Author: Glenn Hauman

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Avengers Vs. X-Men #9 from Marvel Comics, the best-selling comic book to specialty retailers in August 2012, according to information provided by Diamond Comic Distributors, the world’s largest distributor of comics, graphic novels, and pop culture merchandise.

DC Entertainment was August’s leading publisher in Retail Dollars, leading Marvel Comics 33.32% to 32.42%. Meanwhile, Marvel Comics edged DC Entertainment on the Unit Market Share for the month, 37.18% to 37.12%.

For the second month in a row, Geoff Johns and Gary Franks’ [[[Batman: Earth One]]], the original graphic novel that reimagines the early days of Batman, was the best-selling graphic novel to retailers.

Based on Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment’s best-selling Batman: Arkham Asylum video game, Square-Enix’s Batman: Arkham Asylum Play Arts ~Kai~: Harley Quinn Action Figure was the best-selling toy product to comic book specialty retailers in August.

Earth’s most powerful heroes join the HeroClix campaign with the DC HeroClix: Justice League Expansion from WizKids/NECA, the best-selling games product to comic book specialty retailers in August.

TOP COMIC BOOK PUBLISHERS

COMPARATIVE SALES STATISTICS

TOP 10 COMIC BOOKS

TOP 10 GRAPHIC NOVELS & TRADE PAPERBACKS

TOP 10 TOYS

TOP 10 GAMES

Data for Diamond’s sales charts — which include the monthly market shares and all top product charts — are compiled by Diamond Comic Distributors from a universe of over 3,500 comic book specialty shops located in North America and around the world. The account base includes brick-and-mortar comic book specialty shops, Internet merchants, and other specialty stores.

Unit and dollars sales are calculated based upon orders invoiced and shipped to Diamond accounts during any given month, which comprises initial pre-orders, advance reorders, and reorders, minus any copies that are received back from a title marked as returnable.

Please note that comics marked with an asterisk have had their reported quantities reduced due to retailer returnability, and thus may rank lower on the charts than their actual sales would reflect.

In the spirit of giving back to the comics community and helping retailers, ComicMix now has a Comic Store Locator!

We’ll be displaying store descriptions, hours, a website address, an email address, and tags for each store in our database, with easy searching so that you can find stores near you, wherever in the world you might be, and then provide you with easy directions via Google Maps. We’re even building in hooks so that people can find your store if you stock hard to find items like mini-comics.

Of course, for this to work well, we’ll need retailers to include stores in our database, and we invite them to so do. And if you’re a fan of your local store, please tell them to put their store info in, so we can send them even more customers. And if you’re a publisher, tell your retailers too, and make sure they include your company as a tag to make it easier for them to find your books!

Related articles

• How Comic Book Publishers Are Investing In New Comic Book Stores (bleedingcool.com)

This is an all-new clip from BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, PART 1 featuring The Mutant Leader giving his televised declaration of war on Gotham City, Commissioner Gordon and Batman. The Mutant Leader is voiced by Gary Anthony Williams, best known for his recurring roles on “Malcolm in the Middle” and “Boston Legal,” as well as voiceovers as Riff Tamsom on “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” Uncle Ruckus on “The Boondocks,” and Mongul in “Batman: The Brave and the Bold.” Williams’ casting as the bad-to-the-bone Mutant leader belies his true calling in comedy — he is co-founder and artistic director for the L.A. Comedy Shorts Film Festival in Hollywood.

BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, PART 1, the next entry in the popular, ongoing series of DC Universe Animated Original Movies, arrives September 25, 2012 from Warner Home Video as a Blu-ray™ Combo Pack and DVD, On Demand and for Download. The PG-13 film is produced by Warner Premiere, DC Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation.

Back in March, I was asked to put together video clips for this year’s Hugo Awards ceremony, which took place during Worldcon in Chicago on Sunday. Simple assignment— find short clips of the nominated works to introduce them to the audience.

Well, it didn’t quite happen that smoothly. As you may have heard by now, in the middle of the Hugo Awards ceremony at Worldcon, with thousands of people tuned into via video streaming service Ustream, from the people in the overflow room at the convention to people viewing it live at DragonCon to people all over the world, the feed cut off just as Neil Gaiman was giving his acceptance speech for his Doctor Who script, “The Doctor’s Wife”, replaced with the words, “Worldcon banned due to copyright infringement.”

Here’s the video in question, the clip reel for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form:

Do you see anything in there that violates Fair Use? Of course not. But then, you’re not an automated copyright violation monitoring service, which is what UStream is blaming the problem on. (You’ll note that this video is currently hosted on YouTube, and they don’t seem to be having any problems with it.) I happen to strongly disagree: this service worked almost exactly as UStream intended it to, with the exception that they couldn’t do anything when it was discovered that, whoopsie! The automated service has no intelligence and no off switch, and we’ve just pissed off people with millions of twitter followers. I also note that UStream has been taking down comments on their own site, which of course has not stopped people from commenting on Slashdot, TechCrunch, io9, and CNN stories.

I’m also marveling at the irony of cutting of Neil in mid-speech, as Neil is one of the foremost anti-censorship people in the comics industry, as a board member and major backer of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and a supporter of anti-censorship actions on the web going back to the 90s.

We’re still waiting for the full awards ceremony to be rebroadcast. In the meantime, we hope that you were following our Twitter feed, as we were covering the awards live. Universal Geek has posted audio of Neil Gaiman’s Hugo acceptance speech. And here is the clip reel for the Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form:

Congratulations to all the winners. We hope the rest of the world will be able to see your victories shortly.

UPDATE: Yes, irony of ironies, the video is currently offline at YouTube due to a copyright claim from the BBC. Yes, we’re disputing it.

Related articles

• How copyright enforcement robots killed the Hugo Awards [Rant] (io9.com)
• Hugo Awards Live Stream Cut By Copyright Enforcement Bot (entertainment.slashdot.org)
• MUSTREAD How copyright enforcement robots killed the Hugo Awards | #NeilGaiman #DrWho #Worldcon – Can we call Censorbots “Daleks”? (dropsafe.crypticide.com)
• The 2012 Hugo Awards will be livestreamed (comicsbeat.com)
• Ustream suspends Vobile DRM amid outrage over Hugo Awards takedown (theverge.com)
• Ustream Apologizes For Shutting Down The Hugo Awards Livestream, Says It Will ‘Recalibrate’ (techcrunch.com)
• Ustream’s censorship bot goes off the rails (news.techeye.net)