Video Fun

I'll post a regular entry tomorrow, but for today I wanted to share this video which gave me a big chuckle.

Amazon Top 50 of 2010: Graphs

It's a little later than I promised, but here are a few graphs looking at the position of some series on the Amazon Top 50 charts during 2010:

(You should be able to click on a graph to get a larger version.)

(Remember, a title in position 1 on the chart gets a score of 50, so higher number = higher on the graph = better.)

Scott Pilgrim:

This graph is fairly typical for a franchise with a movie based on it. Interest in Scott Pilgrim starts in March, then intensifies in June. Unfortunately, June is also when Amazon decides to reclassify vols 4 & 5 as not being graphic novels for a time. A sizable discount keeps interest high through the autumn, until November when prices return to normal Amazon levels and interest softens a bit.


Diary of a Wimpy Kid:

This graph is for the raining king of Amazon graphic novels, Diary of a Wimpy Kid.This was another franchise that was a victim of an Amazon reclassification, as three of the titles disappear in late April. Volume 5 was introduced as a pre-order in March, and by August it was ensconced at the top of the chart where it has stuck around ever since.


The Walking Dead:

The Walking Dead got a big boost from the television series. Unlike our previous two franchises, there are many more collected volumes and many more ways of purchasing the same story (trade paperbacks, hardcovers, and the compendium). Thus we see the growing interest taking the form of a greater density of titles on the chart, even as no single volume ever dominates.


Maus:

Finally here's Maus. Even with its collected editions over twenty years old, it gets periodic interest in January and September due to its widespread use as a text in college courses.

Big

Bizarro is brought to you today by Fairy Tales.

My weekend post is late, I'm sorry for the three or four of you who wait for these things. For the rest of you who just happen by now and then, ignore everything up to this point.

It is well documented on this blog how I feel about reality TV. I don't just think it is awful, I think it is ruining the world in the way that Baptists thought rock and roll was ruining the world in the 50s and Sarah Palin thinks that intellect and reason are ruining the world today.

But as they say in Brooklyn, whatayagonnado? As long as humans run the world we can expect a never-ending wave a classy quality.

Here's a little cartoon about a couple of mosquitoes. I'd like to apologize to my readers whose lives really do suck and this cartoon was but another painful reminder. You see, to a mosquito, sucking is a good thing. Whether you like or dislike this cartoon, take it up with my bodyguard, Big Rey, who thought it up. I didn't want to print it, but I hate to see a grown man cry. Especially one who has grown to the size of Big Rey and is wearing a shoulder holster. It's heartbreaking.










Now we come to my version of a famous fairy tale. I enjoy the visual and the gag well enough, but what really strikes me is the sexual undertones. If that's the old woman who lived in the shoe with so many children she didn't know what to do, and that's their father and he's 8-stories tall, how did they manage to...? You know.

To make this lurid illustration larger, click Lover Boy's little toe.

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Monkey Covers

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

Archie and Jughead are trapped by a gorilla in a phone booth on Stan Goldberg's cover to Archie's Story & Game Digest Magazine #23 (1992).

(Standard disclaimer about escaped gorillas not really being monkeys applies.)

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

Dancing

I am a huge fan of Tom the Dancing Bug and no fan of political correctness, so it seems fitting that I share this week's brilliant TDB with you. Click the image for greater enlargingmentation.

To read the TDB blog, click the offensive word in this sentence: Sometimes I enjoy a cracker with my soup.

Amazon Top 50

Here are the Top 50 Graphic Novels on Amazon this afternoon. All the previous caveats apply.


1 (-). Diary of a Wimpy Kid 5: The Ugly Truth
2 (+2). Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History
3 (-1). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days
4 (-1). Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Boxset
5 (+11). Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
6 (-1). Odd Is on Our Side (Kindle edition)
7 (+7). Walking Dead Volume 13
8 (+2). The Walking Dead Compendium Volume 1
9 (+8). Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began
10 (+1). Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
11 (+10). Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
12 (+2). Dork Diaries 2 (Kindle edition)
13 (+4). Dork Diaries (Kindle edition)
14 (+2). Serenity: The Shepherd's Tale
15 (-6). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 2: Scott Pilgrim Versus The World
16 (-10). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life
17 (-5). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 3: Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness
18 (-5). Scott Pilgrim Volume 6: Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour
19 (-4). Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 4: Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together
20 (-). Superman: Earth One
21 (-6). Scott Pilgrim Volume 5: Scott Pilgrim vs The Universe
22 (+11). Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
23 (+1). Watchmen
24 (+1). American Born Chinese
25 (-18). Dilbert: 2011 Day-to-Day Calendar
26 (+10). V for Vendetta
27 (+3). Big Nate: From the Top
28 (+1). The Walking Dead, Book 6
29 (-10). Diary of a Wimpy Kid Box of Books
30 (-2). The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
31 (N). Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, Vol. 1 - The Journey Begins *
32 (+12). Batman: The Killing Joke
33 (-11). Fables Vol. 14: Witches
34 (+1). Dork Diaries 2: Tales from a Not-So-Popular Party Girl
35 (-9). Walking Dead Volume 12
36 (+6). The Arrival
37 (-10). The Walking Dead, Vol. 9: Here We Remain
38 (-6). The Walking Dead, Vol. 10: What We Become
39 (-8). The Walking Dead Volume 11: Fear The Hunters
40 (-). Tron: Betrayal
41 (-3). The Walking Dead Book 5
42 (-1). Odd Is on Our Side
43 (+3). Batman: Hush
44 (N). Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight Volume 8: Last Gleaming *
45 (-11). Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight Volume 7: Twilight
46 (R). Blankets
47 (R). Batman: Arkham Asylum (15th Anniversary Edition)
48 (-3). The Walking Dead Book 2
49 (R). Blackest Night
50 (-). Batman: Year One


Items with asterisks (*) are pre-order items.

N = New listing appearing on list for first time
R = Item returning to the list after having been off for 1 or more weeks


Commentary:

* The Wimpy Kid stays on the top once again, but again slips, to #50 on the overall chart.

* The college rush continues, with Maus, Persepolis and Fun Home all in the top 10.

* Demand for individual volumes of Scott Pilgrim continue to soften, though the box set remains strong.

* Dead Watch:Eight Walking Dead collections in the top fifty this week, down from nine last week.

* Two new titles debut as pre-orders: Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, Vol. 1 (the only Marvel title on the chart this week); and the final Buffy Season 8 collection.

* The bottom of the list is a distressingly low #4,048 this week.

Confusion

Bizarro is brought to you today by Nothing.

I got a couple of comments from readers who didn't quite get this headache gag. While I fully understand how a person might not understand it, I'm not sure how to explain it. I think it is one of those oddball gags that you either find amusing or you don't. There is no secret to it that you're not seeing, it's just that this guy has a headache and his wife and dog are part of the equation. If you're still out to sea, get married, sit around with your spouse for 10 or 20 years then look at the cartoon again.*

I'd like to say this about the "Backwards Caps" cartoon: I hate backwards caps. Yes, perhaps "hate" is a strong word for how one could feel about a particular fashion, you're right. Okay, I think it is dumb. A baseball cap is designed with a bill to protect your eyes from the sun, not the back of your neck. It's the entire point of its existence. It is like wearing shoes on your hands. However, if you were the only person to wear it backwards, then you're probably just quirky and individual and I admire that. But if you started doing it just because everyone else is, you're just being a sheep. If, on the other hand, you feel confident that you like the way it looks independently and you'd wear it that way even if you had never seen anyone else in the world do it and tourists were asking to take a picture with you because you looked so silly, then it would be wrong for you NOT to wear it backwards just because it was a fad. And if you find that you're just more comfortable looking the same as everyone else, own it, girl, and don't change a thing. There is also no reason in the world why you should care about what I think of your hat stylings.

In the interest of full disclosure, I was wearing what I call "old man hats" a few years before they caught on with youngsters and now they have become a symbol of shallow hipsterism. But I refuse to give it up because I liked them before they became a fad and I still like them. Again, no reason at all you should care.

I hope this has been sufficiently confusing so that you now don't know what the hell to do with your baseball cap. Life is like that and we've all learned a valuable lesson.

And here, to round out our confusion, is a cartoon from 1997 that even I don't understand. I have no idea why it occurred to me or why I thought it was funny but it did and I did and I still do. Figure this one out for yourself, you're on your own.


*I'd like to mention that this cartoon in no way reflects my own marriage to CHNW. We have a ball virtually every day and she gets more adorable and interesting year by year.**

** Yes, she is a regular reader of this blog.

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