Category: News

May 2012 comics sales break more records

  • News
  • June 12, 2012

The full report of comics orders for May 2012 has been released by Diamond Comic Distributors, and as the initial report here found, the market is hitting on all cylinders. It’s also breaking records, according to estimates compiled here at The Comics Chronicles. Click to see the comics sales estimates for May 2012.

As reported on Friday, led by Avengers Vs. X-Men #4, the comic book Direct Market’s orders of $44.68 million in comics and graphic novels (at full retail value) is the largest sum seen in a single month since Diamond began reporting Final Order data in February 2003, and it’s probably a higher figure seen in any month since 1995 in un-inflation-adjusted dollars.

Now, with the estimates out, we can see that two other Diamond Exclusive Era records have been set. Diamond’s Top 300 comics had orders totaling $25.72 million, an increase of 44% over last May and the highest total since Diamond became the sole distributor in 1997. It beats the total of $25.37 million set in December 2008.

Trade paperbacks and hardcovers were exceptionally strong, too, with the DC reboot volumes topping the charts; the Top 300 accounted for $8.27 million, just missing the one-month record from November 2008. That combined with the comics figures to break the other record this month: the Top 300 comics plus the Top 300 graphic novels combined for sales of almost exactly $34 million, beating the previous record from December 2008 by nearly $2 million.

These are dollar sales and not unit sales — though the unit figures came close to setting records, and inflation is not really a huge factor in comparisons over the last two or three years. As we can see on this table of average comics prices, that December 2008 peak found the average weighted price of comics in the Top 300 to be $3.31; this month, the average weighted price was $3.53. That’s less than a 7% increase over three and a half years.

The 300th place issue didn’t set a record, but it was the second-highest total for issues at that rank since 1996, with more than 4,800 copies sold. We’ve also now gone a full year where all first place issues each month topped 100,000 copies. So we are, as they say on CNBC, well “off the lows” for the decade.

Again, the Diamond Exclusive Era records are exactly that — they don’t take into account the mammoth sales of the early 1990s, the Golden Age, or anything earlier than 1997.

The aggregate totals for the month:

TOP 300 COMICS UNIT SALES

May 2012: 7.3 million copies
Versus 1 year ago this month: +42%
Versus 5 years ago this month: -6%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +27%
Versus 15 years ago this month: -8%
YEAR TO DATE: 31.29 million copies, +20% vs. 2011, -11% vs. 2007, +13% vs. 2002, -27% vs. 1997

ALL COMICS UNIT SALES
May 2012 versus one year ago this month: +44.24%
YEAR TO DATE: +20.89%

—

TOP 300 COMICS DOLLAR SALES

May 2012: $25.72 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +44%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +5%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +60%
Versus 15 years ago this month: +36%
YEAR TO DATE: $108.66 million, +20% vs. 2011, -2% vs. 2007, +39% vs. 2002, +8% vs. 1997

ALL COMICS DOLLAR SALES
May 2012 versus one year ago this month: +45.12%
YEAR TO DATE: +21.77%

—

TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES

May 2012: $8.27 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +47%
Versus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: -17%
Versus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 50 vs. the Top 50: +47%
YEAR TO DATE: $33.16 million, +28% vs. 2011

ALL TRADE PAPERBACK  SALES
May 2012 versus one year ago this month: +41.14%
YEAR TO DATE: +16.22%

—

TOP 300 COMICS + TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES

May 2012: $34 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +45%
Versus 5 years ago this month, counting just the Top 100 TPBs: +1%
Versus 10 years ago this month, counting just the Top 25 TPBs: +36%
YEAR TO DATE: $141.83 million, +22% vs. 2011

ALL COMICS AND TRADE PAPERBACK  SALES
May 2012 versus one year ago this month: +43.76%
YEAR TO DATE: +19.95%

—

OVERALL DIAMOND SALES (including all comics, trades, and magazines)

May 2012: approximately $44.68 million (subject to revision)
Versus 1 year ago this month: +44%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +9%
YEAR TO DATE: $182.49 million, +20% vs. 2011, +4% vs. 2007

The average price of comics in Diamond’s Top 300 was $3.53 as was the cost of the average comic book retailers ordered. $3.50 was the median price of all comics offered in the Top 300, while the most common price remained $2.99.

The numbers already show it, but there’s increasing anecdotal evidence of a turnaround out there — including this piece in yesterday’s Ventura County Star. The headline alone is of a sort we haven’t seen in the business in a long time. Brian Jacoby from Secret Headquarters in Tallahassee, Fla., also provides a very positive view in the comments thread of this ComicsBeat post. “My subscriber list has grown 20% in the past 9 months, beginning on the strength of the excitement for the New 52, and bolstered by other great launches since, like (Miles Morales as) Ultimate Spider-Man and Saga, and the continued influx of Walking Dead– and Avengers-curious people brought in by other media.” That’s how recoveries have worked in the past: one thing leads to the next.

Follow Comichron on Twitter and Facebook, to be alerted when new estimates are released.

Monday Mix-Up: The Dark Knight (Curtain) Rises

  • News
  • June 11, 2012

In honor of last night’s Tony Awards, we present you with this little musical number starring everybody’s favorite Caped Crusader:

We don’t want to say that Batman’s getting a bit… irked at some of the other movies that have come out so far this year. On the other hand, it’s not like Jim Steinman is going to include this song in the Batman musical. (Hey, whatever happened to that Batman Broadway musical, anyway? Did somebody look at Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark and say, “Heck no”?)

FORTIER TAKES ON ‘WINGS OF THE BLACK DEATH’ FROM RADIO ARCHIVES!

  • News
  • June 11, 2012

ALL PULP REVIEWS by Ron Fortier
THE SPIDER
Wings of the Black Death
(An Audio Book)
Radio Archives.com
6 CD Set
4 hrs. 46 min.
With the expansion of the increasing popular New Pulp movement, it was only inevitable that the audio book industry would enter this exciting new field.  One of the most aggressive to do so in the past year has been Radio Archives out of Spokane, Washington, headed by the wonderfully creative and energetic Roger Rittner.  Working with noted pulp writer and historian, Will Murray, Rittner and Radio Archives have began doing expansive audio book versions of classic pulp thrillers with the feel of genuine old time radio melodramas.  It is important to note that these are not exact, full cast recordings, but by adding brilliant sound effects and period background music, Radio Archives provides such marvelous audio atmosphere as to beautifully mimic those old radio plays.
“Wings of the Black,” was written by Norvell Page, writing as Grant Stockbridge, and appeared in the December 1933 issue of “The Spider” magazine. This exciting audio adaptation produced and directed by Rittner, features Nick Santa Maria as both the narrator and primary male characters to include Richard Wentworth, aka the Spider, and Police Commissioner Stanley Kirkpatrck along with Robin Riker who takes on the role of Nita Van Sloan, Wentworth’s paramour.  They are absolutely marvelous, each evoking these well known characters as we all imagined they would sound…and act towards each other.
The plot centers about a fiendish villain calling himself the Black Death. He has managed to get a strain of the Bubonic Plague and is systematically unleashing it on the people of New York City. He will only stop when they pay him a billion dollar ransom.  As if that were not horrendous enough, this merciless fiend has managed to convince the police that it is the Spider who is responsible to the point of leaving the Spider’s telltale crimson seal on the foreheads of his policemen victims.  Now, for the first time ever, Commissioner Kirkpatrick finds himself believing the Spider is in reality a heartless monster and he proceeds to hunt him down with all the resources at his command. Suddenly Richard Wentworth is battling both the fiendish mastermind and the police, frantically trying to evade capture until he can solve the mystery of the Black Death and bring him to justice.
Rittner’s direction is pace-perfect as he leads both Santa Maria and Riker through each chapter hitting all the right beats, from moments of intense action scenes to those of quiet, anxious reflection as the pair, depending on each other as never before, endure the Spider’s greatest challenge of his crime-fighting career.  Radio Archives’ “The Spider – Wings of the Black Death,” is a winner from the opening scene to the last. It pulls the listener into the raw, brutal, fantastic world of the classic pulps and in the end provides such a unique, rewarding experience as to delight both old and new fans alike.
Finally, this audio book is available both as a digital download and in the 6 CD set, both reasonably priced.  For those into new fangled digital toys, this reviewer would imagine the digital version would be their obvious choice. Whereas the legion of audio book listeners who prefer enjoying books while on long road trips will find the CD set much to their liking.  Either way, this is a package you will be thrilled with.  And if you aren’t familiar with audio books, this is easily the right book to begin with.  Enjoy.

“Midnight Hour” puts a retro comic-book spin on Father’s Day

  • News
  • June 10, 2012

On June 17, millions will celebrate Father’s Day with a card, a gift or a dinner. But “Lee Martin’s The Midnight Hour” has a unique way of saluting dad: with a chainsaw.

In this month’s all-new episode, “How I Dismembered Your Mother,” a grassroots family man named Bruno (Didrik Davis) discovers that his rebellious wife plans to divorce him and take with her their young son, he goes on a chainsaw-wielding rampage of death which ends with the show’s signature twist at “The Midnight Hour.”

This entry airs as the show’s fourth season draws to a close (the season finale, “Secret of the Blood Children,” airs in August) and is rife with drama, dismemberings and death. Watch for a powerful performance from leading man Davis as well as some stomach-churning special effects courtesy Brian Schoof.

“How I Dismembered Your Mother” airs every Thursday and Saturday night throughout the month of June, 2012. Visit www.leemartinsthemidnighthour.com for channels, times and a live streaming video simulcast link.

Sunday Cinema: “Ray Bradbury: Story Of A Writer”

  • News
  • June 10, 2012

In honor of the passing this week of the great Ray Bradbury, here’s a half-hour television documentary about him by David L. Wolper, courtesy of the Internet Archive.

Included is Bradbury’s “Dial Double Zero,” a short story about intelligence within a telephone system.

Enjoy. Me, I’m going to go memorize a book in his honor.

Archie Comics CEOs end their court fight… for now

  • News
  • June 10, 2012

Have we achieved peace in our time? The Associated Press piece is skeptical…

The two CEOs of the company that publishes Archie Comics on Wednesday ended their court feud over control of the comics kingdom, but now some relatives are accusing both sides of funny business.

A judge on Wednesday signed off on a settlement between Nancy Silberkleit and Jon Goldwater, the co-CEOs of Archie Comic Publications, even as Goldwater’s nieces told the judge in court papers that they think both chief executives’ “hands are dirty.”

Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Shirley Kornreich said the nieces weren’t in a legal position to weigh in on the settlement, but she noted that they could file a suit of their own. A lawyer for the nieces’ trust, Charles W. Grimes, said it “will be pursuing the requisite steps to protect the interests of the trust and its beneficiaries.”

The settlement ends — at least for now— a bitter and sometimes bizarre fight at the company that produces the congenial, more than 70-year-old comic that follows Archie, Betty, Veronica, Jughead and others through dating and other teenage adventures.

via The Associated Press: Archie comics’ 2 CEOs end their NY court fight.

Ray Dillon / Artist & Writer: My wife, Renae De Liz, is going to be okay, but she is in the hospital. :(

  • News
  • June 10, 2012
2011-06-womanthology-2-2161520Spreading the word: Renae De Liz, the creator behind Womanthology, is in the hospital, according to husband Ray Dillon:
Hi, everyone-

Been avoiding saying anything publicly because I didn’t want to cause worry prematurely and wanted to make sure I had more information and talked to our immediate family first.
Renae is recovering right now, just very slowly.
She has an infection that has spread into her blood and kidneys, as well as pneumonia and some other things we’re worried about, but I don’t want to say anything there until test results are back. As of today she’s doing a bit better and we’re told after perhaps a week in the Critical Care Unit she should be mostly recovered. It got really bad and we almost lost her. :( Been a very rough couple of weeks. We’re behind in work, income, communication, and our nerves are just shot from all this. (I can’t even think about the likely $30k or more in medical bills we’re racking up here with no health insurance and we don’t qualify for assistance…)
So, please understand that we’re unable to get back to everyone checking in on current or future projects, Womanthology copies, or anything else right now. Please give us 2-3 weeks. I’ll do my best during that time, but can’t promise to get back to everyone. Renae will likely be in CCU for a week or more, not sure how long she’ll be in a recovery room after that. My focus is taking care of her and the kids during this (which I can’t do at the same time because Critical Care doesn’t allow kids).
I just can’t keep up on all these messages right now, but I’ll do my best. If you could help by spreading the word so no one out there is getting frustrated by not hearing back from us sooner that would be amazing. Particularly on Womanthology. If you happen to see someone asking about it, please direct them here and to the updates on the Womanthology Kickstarter Updates page, which should answer all questions. Books and other rewards are in process as quickly as we can get them out. Most of them are done! But we’re sorry for any delay this might cause, if any. It’s mostly out of our hands at this point and just about everything is already on its way to the backers.So aside from a few pre-scheduled tweets and blogs to keep things running I’ll be away from the computer most of the time for right now.

Huge thank you to Stacie Ponder (check out her movies and comics!) for helping with the kids while I visit Renae and to Renae’s sister Kimberly De Liz (check out her art!) for offering to fly all the way over here to Maine to help with the kids.
And to everyone who already knows and has offered their support and love and everyone who surely will. Thank you.

Get Well Cards!

Oh, and if anyone wanted to send Get Well cards, flowers, chocolate, or anything like that to Renae that would be so sweet! You can send to our home: 18 Killdeer Road, Cape Elizabeth, Maine 04107 or directly to her hospital room Mercy Hospital, 144 State Street, Portland Maine, 04101 – Critical Care Unit c/o patient: Renae Dillon. (Keep in mind that is the Critical Care Unit so nothing too elaborate, but once she’s in her recovery room you could send real elephants and stuff). That would make her feel really loved and special (which she is!)

~Ray
www.RenaeDeLiz.com

Are We Taking Donations?

Wow! I’m overwhelmed the amazing support, love, and offers for donations. We’ve even gotten a few already! Wow! Thank you! Generous people!!!!!
The answer is:
Kinda?
Part of me (the scared part) wants to say, “Yes, please help!” But … some of you might remember a few years back, when we lived in Kansas, and we were about to have a baby and things with the home we were trying to buy (and had been living in for a year) fell through and we had to move in 30 days and didn’t know what we were going to do. Back then we asked for donations and took on a ton of commissions and new projects to try to raise the money to save the house. Despite all of our efforts (and yours) it still didn’t work out, but we moved to Maine and life is incredible here and we’re actually glad now that we didn’t stick our roots down there, even if we loved the house.Everyone was SO generous and helpful, and in fact we still owe some commissions from back then (moving across country and having a baby who didn’t sleep for his first 2 years is like jumping in a time warp). So I know we totally don’t want to be the people who are like “We need help AGAIN!” You know? And this is something that we can probably work out. We might be paying these medical bills forever, but it’s not the same as needing to raise a certain amount by a certain time to save a house or to have a major operation to save a life or anything like that. It’s just going to be some really, really bad debt that we were really hoping never to have. Taking a huge bite out of our future plans and the getting ahead of debt that we’ve been hoping to do forever, that’s for sure. BUT, right now we don’t have any dire need and there are a lot of people out there who probably do.

Also I can’t ask Renae our thoughts on this yet. She’d probably think you’re all amazing for wanting to but not want to bother anyone for the help. That’s just who she is.

SO, with that in mind (the fact that we’ve gotten an amazing amount of help before and this isn’t an urgent and dire need … at least not yet … knock on wood) if you still want to help and totally have it to spare (if you’ve got your own financial worries, please take care of you and yours first) then you can donate by clicking this button:

But please read the above information before you do that. We’ll probably be fine without donations, but of course they would help! But there are people who need it more, too. 
You’re all just super incredible people for being so sweet and supportive and wanting to help so much.
THANK YOU!!
~Ray

 

via Ray Dillon / Artist & Writer: My wife, Renae De Liz, is going to be okay, but she is in the hospital. :(.

The Point Radio: Jersey’s Jaws Weekend

pt060812-3032209This weekend, the SyFy Channel takes a piece of history and smacks it into a hot reality show. The result, JERSEY SHORE SHARK ATTACK, described as a “thrill ride with a smile”. We talk to the cast & crew to see just how this whole thing got started – plus remember the cool Batman toys from the 60s? They’re coming back!

The Point Radio is on the air right now – 24 hours a day of pop culture fun for FREE. GO HERE and LISTEN FREE on any computer or mobile device– and please check us out on Facebook right here & toss us a “like” or follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.

big-questions-by-anders-nilsen-5335912

REVIEW: “Big Questions” by Anders Nilsen

big-questions-by-anders-nilsen-5335912If you’re plugged into the comics field at all, you’ve probably already heard of this: it’s the gigantic out-of-left-field book that all of the cool kids have been talking about for the last six months (call it 2011’s Bottomless Belly Button). Of course, the really cool kids have known about it for a while: Nilsen has been serializing Big Questions as a series of smaller comics for close to a decade now.

In a wide, open landscape — there’s a stand of trees by a river, and a single farmhouse, and even some caves underground, but what we see most of all is widely scattered single trees — live a flock of small birds, who are collectively our main characters. They’re fascinated by “the giant,” which they think is a massive metal bird, by the metal egg that it drops one day, and, later, after that egg is no more, by the grounded giant itself, and the man that comes out of it. That single farmhouse is also the home of an old woman and the idiot grandson she takes care of, but the humans in Big Questions are all seen from outside, like the other non-bird dangers, like the Owl and the Snake.

The birds question their lives, their cosmology, the purpose and ends of the world around them — these are the questions of the title. And they, despite their best attempts, don’t really understand what’s going on with the giant, the egg and the pilot, or with the grandmother and the idiot. Nilsen tells his story from the point of view of a dozen unreliable narrators, but has the clarity and precision of his drawings to show us both what’s really there and what the birds think is there.

Big Questions is a magnificent achievement: sweeping, even epic in its scope, with a heartbreaking sense of mortality and loss while maintaining a sense of mystery and spookiness. But it all begins with a few birds — drawn more simply than the style Nilsen developed later in this story — wondering about the purpose of their lives. It might not answer those big questions, since no book could, but it asks them well, and thinks about them deeply, and tells a worthy story around them.

New Pulp Writers Visit Earth Station One Podcast

Earth Station One Episode 114: More Assembly Required

ESO REASSEMBLE!!! This week, the ESO crew follows up on The Avengers movie review to focus on the long-running comic series that inspired one of the biggest blockbusters of all-time. ESO hosts Mike Faber, Mike Gordon, and Bobby Nash are joined by Van Allen Plexico (www.AvengersAssemble.net) to discuss what makes this band of Marvel misfits the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. We also interview writer/editor Win Scott Eckert as he takes a turn in The Geek Seat. And we are proud to introduce the newest podcast to the ESO Network family, Transmissions from Atlantis with hosts Jason and Rita de la Torre! All this, plus the usual Rants, Raves, Khan Report, and Shout Outs!

Join us for yet another episode of The Earth Station One Podcast we like to call: More Assembly Required at www.esopodcast.com.
Direct link: http://erthstationone.wordpress.com/2012/06/07/earth-station-one-episode-114-more-assembly-required/

Categories

Archives

Everything you need to make great comics!

comicmix-pro-300x69-2

Nucleus X

Bookshop Zaks