s the most recent volume in the 33 1/3 series of short books about albums (full disclosure: I wrote…  Read More…

My Life is Choked with Comics #15 – Little Sammy Sneeze: The Complete Color Sunday Comics 1904-1905

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Posted by: Joe McCulloch on December 28, 2007

Categories: Reviews

  The true meaning of Christmas, as dozens of imaginary theological scholars have told me, is swapping boasts about awesome gifts. It’s all in the Bible, I think somewhere around the Book of Numbers; maybe that isn’t where you’d expect to find information pertaining to Christmas, but life does like to carry its surprises. I got this book as a gift. It’s a dandy. Riding high at the extravagant front of today’s Golden Age of Reprints is Sunday Press Books, which attracted a lot of attention last year for its first publication, Little Nemo in Slumberland: So Many Splendid Sundays!, a very large (21″ x 16.2″), very expensive ($120.00), 120-page ‘best of’ presentation of episodes from the famous 1905 newspaper…  Read More…

Oh wow: Douglas is looking forward to April now.

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Posted by: admin on December 27, 2007

Categories: Uncategorized

Not what I would’ve expected Dave Sim’s new comic to be. Or, as one of the promo posters puts it: But it also makes sense–all the photorealist stuff in Latter Days, and the stuff he’s been writing recently about his fascination with Alex Raymond, Stan Drake, et al., suggests that this is exactly the kind of comic he’s going to enjoy drawing. (Why he uses “photorealism” instead of “photorealist” as an adjective I have no idea, but I’m sure he’s thought it out. Actually, of all the potential Dave Sim manifestos I could read, Why Photorealism Is The Best Kind of Cartooning is easily #1.) And those pages behind him in the author-promo photos look fantastic. I’m totally there.

Arriving 12/28/2007

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Posted by: admin on December 24, 2007

Categories: Shipping Lists

Just to remind everyone, comics ship on FRIDAY this week and next! Merry Christmas to you one and all! 52 AFTERMATH THE FOUR HORSEMEN #5 (OF 6) A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #72 (A) ACTION COMICS #860 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #545 OMD ARCHIE & FRIENDS #115 AUTHORITY PRIME #3 (OF 6) AVENGERS INITIATIVE #8 BADGER SAVES THE WORLD #1 (OF 5) BART SIMPSON COMICS #39 BATMAN #672 BERLIN #14 BETTY & VERONICA DOUBLE DIGEST #157 BLACK PANTHER #33 BLUE BEETLE #22 BOMB QUEEN IV #4 (OF 4) BRAVE AND THE BOLD #9 BRAWL #3 (OF 3) CAPTAIN AMERICA #33 CAPTAIN MARVEL #2 (OF 5) CARTOON NETWORK BLOCK PARTY #40 CONAN #47 COUNTDOWN ARENA #4 (OF 4) COUNTDOWN TO ADVENTURE #5 (OF…  Read More…

Oy to the World, Part 2: Jeff Looks at the 12/19 Books.

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Posted by: Jeff Lester on December 23, 2007

Categories: Reviews

Wow. Thank goodness things picked up there at the end. MARVEL HOLIDAY SPECIAL: This year’s story by Andrew Farrago and Shaenon K. Garrity had some really cute moments, like the jingle noises on Santa’s Sentinel, but seemed forced in a way last year’s story by them (the AIM holiday party) did not; the Loners story by C.B. Cebulski and Alina Urusov made me interested in characters I’ve never read about previously (and had really lovely art to boot); and the Mike Carey and Nelson story about a reporter asking Marvel characters about the meaning of Christmas was, like the Hembeck reprint and the Irving pin-up, well-intentioned filler. It’s high EH, particularly at that price point, but it doesn’t make you…  Read More…

Who are we to deny it in here? HIbbs on Todd: the movie

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on

Categories: Reviews

The good thing about Tim Burton’s SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET is that it really works remarkably as a film — I went in with a fair deal of trepidation over the changes I knew were coming, but virtually all of them worked pretty darn well. The cuts to the libretto that were made, were overall, pretty good — I didn’t really know if it could survive removing the (various) “Ballad(s) of Sweeney Todd”, but, for the most part one didn’t miss them. And while a couple of pieces were missed (I was sort of looking forward to the four-part disharmony of “Kiss Me/Ladies in Their Sensitivities”), it kicked the momentum of the story dramatically forward. I’m…  Read More…

Oy To The World: Jeff Looks at the 12/19 Books (Part 1 of 2)

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Posted by: Jeff Lester on December 21, 2007

Categories: Reviews

I mean this in the least Chicken Little-ish way possible, but Good Lord, this marketplace is glutted. I’m not sure how big or small a week retailers would consider this to be, but there are 80+ items that came into CE this week under the classification of “comic book” (and an additional 35+ items under books, mags & stuff). No wonder Hibbs talks in his latest Tilting about his newfound “I see dead trades” superpowers and how to best use them for the good of his store. The big two have their furnaces open wide and are shoveling terrifying levels of product onto the market, which may be fine for them–in the non-returnable market, they’re at least making their money…  Read More…

Mind the oranges, Marlon: Douglas looks at 2000 A.D.

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Posted by: Douglas Wolk on December 19, 2007

Categories: Reviews

I got my first look at the weekly British anthology series 2000 A.D. sometime around 1980 or 1981, when Mile High Comics had a “five bucks for ten randomly selected British weeklies” special–the issues I got included a couple of the Judge Dredd stories that Brian Bolland drew, and I was pretty impressed, especially by how tightly constructed the stories were. With only five or six pages to an episode and at least five stories in each issue, there was a lot happening in very little space. In 1982, I got to visit England, went to Forbidden Planet in London, and bought a pile of 15 or 20 recent issues (excuse me “progs”), in the 250-275 range. This time I…  Read More…

Arriving 12/19/2008

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Posted by: admin on December 17, 2007

Categories: Shipping Lists

The last shipping week before Christmas…. 2000 AD #1565 2000 AD #1566 ANGEL AFTER THE FALL #2 ARCHIE DIGEST #240 ARMY @ LOVE #10 AVENGERS CLASSIC #7 AWAKENING #3 (OF 10) BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS #3 BETTY & VERONICA #232 BIRDS OF PREY #113 CABLE DEADPOOL #48 CAPTAIN AMERICA CHOSEN #5 (OF 6) CATWOMAN #74 CHECKMATE #21 CIRCLE #2 COUNTDOWN ARENA #3 (OF 4) COUNTDOWN RAY PALMER SUPERWOMAN BATWOMAN #1 COUNTDOWN SPECIAL THE ATOM 80 PAGE GIANT #2 (OF 2) COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS 19 CRYPTICS #3 DETECTIVE COMICS #839 (GHUL) DOCTOR WHO CLASSICS #1 EX MACHINA #33 EXILES #100 FOOLKILLER #3 (OF 5) GLISTER #3 GRENDEL BEHOLD THE DEVIL #2 (OF 8) HERO BY NIGHT ONGOING #1 HOPE FALLS…  Read More…

Diana Goes Digital #1: Baby Remember My Name

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Posted by: admin on

Categories: Reviews

What better way to kick off this series than by featuring a webcomic about webcomics? Kristofer Straub’s CHECKERBOARD NIGHTMARE lays it all out in the very first strip (which doubles as a cast page): Chex is a cartoon character obsessed with webcomics. He wants to go all the way to the top without investing any long-term effort or talent. Since this shake-and-bake strategy brought about the Great Boy Band Epidemic of the early ’00s, it’s hard to argue with his logic. Unfortunately for Chex, all he’s got going for him is a short attention span and a knack for plagarism. Fortunately for us, that translates into a brilliant comedy that follows our hero’s hilarious schemes. CHECKERBOARD NIGHTMARE has a lot…  Read More…

Remember Brevity: Jeff Tries to Jam in A Best Of/Shopping Lists.

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Posted by: Jeff Lester on

Categories: Reviews

I like “best of” lists, particularly before the holidays when people have a bit of cash and trying to figure out what to get loved ones. So I’m gonna do one even though (a) I’ve been more than a little out of the loop since I left the store in May; (b) my brain is still like well-chewed taffy after writing this week’s reviews; and (c) my tech karma just took a massive hit, with my external hard drive unresponsive, my alphasmart wiped, and my image search for book covers (because everyone loves images) hit a snag when a page tried to install a fuckin’ trojan horse on my laptop. (Oh, and what’s up with our sidebar?) So I’ll try…  Read More…

Second Round: Jeff Tackles the 12/12 Books (Part 2 of 2, as it turns out…)

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Posted by: Jeff Lester on December 16, 2007

Categories: Reviews

Okay, let’s finish this puppy up… HATE ANNUAL #7: I’m probably being too meta about this, but I thought it was funny that the Buddy Bradley story is all about he and Jay running dueling junkyards and battling over potentially valuable scrap metal, and this issue seems, like the last few Hate Annuals, like a collection of Bagge’s odd & ends from which he’s trying to get a little more cash. (Scrap, in other words.) I felt weirdly nostalgic flipping through this issue overall, with pieces like Bagge’s comparison of Seattle to New York being the kind of short, funny pieces all indy cartoonists used to do, and now it seems like only Bagge (and Crumb, I guess) is still…  Read More…

Tilting at Windmills v2 #47 up

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Posted by: Brian Hibbs on December 15, 2007

Categories: Retailing/Industry

Just in case you didn’t notice it at Newsarama, you can find my latest column right here. -B