Comic book sales showed some resilience against the recession in 2009, based on The Comics Chronicles analysis of data reported by Diamond Comic Distributors. We’re still bringing together all the information needed for December, so the figures posted here may require some further adjustment, but it appears from our initial estimates of comics ordered in … Read more
Edit: Caught a simple but embarrassingly large math error, thanks to John diBello. The ICV2 data included Diamond data within. Corrections made to the math, and new info below… San Francisco retailer Brian Hibbs has his annual look at the Nielsen Bookscan numbers for trade paperbacks online, and again it provides a lot of interesting … Read more
Not to evaluate every mass-media reference to trends in the comics market — much less places that do unsigned snippets about Madonna, video games, and American Idol like gossip-and-fad-chaser Radar Online — but its latest “exclusive” revelation on “The End of Comic Books” cobbles together a couple of data points and leaps wildly into the … Read more
I spoke recently to the reporter for the Northwest Herald, a suburban Chicago paper, for her piece on the local comics scene, recently posted. The reporter interviewed Al Armstrong of Al n’ Ann’s Collectibles in McHenry on surviving in the recession. “We’re established, and we’ve got a really solid customer base,” Armstrong said. “I don’t … Read more
Kiel Phegley’s account of the ICV2 forum at New York Comicon included an interesting comment by Dave Roman, cartoonist and associate editor at Nickelodeon magazine: “Most people I know and that I’ve talked to don’t read books more than once. There is that collector mentality, but that’s a very niche comic book mentality that has … Read more
With much of the comics world’s attention focuesed on New York for the Comicon, another mainstream media report about comics shops has appeared on the other side of the continent. Only this one, from the Seattle Times, involves the chain Comic Stop and presents a more hopeful outlook. Obama did indeed save January, according to … Read more