It seems my look at Marvel’s latest audit figures and how they apply to the nearly year-old argument of whether three issues of one Spider-Man title compare to three Spider-Man titles has been a bit… politicized… on the message boards.  Circulation numbers are being used as part of an argument about [...]

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We finally have answers to the Spider-Man subscriptions question. On August 12, 2008, in a CBR interview Marvel Executive Editor Tom Brevoort said “Everyone is saying the book will be cancelled any day now. I could float the book on my subscribers alone at this point.”
The question of whether [...]

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Looking at comments online, there seem to be two distinct camps for Captain America #600’s Monday release: places where practically no one batted an eyelash on Monday and places where it was a hot ticket.  This isn’t too surprising since while there was some publicity, it was spotty and much [...]

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Is Gareb Shamus stealing a page from Danny Ocean?
The Beat noted an interesting quote about a survey being conducted at The Big Apple Con: “If Big Apple Con added a casino, would you stay and gamble?”
Want to know the secret behind that question?  Open source intelligence reveals all.
You may recall [...]

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As you may or may not know, Marvel Comics told retailers that the 600th issue of Captain America would be available for sale today, a Monday (Wednesday being the day new comics normally go on sale), because there was going to be a biiiiiiig announcement.  They thought there was going to be similar coverage to [...]

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I’ve made some comments over the last month or two about feeling sorry for anyone planning to read Secret Invasion in trade paperback (tpb) format.  The actual mini-series was released as a solo tpb and when released on a weekly basis, the tie-ins (especially the Avengers titles) would unfold as flashbacks, [...]

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As you may know, The New York Times has started a best seller list for “Graphic Books,” which you and I would probably call either graphic novels or comics.  A lot of people have been trying to figure out what this list really is and whether it’s valid.  The exact [...]

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This is the final installment of a look at the world of print comics in a world where the direct market implodes.  Previous installments were the actual “Doomsday Scenario” and a look at formats that print comics might adopt online.  This installment will look at graphic novels as more of an independent product than just [...]

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Last week, we looked at a possible doomsday scenario with a perfect storm of a recession, price hikes, consumer antipathy towards the Big 2, and digital distribution cause a drastic shrinkage in the direct market and the number of books distributed as printed monthly magazines (*cough* Seattle Post-Intelligencer *cough*).
The first thing we [...]

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I want to emphasize, this is not written for the express purpose of fear mongering.  This is a look at what might happen if a few current industry trends are taken to their logical conclusion.  I’ve discussed these scenarios with a few publishing professionals (both comics and “traditional” book publishing) and the consensus is this [...]

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