Does anybody have a recommendation for good sources of news on domestic manga (both translated & OEL)? I'm thinking of the kind of coverage that sites like Comic Book Resources & Newsarama provide for the super-hero-ish stuff, but for manga.
Thanks!
Thursday, 8 February 2007
Review: Mr. Big
Mr. Big
by Carol & Matt Dembicki
Little Foot Publishing, $9.99
Life in the pond can be cruel. It is home to many creatures: fish, crayfish, frogs, insects, even crows. But it is ruled over by Mr. Big, a giant turtle, who is inscrutable in his actions as he randomly chooses smaller creatures to devour. Some of the swamps denizens have had enough: they want to get rid of Mr. Big to stop his senseless killing; others argue that Mr. Big is part of the swamp itself and should be left alone. A plot is hatched anyway; but as things start to be set in motion, a wildcard in the form of an invasive species arrives in the pond.
Mr. Big is an ecological parable, but not in a preachy manner. The Dembickis' story is produced in a realistic way. Although the animals' thought processes are anthropomorphized, they serve a dual purpose in both representing instinctual motivations and as a mirror to aspects of our own human society. The animals look like real animals, not cutesy cartoons, in art that reminds me of Michael Zulli's early Puma Blues work. There's also a great sense of place in Mr. Big, with art that makes it feel 'swampy.' Different border styles are used to differentiate between action that takes place underwater, on the surface, or in the air--a nice touch.
A true all-ages book, Mr. Big will appeal to anyone with an interest in nature.
Rating: 3.5 (of 5).
Wednesday, 7 February 2007
New This Week: February 7, 2007
Based on the NCRL list for this week's comics shipping from Diamond, here are a few things to look for at the local comic shop later today:The Pick of the Week is Shazam: The Monster Society of Evil #1, Jeff Smith's first comic since concluding Bone. If anyone stands a chance of recapturing the old Captain Marvel aesthetic while bringing it to a 21st century audience, it's Smith.
In other comics:
Antarctic have the 2nd issue of Pirates vs. Ninjas.
Boom! have a new Cthulhu Tales anthology, plus Tag: Cursed #1.
Dark Horse have tons o' manga, including Eden: It's an Endless World vol. 6.
DC have a collection of American Way; a second DMZ collection; plus second volumes of Superman Chronicles and old Justice Society. There are also new issues of 52 (week 40), Action Comics Annual (#10), All New Atom (#8), Astro City: The Dark Age Book Two (#2), Jonah Hex (#16), and Midnighter (#4). Oh, and a new issue of Supergirl (#14), if anyone is interested...
IDW have the second issue of Desperadoes: Buffalo Dreams, the fourth issue of Angel: Auld Lang Syne, and the concluding issue of Spike: Asylum (#5).
Image finally have Fell #7.
Marvel have new issues of Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man (#17), The Irredeemable Ant-Man (#5), newuniversal (#4), The Punisher (#44), and Spider-Man and Power Pack (#4).
Oni have the second issue of Maintenance.
Penny Farthing have a collection of the criminally overlooked Stuart Moore's Para. Do yourself a favor and take a look see.
TokyoPop & Viz both also have tons of manga coming out this week, including new volumes of Banana Fish (vol. 18) and Nana (vol. 5).
Plenty of comics for you this week. Enjoy!
Is Fables DC's Best-selling Title?
Is Fables DC's best-selling title?I ask because the latest collection, Wolves (vol. 8) not only topped Diamond's December graphic novels chart, but was also the top non-manga title in the latest PW sales chart (which charts bookstore sales too).
Fables would appear to be an evergreen title too, with the Diamond chart showing 1500 of vol. 1 & 1000 of vol. 2 in December (in November it was even higher: 1700 & 1400 respectively). That's most likely 3000 new readers of Fables over the last two months of 2006, not even counting bookstore sales.
It's got to be either Fables or Y, the Last Man.
New Library Comics: Week of January 29, 2007
Here are the comics we added to our library collection last week:
Farr, Michael, 1953- Tintin : the complete companion /San Francisco, CA : Last Gasp, c2002.
Kiersh, Dave. Last cry for help. /A Dave K Comic, 2006.
Maslov, Nikolai. Siberia /Brooklyn, NY : Soft Skull Press ; [Berkeley, Calif.] : Distributed by Publishers Group West, 2006.
McKeever, Ted. Ted McKeever's Metropol /[S.l.] : Sorhenn Grafiks, c2000- vol. 1
Melby comics. /Royal Oak, MI : Melby Comics, c2004- no. 1
Farr, Michael, 1953- Tintin : the complete companion /San Francisco, CA : Last Gasp, c2002.
Kiersh, Dave. Last cry for help. /A Dave K Comic, 2006.
Maslov, Nikolai. Siberia /Brooklyn, NY : Soft Skull Press ; [Berkeley, Calif.] : Distributed by Publishers Group West, 2006.
McKeever, Ted. Ted McKeever's Metropol /[S.l.] : Sorhenn Grafiks, c2000- vol. 1
Melby comics. /Royal Oak, MI : Melby Comics, c2004- no. 1
Tuesday, 6 February 2007
Super-hero Comics = Niche
Super-hero comics are a niche industry.
I know that may seem to be a funny thing to say. One need only to look at the monthly Diamond sales charts to see that super-hero comics from DC & Marvel dominate. But it's those same charts that give us a clue as to how small the super-hero comic market actually is.
Let's take a look at the current most popular super-hero comics, Marvel's Civil War mini-series. The latest issue for which we have sales figures is #5, where it moved about 273K copies. Now we know there were multiple cover incentives, and we also know that not every super-hero comics fan was buying Civil War; so let's make the math easy on ourselves and say, probably generously, that there are 300,000 people in North America who are interested in buying super-hero comics on an at least monthly basis.
Now 300,000 potential customers is nothing to sneeze at. If we assume that (again rounding to make the math easy) that there are 3000 comic book specialty stores in that market, that gives us 100 regular customers per store. Not huge, but of those customers are regulars who spend enough money you cna probably make a go of it. Of course you have to have a product that caters to those regular customers; from what we've seen over the past years, those customers like continuity-heavy, event-driven comics.
However, 300,000 is a very small number compared to the population: 300M in the US, plus another 33M in Canada. So we're talking less than one-tenth of one percent of the population is interested in regular super-hero comics. That is pretty much a standard definition of 'niche.'
I would argue that 300,000 was pretty much always been the upper limit of dedicated super-hero comics fans; even back in the early-90s heydey, when top super-hero comics could sell 1M-5M copies, it was gimick covers and speculators and collectors buying multiple copies pushing those numbers up.
300,000 is not, we should note, the upper limit of people who are interested in super-heroes themselves. The most popular super-hero movie of recent years, Spider-Man 2, took in $373,585,825 in domestic gross; if we assume $10 per ticket, that's 37 million people who wanted to watch a super-hero movie. Heroes, the #1 new television show of the season, gets nearly 14 million viewers per week.
Clearly people are interested in super-heroes, just not super-hero comics (at least as they present themselves).
300,000 is also not the number of people in North America interested in comics themselves. One need only to look at the bookstore market where teen-oriented manga and selected 'mainstream graphic novels' regularly outsell the super-hero collections quite handily.
There's nothing necessarily wrong with being a niche market. Most markets are. It means giving that market what it wants, which is why the Diamond sales charts are dominated by those types of comics.
One could make the argument (and many have) that, to break out of the niche to a larger market that is clearly interested in super-heroes, the publishers of super-hero comics should make super-hero comics that don't play to the continuity-heavy niche. The problem is that we've seen that those comics don't appeal to the niche, and thus cannot support themselves enough to survive in that ecosystem. And outside of the niche market you're competing with manga, and the manga kids have made it quite clear where they want to spend their comics dollars.
So super-hero comics are a niche, and most likely will continue to be a niche. It appeals to that niche market well enough to survive. I just don't see and clear way that it can break out; nor do I see that it necessarily should.
I know that may seem to be a funny thing to say. One need only to look at the monthly Diamond sales charts to see that super-hero comics from DC & Marvel dominate. But it's those same charts that give us a clue as to how small the super-hero comic market actually is.
Let's take a look at the current most popular super-hero comics, Marvel's Civil War mini-series. The latest issue for which we have sales figures is #5, where it moved about 273K copies. Now we know there were multiple cover incentives, and we also know that not every super-hero comics fan was buying Civil War; so let's make the math easy on ourselves and say, probably generously, that there are 300,000 people in North America who are interested in buying super-hero comics on an at least monthly basis.
Now 300,000 potential customers is nothing to sneeze at. If we assume that (again rounding to make the math easy) that there are 3000 comic book specialty stores in that market, that gives us 100 regular customers per store. Not huge, but of those customers are regulars who spend enough money you cna probably make a go of it. Of course you have to have a product that caters to those regular customers; from what we've seen over the past years, those customers like continuity-heavy, event-driven comics.
However, 300,000 is a very small number compared to the population: 300M in the US, plus another 33M in Canada. So we're talking less than one-tenth of one percent of the population is interested in regular super-hero comics. That is pretty much a standard definition of 'niche.'
I would argue that 300,000 was pretty much always been the upper limit of dedicated super-hero comics fans; even back in the early-90s heydey, when top super-hero comics could sell 1M-5M copies, it was gimick covers and speculators and collectors buying multiple copies pushing those numbers up.
300,000 is not, we should note, the upper limit of people who are interested in super-heroes themselves. The most popular super-hero movie of recent years, Spider-Man 2, took in $373,585,825 in domestic gross; if we assume $10 per ticket, that's 37 million people who wanted to watch a super-hero movie. Heroes, the #1 new television show of the season, gets nearly 14 million viewers per week.
Clearly people are interested in super-heroes, just not super-hero comics (at least as they present themselves).
300,000 is also not the number of people in North America interested in comics themselves. One need only to look at the bookstore market where teen-oriented manga and selected 'mainstream graphic novels' regularly outsell the super-hero collections quite handily.
There's nothing necessarily wrong with being a niche market. Most markets are. It means giving that market what it wants, which is why the Diamond sales charts are dominated by those types of comics.
One could make the argument (and many have) that, to break out of the niche to a larger market that is clearly interested in super-heroes, the publishers of super-hero comics should make super-hero comics that don't play to the continuity-heavy niche. The problem is that we've seen that those comics don't appeal to the niche, and thus cannot support themselves enough to survive in that ecosystem. And outside of the niche market you're competing with manga, and the manga kids have made it quite clear where they want to spend their comics dollars.
So super-hero comics are a niche, and most likely will continue to be a niche. It appeals to that niche market well enough to survive. I just don't see and clear way that it can break out; nor do I see that it necessarily should.
Monday, 5 February 2007
Minicomics Monday
Cartoonist Molly Lawless sent along a couple of her chapbook-sized comics for me to review. I'm pleased to say that they are both quite enjoyable.infandum!: Adventures in Intoxication is short--just eight pages, including covers--but she packs a lot of story in; four stories, in fact. As you might guess from the subtitle they're all about inebriation in one form or another. Two deal with religion as well: one about the odder aspects of the transubstatiation doctrine, the other as to why you should never get into the Jesus Van while stoned.
Lawless's newest comic, Great Moments in Baseball #1, highlights some of the low points in the grand history of our nation's pastime, Such as the last stand of the original Washington Senators, or the time Ty Cobb claims he killed a man. Lawless is able to fully tell these five tales in two brief pages each, and her love for the game itself comes through even as she skewers its less honorable moments.
You can read selected comics and find ordering information on Lawless's blog.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
