Here’s part of a talk I had with Tom Spurgeon of ComicsReporter about comics and recessions. Some of this is stuff I’ve said elsewhere, but I think the general theory is true — we need to look at front-market and back-market separately, and then you need to look at how the structure of the comics … Read more
by John Jackson Miller Updated! As I surmised last month, June 2008 comics sales in the direct market had an easier time in comparison with June 2007 sales, in part thanks to the second best trade paperback month recorded among Diamond’s Top 100 Trade Paperbacks. While ground was still lost in the narrower categories (such … Read more
by John Jackson Miller Updated 6/19: OK, some technical difficulties past, you can find the tables with sales estimates for May 2008 here. My guess at total market size earlier this week was based on a file Diamond distributed to the media that mistakenly included the April market shares under the banner for May; once … Read more
by John Jackson Miller Diamond Comic Distributors released its sales rankings today, and unusually I was able to attend to the math right away and generate the estimates for April 2008. Overall, the comics industry fared better against last April — but only overall. Comparatives in the narrower categories remain slightly down, even considering this … Read more
by John Jackson Miller And speaking of advertising and comics… About a decade ago, I interviewed Manfred Bernhard, the advertising executive who produced the Big Boy comics series for the famed restaurant chain — and there began my attempts to begin tracking down some of the unusual artifacts of this series of promotional comics. Now, … Read more
by John Jackson Miller I did this last year for Amazing Spider-Man when the third movie came out in response to media inquiries; now, I have plunged ahead and listed all the Iron Man sales figures from Statements of Ownership that I have found, from 1980 to 2003. I can’t locate my copies from Volume … Read more