Monkey Covers

Sunday is Monkey Covers day here at YACB. Because there's nothing better than a comic with a monkey on the cover.

Joe Kubert let's us known that "You Can't Pin a Medal on a Gorilla" on the cover of Star Spangled War Stories #126.

(Standard disclaimer about gorilla NCOs not really being monkeys applies.)

Image courtesy of the GCD. Click on the image for a larger version.

YAFL2 Week 1

Here are the results from Week 1 of Yet Another Fantasy League 2:


www.rickgebhardt.net 48
Kickers Inc. 78

Superteam 32
Star City Archers 78

Flex Mentallo 72
The Defenders 68

Delphi Oracles 40
Power Pack 38


Current Standings:

   Team                 Record  Pct    Points  Streak
   -------------------- ------  -----  -----   ------
1. Kickers Inc.          1-0-0  1.000  78.00   W-1
1. Star City Archers     1-0-0  1.000  78.00   W-1
3. Flex Mentallo         1-0-0  1.000  72.00   W-1
4. Delphi Oracles        1-0-0  1.000  40.00   W-1 
5. The Defenders         0-1-0   .000  68.00   L-1
6. www.rickgebhardt.net  0-1-0   .000  48.00   L-1 
7. Power Pack            0-1-0   .000  38.00   L-1 
8. Superteam             0-1-0   .000  32.00   L-1  

Week 2 Games:

Star City Archers
vs.
Kickers Inc.

Delphi Oracles
vs.
www.rickgebhardt.net

Superteam
vs.
The Defenders

Flex Mentallo
vs.
Power Pack


Good luck to all!

(In my other fantasy leagues, I won 57-53 in my friends & family league; won 67-57 in my public league; and scored 296.40 points in my pass & kick league, good for 3rd place. I also lost 4-5-1 in the first round of fantasy baseball playoffs.)

New This Week: September 13, 2006

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 today:


The Pick of the Week is Yukinobu Hoshino's adaptation of James P. Hogan's The Two Faces of Tomorrow (from Dark Horse). If you're a fan of hard sci-fi manga like Planetes, you should enjoy this.


In other comics:

Alias have the extremely affordable B&W collection of ArmorQuest: Genesis.

Boom! have the third issue of the highly entertaining Talent.

Buenaventura Press have the 6th Kramer's Ergot.

DC have Musclebound, the fourth collection of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol, featuring the Secret Origin of Flex Mentallo, Hero of the Beach! They also have new issues of 52 (week 19), DMZ (#11), Ex Machina (#23), Fables (#53), and Firestorm (#29); a collection of the new Jonah Hex series; and Brian K. Vaughan's new hardcover OGN The Pride of Baghdad.

Fantagraphics have a new issue of Love & Rockets (vol. 2 #17) and the fifth volume of Mome.

First Second unleash their second have of GNs; unlike some other bloggers I didn't get preview copies of any of them, but they all look nice, especially Journey into Mohawk Country.

Image have new issues of Casanova (#4), Girls (#17), and Phonogram (#2).

Marvel have a collection of Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man; and new issues of Thunderbolts (#106) and Ultimate X-Men (#74).

Oni have the third issue of Wasteland.


You could very easily unload a ton of cash at your FLCS today, so hold on tight to your wallet!

More TokyoPop & Viz Charts

Following up on my post from earlier today about the volume number counts for TokyoPop & Viz:

I ran the numbers from the August & July Previews as well. Here are the histograms (you may need to click to see the larger version to read them fully):

TokyoPop:



Viz:



Series 1 (blue) = September
Series 2 (red) = August
Series 3 (yellow) = July

For TokyoPop:
September: Count: 39; Median: 3
August: Count: 42; Median: 2
July: Count: 39; Median: 3

For Viz:
September: Count: 38; Median: 8.5
August: Count: 31; Median: 9
July: Count: 35; Median: 9

(Note: for both publishers, I did not count books/novels, just manga volumes.)

With three months of data, it looks like the pattern is holding; TokyoPop produces more manga with low volume numbers, and more new titles each month than Viz.

New Library Comics: Week of September 4, 2006

Here are the comics we added to our library collection last week:


Pekar, Harvey. Ego & hubris : the Michael Malice story /New York : Ballantine Books, c2006.

Sim, Dave. Cerebus guide to self publishing /[Kitchener, Ont.? : s.n.], c1997.

Ware, Chris, 1967- Jimmy Corrigan : the smartest kid on earth. /New York : Pantheon Books, c2000.

TokyoPop & Viz Output

Over at Crocodile Caucus, Lyle asks:

Why does the large number of titles that Tokyopop publishes inspire phrases like “flooding the market” and “throw it at the wall and see what sticks” when Viz, who also publishes a large number of titles never generates the same complaint?

It's a good question. In terms of sheer number of volumes, TP & Viz put out about the same number of titles per month, but they definitely have a different image in the comics blogosphere. Some of the responder comments point to things like quality, shipping schedule, and Viz's use of imprints.

Those are some good anectdotal possibilities--and when you're dealing with perception, anectdotal evidence can go a long way. But I suspected there was something else going on as well, so I did some number crunching. I looked at the TP & Viz sections in the current issue of Previews (September, for items supposedly on sale in November). A pure count shows that TP has 39 volumes, Viz has 38 (for purposes of this analysis I didn't count Shojo Beat or Shonen Jump). But then I counted how many titles each publisher had with a particular volume number; i.e. how many titles were on vol. 1, how many on vol. 2, etc. Here are the results in handy histograms:

TokyoPop:



Viz:



As can be plainly seen from these graphs, TP's output is weighted far more towards the early volume numbers, while Viz's output as a whole is far more mature. The median volume number for TP is 3, while the median for Viz is 8.5.*

So that's where the “throw it at the wall and see what sticks” image for TP comes from; they're putting out a lot more new series every month, while Viz is more likely to stick with longer-running series. This means that each month readers and retailers are faced with an array of many new choices (or ordering decisions) from TP, while with Viz they know more what they're getting into.

Just another piece of the puzzle.


(* You might be tempted to try to take an average, but I think that your college statistics professor would likely have told you that you cannot take averages of ordinal data.)


Update: Three months worth of data graphed here.

Minicomics Monday

Two minicomics from Drew Weing:

Blar is a fun little comic that parodies barbarian parody comics, like Groo and Thrud. Through several short stories, Blar--the titular barbarian--uses his sword to slice easily and wordlessly through a host of enemies, often hillariously. Weing has a fun drawing style with a light line that recalls E.C. Segar's Popeye a bit. (samples here)


Untitled is, in fact, untitled. In a series of one-panel pages, Weing draws himself coming home from the market, when suddenly all reality breaks loose and he has to wander through a void in search of his love, Eleanor. It's an exercise in formalism that compares favorably with the work of Kevin Huizenga.

I enjoyed both of these comics, and I see from Weing's Website that he has a few more available; I'll look to get them from Little House Comics, where Weing's (and Eleanor's) minis can be purchased.