New This Week: October 10, 2007

What looks good at the comic shop this week?


A new volume of Yotsuba&!, one of the funniest comics ever. Volume four lived up to my high expectations, so I'm looking forward to volume five (and only a couple of months later!)

There's a ton of other manga this week too, but right after Yotsuba&! on my list is the first volume of Aqua, Kozue Amano's prequel to Aria.

If you're looking for large expensive deluxe hardcovers, the $99 Absolue Sandman vol. 2 should fit the bill just fine.

James Sturm's America collects three graphic novellas by Sturm; I've not read "The Revival" or "Hundreds of Feet Below Daylight" yet, but "The Golem's Mighty Swing" was darn good.

Ghost Stories, the second volume in Jeff Lemire's Essex County trilogy, hits the streets. I really liked the first volume, so I look forward to reading this one as well.

I'm pretty sure the story in Green Arrow/Black Canary #1 will be tosh, but it's got art by Cliff Chiang, so I'll be buying it for the pretty pictures.


There's plenty of other comics, so be sure to get yourself down to the local comic store tomorrow and check out what's new on the shelves!

YAMR: Halloween Spooktacular 2007

It's October, and that means it's time for our third annual Halloween Spooktacular on Yet Another Music Radio!

Tune in and listen to more than one hundred tracks, including music by:

3, The 5 Browns, 16 Horsepower, Adam Sandler, Amber Benson, Aqua, Astor Piazzolo, Austin Lounge Lizards, Ben Colder, Benjamin Chan, Bing Crosby with Victor Moore & Boris Karloff, bis, Bob Ridgely, Bobby "Boris" Pickett & the Crypt-Kickers, Bobby Please, The Bonzo Dog Band, Boris Karloff, The Born Losers, Carl Orff, Castle Kings, Chantal Kreviazuk, Charlotte Martin, Chris Kevin & The Comics, Christophe Beck, Chubby Checker, The Crewnecks, Danny Elfman, Darling Violetta, The Daylighters, The Diamonds, Don Hinson & The Rigamorticians, The DVDs, Earl Patterson, The Edgar Winter Group, Edie Brickell & New Bohemians, Edvarg Grieg, Evanescence, Frank Sinatra, The Friars, The Fuzztones, Gene Moss, The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, Inkubus Sukkubus, Jack & Jim, Jack Marshall, James Marsters, Jenny Lewis with The Watson Twins, Jimmy Dee, Jocelyn Pook, J.S. Bach, John Carpenter, John Ford, John Williams, John Zacherle, Jonathan Elias, Juliana Hatfield, K's Choice, The Keytones, kidneythieves, The Legendary Invisible Men, Leroy Bowman, Little Richard, The Mancini Pops Orchestra, Mark O'Connor, Martinibomb & The Coconut Monkeyrocket, Matt Pond PA, Matthew Sweet, Mike Oldfield, The Modernaires, Modest Mussorgsky, the Mutton Birds, Natacha Atlas, Neil Norman, Neko Case, Nerf Herder, Nicole Blackman & John Van Eaton, North American Halloween Prevention Initiative, Otis Redding, The Phantom Five, Phantom Planet, Poe, Ralph Marterie & His Marlboro Men, Rasputina, Ray Lewis, Rose Chronicles, Roy Clark, Sarah McLachlan, The Scattered Pages, Sheb Wooley, Soupy Sales, Southern Culture on the Skids, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Steve Martin, Sufjan Stevens, The Swingin' Neckbreakers, Tarantula Ghoul and The Cryptkickers, The Tarantulas, Tegan and Sara, They Might be Giants, Thought Gang, Vic Mizzy, Vince Guaraldi Trio, Wojciech Kilar & Zombie Ghost Train.

Over six hours of music to get you in the trick-or-treating mood!

ALA on Challenges to Graphic Novels

It's the end of Banned Books Week, so here's the American Library Association's Dealing with Challenges to Graphic Novels.

In theory, dealing with challenges to graphic novels is no different than dealing with challenges to print material. In practice, however, it is important to keep in mind that many people consider an image to be far more powerful in its impact than any written description of that image.

And of course a link to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Sometime in November I'll be launching my Fourth Annual CBLDF Fund Drive.

I Hope They Never Have to Draw Spider-Man

Regarding Valerie D'Orazio's write-up of the Friends of Lulu panel at the The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art:

I hope that none of the talented young women cartoonists on the panel ever reach the point in their careers where they feel that they have to draw for Marvel or DC. If they want to--like Nikki Cook says she does--then that's fine, but then I hope they're coming at such an endeavor from a position of strength. These ladies already have graphic novels out or in the works from Top Shelf, Fantagraphics, First Second and Wiley; going to DC or Marvel would seem to be a step backwards in their careers. Let's hope that their inaugural efforts do well enough that they can continue to work on their own projects and not on corporate trademark maintenance.

Floppy Comic Prices

Mike Sterling asks about predictions for the price of floppy comics from the big-2. He notes that we're already starting to see $3.99 per issue mini-series; often these are for 40-page comics, but sometimes (especially with Marvel's MAX titles) it's a regular 32-page comic with cardboard covers.

Right now your standard big-2 comic is 32 pages--21 or 22 pages of story and ten or eleven pages of ads--for $3, and as Mike notes they've been that was for a long time. Something has got to give, and probably soon.

I can't see just raising the price to $3.50 as working. While enough people are willing to shell out $4 for an IDW or Boom! comic to keep those outfits running, those books also have no ads interrupting the story (just house ads in the back of the book). I think there's a psychological barrier for the $3 price point that your average super-hero fan just isn't going to cross for a 32-page book.

Increasing ad space won't cut it either. Marvel has tried adding 8 extra pages of ads to a comic, to universal disdain. (DC has had ad inserts in the recent past too). When the amount of advertising reaches par with the number of story pages, consumers start to wonder why they're shelling out $3 for something that is mostly ads.

So I only see one way they can go: increase the price while also increasing story content. $3.50 for 27 pages of story (and 5 pages of ads) would work well, but more likely it will be $3.99 for 29 pages of story and 11 pages of ads.

Another option is to use lesser-quality paper; DC does this to keep the price of their Johnny DC titles down at $2.25, but in general consumers have shown a preference for the shiny paper stock and fancy computer coloring.

Ultimately I'd rather see 100-200 page anthologies (i.e. the 'manga model'), but getting to that point from the current model doesn't seem likely to happen. However, the industry does seem to be making a long transition to a trade collection model, and as that becomes more and more prevalent perhaps the large anthology-as-loss-leader model will become more attractive.

New This Week: October 3, 2007

What looks good at the comic shop this week?


Top of the list is local creator Jane Irwin's Vögelein: Old Ghosts; I'm presuming that this modern faerie story will be as charming as the first Vögelein.

Marvel have the first issue of Jonathan Lethem & Farel Dalrymple's Omega the Unknown, a reimagining (I believe) of Steve Gerber's classic character.

Also from Marvel is the latest Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane digest; at only $8 there's no excuse for not picking the collection of this charming series. (Well, expect for the fact that there seems to be no mention of this collection on Marvel's Website...)

The second issue in BKV's Faith story arrives in Buffy #7 from Dark Horse.

Dark Horse also have the second volume of Adam Warren's Empowered; the first volume straddled the line between parody & exploitation, and I expect this one will do likewise.

Viz have the first volume of their new edition of Uzumaki, Junji Ito's fantastic horror manga. (There's tons of other manga from Viz, TokyoPop, and Del Rey too).


Enjoy your new comics, whatever you end up getting!

Read Irresponsibly

To celebrate Banned Books Week, the staff here at the library has put together a flickr photo set showcasing various banned and challenged books. My choice, of course, was the now-infamous Eightball #22.

Check out the rest of the pictures, including more-famous-than-me Jim Ottaviani reading Fun Home and Watchmen.

(Also: Don't miss Unshelved this week, whose "Read Irresponsibly" theme gives this post its title.)