On the Hooded Utilitarian
The week started off with my review of Wonder Woman #18 of the Marston/Peter run, which I compared to John Carpenter’s Christine.
Vom Marlowe continued her perusal of Batwoman.
I sneered at The Long Halloween.
KInukitty explored her tortured love affair with Kazuna Uchida’s I Shall Never Return.
And I reviewed the collected black and white Zot.
And you can see the tracklist and download my Thrash by Thrash mix here.
Next week, by the by, we are doing a bande desinee roundtable, with special guest blogger Derik Badman.
Utilitarians Everywhere
Over at Comixology I compare comics sales figures to those of other entertainment products.
Also to my surprise, big-event books appear to actually outsell big-event CDs and DVDs. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sold more than 8 million copies on its first day on sale in the U.S., which makes Lil’ Wayne’s 2.8 million albums over a year look pretty puny. And, of course, 8 million copies is just about the total bookstore sales for all graphic novels in all of 2008, according to Brian Hibbs’ figures. Obviously, Harry Potter is exceptional…but Dan Brown’s most recent book was also selling in the hundreds of thousands on its first couple of days. Breaking Dawn, the last Twilight book, sold 1.3 million copies on the first day.
I talk about some of my favorite less successful contemporary R&B albums from the last ten years or so at Madeloud. Among them, Brandy’s Afrodisiac:
The commercial failure of this album is altogether a mystery. Brandy and Timbaland — how could that go wrong? The problem isn’t the music, anyway; this is indisputably Brandy’s best album…and it may be Timbaland’s as well. Brandy’s rich, resonant, slightly burred vocals fit perfectly with the washes of sound in Timbaland’s mature style. Far from being overpowered, Brandy instead becomes the most potent effect in Timbaland’s arsenal. On “Who Is She 2 U,” Timbaland opens with some patented funky/goofy stuttering and then Brandy slides in with her patented heart-stopping vocals, one of the sexiest sounds in R & B. The whole album’s like that; idiosyncratic genius and funky wit fused with absolutely unironic heartbreak and desire. Maybe Brandy’s fans just weren’t ready for her to go avant-garde and Timbaland’s weren’t ready to see him embrace the sincerity of the slow jam. Which is said fan’s loss; this is one of the great syntheses of black music in the last twenty years at least.
I review The Anthology of Experimental Chinese Music at Madeloud as well.
And I have an enthusiastic review of the great new Mariah Carey album up at Metropulse.
Other Links
I’ve been reading a bit of rock critic Carl Wilson. Some highlights are his article on why only hipsters make fun of hipsters, and also on why for indie rock class is more important than race.
Shannon Garrity is doing an epic series of posts on yaoi; this one about why yaoi is popular is a balanced and thoughtful look at the subject.
Hi Noah…
I'm interested in the sales thing. I think if you're figures are right about DVD's, they may sell less than comics (although they cost more per unit obviously). You cited a sales figure of 50,000+ for State of Play…and "big-event" comics do, in fact, sell more than that. Batman and Robin #1 sold almost 200,000 I think—and Dark Reign (the Marvel crossover thing) was selling in the same range or more. Direct sales figures for comics are readily available online–they're broken down by month, not by week…but, of course, most comics are monthly, so that makes a certain amount of sense.
The book industry is weird in that a few authors can shift in the millions of units, but after that, I think we start talking about figures more similar to comics. Harry Potter is the gross exception to the usual pace of book sales–and Da Vinci code was also a gross exception (which makes the Dan Brown new book likely to sell well over the usual bestsellers). I mean…yes, I think books sell better than comics–but better than CD's and DVD's? I think that's less clear.
Alan Moore would no doubt point out that it's kind of sad that the bestselling "graphic novel" of the year is 25 years old–but of course it has something to do with the movie. I'm going to dry to dig up that link…I've perused it from time to time…
Oh…one more thing…the direct sales of graphic novels, from what I can tell, actually kind of stink–I don't see that adding that to the Bookscan number will make as big a difference as you suggest (online sales maybe…)
Right…here's (direct) sales figures for last month…
http://www.icv2.com/articles/markets/15822.html
Biggest seller was Blackest Night with 146,000 (how's that for f-ed up). Anyway, this doesn't jibe with some of the comparisons you made over at comixology. 146,000 is not very many people in this grand ol' country of ours–but there are people out there not waiting for the trade.
DVD sales have plummeted of late as well–blame the same factors as CD sales and the crappy economy…and may the rise of Blu-Ray.
Hey Eric. I'm confused. The DVD sales figure I saw in for state of play was several hundred thousand a week, which beats the hell out of 200,000 a month. Why did you think I said 50,000? Am I missing something?
Ok…my memory wasn't so good surfing back and forth…It was Watchmen (the movie) which sold (according to you) 56,000 copies in its first week "more than any recent comic"–(roughly quoting you). Obviously, this isn't true–just going by the notion that most copies of a comic are sold in its first week–certainly a Blackest Night which sells 150,000 or so in a month sold more than a third of that in its first week.
State of Play obviously beats any of the comics I mentioned (or any, period) so that much is true…but it occurs to me that if you look at cost to make the film–and the fact that most comics are coming out every month (so you get that 4.00 over and over again), its not quite so lopsided on the money side (well…of course there's the money made in the theater)…
I wonder if there's profit figures for just comics and trades (not action figures, animation films, or theatrical films using comics characters)–There must be right? Did you see any of those?
Hmmm. Yeah, I guess that's wrong then…though it's still selling way better than any comic has done in a long while 7 weeks into the run, I'd guess.
I didn't see any profit figures. I bet those are virtually impossible to find, actually. I mean, you can find them for movies, but I bet anything else is really dicey.
That indie rock article is pretty interesting. Thanks!