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Diary of a Wimpy Kid – comics or not?

Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney

Here at CoreyBlake.com, we like to give you truly cutting edge coverage of the comic book and graphic novel world. That’s why almost exactly four years after its release, we’re taking a look at Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney, published by Abrams’ Amulet Books.

OK, maybe this isn’t the CNN of comics, but where there may be a lack in timeliness, I hope quality and analysis picks up the slack. (Side note: follow me on Twitter, and you’ll see me comment on, tweet and retweet comics-related stories I think are worth a closer look, so there’s your fancy CNN breaking news coverage! Sorta.)

So yes, the first book in the series was released on April 1, 2007, and eventually topped the New York Times Best-Seller List. All subsequent books have done the same. Much like the Harry Potter books, each release has become a bigger and bigger deal. And two movies adapting the first two books have done very well. In fact, the second one was released just last weekend and dominated theaters. It was around then that I thought maybe it’s past time I check this out to see the big deal. I’m also considering buying a TV set.

Having read the first book, I’m not breaking the internet by saying that it’s a very enjoyable read. It’s fun and funny. It’s a light read, a quick read, and it’s very easy to get sucked into the pages. Jeff Kinney writes with an authentic voice for the main character, a middle school kid named Greg Heffley, and he has a charming cartooning style to match. It’s real easy to see why this became a big hit.

So now the big question: Is it comics?

My answer: Sometimes.

To qualify as comics, and not simply an illustrated children’s book, there needs to be a sequence of images with or without words. In the case of most illustrated children’s books, the cartoons or illustrations merely echo what is being said in the prose. They may add aesthetic information, but they are not a sequential moment in the story all their own. Sometimes this is the case with Diary of a Wimpy Kid, but just as often, the cartoon drawing is the punchline to a joke or is a story beat of the story or adds details and information to the story that isn’t revealed in the prose text. And as is the case of the snowman scene (below), there is a series of drawings that sequentially tell the story at the same time the prose is doing the same, yet they aren’t completely redundant to each other. Both words and images are playing off of each other and forwarding the story with new information. In a sense, the blocks of text themselves become a part of the sequential storytelling of the images, almost like a comics panel. And I think in those moments, Diary of a Wimpy Kid is very much sequential art, or comic books (or graphic novels, if you prefer).

Part of the snowman scene (from BarnesandNoble.com - click to buy)

I believe there’s actually a level of formalistic innovation involved in those scenes. It’s not the first or only to try this hybrid form of prose and comics. In 2006, J.M. DeMatteis and Mike Ploog released a short-lived series of books called Abadazad through Disney’s Hyperion Books. They were an adaptation of their earlier comic book series of the same name which sadly ended prematurely due to the bankruptcy of its comics publisher CrossGen Comics. Disney bought the company up at an auction because of their interest in Abadazad. Unfortunately the experiment didn’t work out or the marketing efforts fizzled or both, and the series of books ended early. Of course, Diary of a Wimpy Kid first appeared online in 2004 (slightly different from the published version), so it’s possible Hyperion and/or DeMatteis and Ploog were influenced by that in their attempts with Abadazad. Either way, the execution wasn’t quite the same. Abadazad more often than not switched from full comics pages to full prose pages. There were occasional illustrated pages to accompany the prose, like a children’s book. This back and forth might’ve been what kept the books from taking off. With Diary of a Wimpy Kid, the integration is visually consistent throughout with only the increased frequency of cartoons causing the sequential effect I describe above.

So what do you think? Is Diary of a Wimpy Kid comics? An illustrated children’s book? Something else?

(As a side note, I was kind of astonished to learn that Jeff Kinney apparently still has a full-time job outside of handling the growing Diary of a Wimpy Kid empire. Considering the stellar sales these books have had and continue to have, and the big success of two feature film adaptations from Hollywood, I have to assume that he chooses to work because he loves it, and he’s not somehow trapped in some terribly restrictive contract where he’s only seeing a fraction of the profits he’s due. Anyone know more?)

List of Independent Alternatives to Closed Borders: Graphic Novel Edition

Pic via The Stonebrook Institute of Higher Thinking (click for their thoughts on Borders closing)

In case you haven’t heard, Borders filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy recently, and the first order of business in an attempt to reorganize was to close 200 Borders bookstores (interactive map), with an option to close 75 more at a later date. Subsequently, 28 additional stores were added to the list, scheduled to close in late May. Massive liquidation sales started at 20%-50% off everything in each chosen store, with discounts getting steeper as each week passes. The locations made up at least 30% of Borders’ entire retail presence. Borders.com resumes as normal, and gift cards will be honored. For now, anyway.

Once your local Borders store is gone, where to go for graphic novels, manga and comic books? Fortunately there are an estimated 2400 comic book stores out there to pick up the slack. In fact, comics retailers would love your business. Earth 2 Comics, less than a mile from the Borders closing in Sherman Oaks, California, posted on their store’s Facebook page, “You know we can order any book in print for you, not just comics and [graphic novels]? You may also notice we are expanding our prose section.”

Here is a list of comics and specialty shops near the closing Borders stores, according to the database of ComicShopLocator.com and the power of Google. If I’m missing one within about 5 miles of a closing Borders store or any of the info needs correcting, please post below in the comments or email me and I’ll update it.

(Blatantly stolen and adapted from Edward Champion.)

Click through for the huge list. (more…)

Comics Publishers make Mainstream Push

There's a comic for everyone. They just don't know it yet. (Art by the late great Seth Fisher.)

Public awareness of comic books (or graphic novels or whatever you want to call them) is probably at an all-time high. Certainly higher than it’s been since the ’50s. But awareness has translated to people seeing and talking about comic book movies and TV shows, not actually reading comic books and graphic novels. Not in any significant and sustainable influx of numbers, anyway. Fortunately some comics publishers have noticed this and are doing some things about it.

Marvel Comics has entered into a partnership with Starbucks where their Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited service will be included free as part of the Starbucks Digital Network available via free Wi-Fi to patrons of nearly 6,800 Starbucks coffee shops in the United States. Marvel’s MDCU currently has about 8,000 comic books available digitally, with more added every week, so it’s quite a sampling. It will be part of the Entertainment channel, along with iTunes, Nick Jr. Boost, Yahoo! entertainment offerings, and other content providers. This has huge potential to lure in the simply-curious for some fun Marvel comic books. If it goes well, maybe Starbucks will add in other publishers to offer a greater diversity of material (ie, not just superhero comics). It’s an exciting start and a great idea. (Read more about Starbucks’ announcement.)

DC Comics also had big news yesterday. Cartoon Network announced plans for a block of on-air and online programming they are calling DC Nation. “A multi-platform, branded block of original programming and exclusive content based on the DC Comics library of legendary character properties, DC Nation is developed in partnership with Cartoon Network, Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment.  The all-new venture will harness the publishing, theatrical and television assets together for one powerful on-air block on Cartoon Network with exclusive online content.” The name is a reference to DC Comics’ in-house column of the same name that appears monthly in most of their comic books. Programming will include a CG-animated Green Lantern animated series and a brand new Looney Tunes show, among lots of other things (ThunderCats!). Cartoon Network is saying that it will be “populated with event programming, interstitials, exclusive behind-the-scenes of theatrical production and an insider look into the world of all things DC.” Maybe I’m getting my hopes up too high, but I’m hoping they will use this opportunity to promote DC’s line of comic books and graphic novels, and not exclusively focus on other media. (Read more about Cartoon Network’s announcement.)

And finally, LA-based Boom! Studios released a PDF of a comic book meant to be freely shared and passed on to friends. In a bold reversal of most publishers’ fears of pirating, Boom! is embracing the modern internet culture of sharing by actually encouraging people to pass it on to others. The comic, suggested for mature readers, is Hellraiser: At the Tolling Bell, a new 8-page comic by horror legend Clive Barker and artist Leonard Manco (Hellblazer). It serves as a prelude to the new ongoing Hellraiser comic book series by Barker and Manco. This is a pretty big deal because, as mentioned on his website, “Clive Barker has touched Hellraiser only twice: once to write The Hellbound Heart, and once more to write and direct the original Hellraiser film”. The preview includes a link to sign up for more free comics from Boom!, a great explanation of how the new Hellraiser series will work for the uninitiated (“Just as TV shows are serialized week to week, comic books are serialized month to month”), a list of premiere comic book shops in Canada and the United States, with links to their websites, and a link to the Comic Shop Locator and their phone number 888-COMIC-BOOK. The PDF comic is a very creative advertisement for the comic, and they take great pains to make it clear that it’s not a preview – what appears in the PDF comic is unique and not an excerpt of the first issue. (Read more about Boom!’s announcement.)

Three publishers creatively reaching out to new audiences. What a great step in the right direction. To these three publishers and every other publisher out there: more like this, please!

Radiation Dose Chart proves Bananas are Evil

Mega-popular web-comic xkcd writer/artist Randall Munroe has created a really helpful chart showing radiation exposure comparisons. With the help of a Senior Reactor Operator at the Reed Research Reactor in Portland, Oregon, he compiled information on the relative radiation levels of things like daily life (none for talking on cell phones) to exposure at the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl (lots). With the ongoing fears regarding the partial nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant following a devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, this should be of great interest to a lot of people. He notes at his blog though that there are bound to be mistakes since he is not a specialist and that this is intended for general information only. He also points to his friend’s own charts, which provides a Layman’s Intro to Radiation.

Chart by Randall Munroe (click to read full-size version)

According to his information, eating 1 banana is just as dangerous as living within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant for 1 year. Considering my past experience with bananas, I assume that means it is incredibly dangerous and merits immediate freak-out. Don’t let the bananas win.

(via Comics Alliance)

Sequence to Motion: The First Comic Book Movie and the Comic That Inspired It

Happy Hooligan by Frederick Opper (click for bigger)

We’re getting closer to the beginning of the big summer blockbuster season and once again, comic book adaptations are making up a very visible percentage of the big cinematic spectacles. But before Green Lantern, Thor and Captain America, before Iron Man, Batman, Spider-Man and Superman all had their own superhero movies, there was Happy Hooligan.

Over 100 years ago, newspaper comics were still refining the language of comics but at the same time they were becoming a hugely popular form of entertainment. It was basically TV for the masses before there was television (or even radio, for that matter) in America’s living rooms. In 1899, one of newspaper’s biggest moguls, William Randolph Hearst, hired a respected illustrator of humor magazines to add to his growing roster of newspaper cartoonists at the New York Journal. Hearst quickly found that comics significantly increased readership and was a powerful communication tool, and he was a fan himself. He paid better rates to steal creators from his competition, and would fight for less successful creators he believed in. Hearst’s respected illustrator was named Frederick Burr Opper and one of his big creations was Happy Hooligan, which debuted March 11, 1900.

The comic strip was about a disheveled tramp with the worst luck. Happy would frequently try to do good, only to fall (usually literally) to some accident conveniently witnessed by a passing cop who thought Happy was causing the trouble. Most comics ended with Happy being dragged off by one or more cops to serve some excessive amount of jail time. Someone in the legal system must have taken pity on Happy because the following Sunday he would be getting into trouble all over again.

Above is an example from August 24, 1902, preserved and represented by Barnacle Press, which has a veritable treasure trove of old newspaper comics. The physical comedy is played out seemingly second-by-second in each panel. The main fun is in following each step of the small disaster as it unravels, and how each chess piece moves around the space and interacts with the others. In this instance, the chess pieces are Happy, the woman, her horse, Happy’s brother Gloomy Gus (essentially serving as our point of view), the police officer that runs onto the scene, and the tree. The tree’s broken branches and Happy’s pocket knife also serve as secondary chess pieces (he always has his sharpened edc knife with him). Even the bush in the background seems to respond to the action in each panel. And Happy’s ever-present tin can hat adds to the whole. It might look like it vanishes but it’s still on his head at the end, flattened from the action in panels 6, 7 and 8.) You can re-read the strip following just one of the chess pieces. Speech balloons helped direct attention to certain chess pieces at specific moments. The “camera” holds at one angle throughout, similar to vaudeville theater at the time (Gloomy Gus even breaks the fourth wall and talks to the readers/audience at one point). But this also enhances the effect of following the action. We’re a witness to this unbelievable accident as though we were walking by. It also makes it easier to track the action, allowing each panel to serve as a before and/or after comparison of the panels around it. It seems primitive at first (the panels are numbered to make sure readers understood the reading sequence), but it’s really quite a wonderful bit of choreography, and was probably really eye catching to readers of the time. It still holds a lot of delight. I love the horse’s faces! And there’s something really bewitching about Gloomy Gus’s spotted hankerchief, which seems to know more than it’s letting on.

The comic must have hit a chord with people fairly quickly, because within the year the silent film producer/director J. Stuart Blackton (who also created the first American animated film) began making live action short films based on Happy Hooligan. Blackton himself played Happy, complete with torn clothes and a tin-can as a hat. Six shorts were made between 1900 and 1903. Sadly, nearly all of the shorts have either been misplaced or dissolved from the passage of time. Fortunately, The Library of Congress has been able to retrieve and digitally save about 1 minute of one of the last shorts in 1903. This scene was shot on June 15, 1903, at the New York studio of the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, the production and distribution company for the shorts.

Cute bit, definitely a classic. But from the start, you can see that movies already had a challenge in adapting comics that would dog them for a century. The visual effects just can’t recreate the madcap slapstick and physical choreography of the comic strip. And this was a good 35+ years before superheroes introduced superpowers and flashy costumes into the mix. Movie-making technology has come a long way since then but it’s still a challenge to get the visuals right. Just last week, the reveal of Wonder Woman’s costume for the new TV series caused much outrage and ridicule online. We’ll see how this summer’s movies tackle it.

Meanwhile, Happy Hooligan went on to influence Charlie Chaplin’s tramp and other lovable homeless characters with bad luck. Happy had three brothers, one of which was named Gloomy Gus (seen in the comic above), a term that’s still sometimes used today to describe an excessively depressed person. Happy also had three nephews that looked nearly identical and spoke in unison, likely influences for Donald Duck’s nephews Huey, Dewy and Louie. The strip has also been cited as the comic to establish the consistent use of speech balloons as the regular comics form of depicting dialogue. Before that, comics typically had dialogue below the panel as a caption. While the comic might take work for some readers to adjust to its aging style of storytelling, it will always hold a significant place in history.

More info about Happy Hooligan and Frederick Opper: Toonopedia, Wikipedia, Comiclopedia

To read more Happy Hooligan comics, visit the previously linked Barnacle Press, and NBM Publishing for their published compilation.

Someone make this: Searchable database of comic strips in major newspapers throughout history

I was hoping to find something like this but for the Boston Globe instead of The Oregonian (scan from Jonathan Shipley's Writer's Desk blog)

I was trying to figure out what comic strips were running in The Boston Globe when I started reading the comics section as a young lad. I know there was Garfield, probably the Amazing Spider-Man strip, Peanuts most likely, For Better or For Worse probably, but I can’t really remember what else. I think I started regularly reading the comics pages just before Calvin and Hobbes started, as I remember that being “the new strip”. So probably around 1984? I would love to have that information.

I was hoping I could find a scan of a random page from the ’80s to help refresh my memory. You can find everything online, so I figured this might take some clever Googling but should be doable. Well, apparently not. (Or I’m just not a very good Googler.) I did an image search at “the Google” for said random scan but no such luck. Then I did a search of all the internets, every single one of them, hoping for some ugly GeoCities fan site created by an obsessive-compulsive Globe reader who had cataloged every comics page, preferably using HTML tables and yellow font on a gaudy background. Maybe a dancing Calvin & Hobbes gif to really seal the deal? Well, GeoCities is gone, so maybe it took this hypothetical site with it. Once again, no such luck.

So this got me thinking. This is something that should be out there. All of the major newspapers with comics sections: The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune – it would be a great historical resource to know which strips ran in which papers when and for how long. (Last night on Twitter, I mistakenly included the New York Times in my initial wish list, but they don’t have a comics section.) Getting smaller papers would be great too but at least the major papers initially. And this information undoubtedly exists. The syndicates surely have extensive records of this information and more, although they probably have little motivation to provide it. So it will likely fall to the people to collect this information. So come on, everyone, let’s head to our local library‘s microfiche and get this going!

It’s MS Awareness Week: MS = 1 day at a time #msequals

Hey everybody! Multiple sclerosis is a thing that exists!

There, now you’re aware. That wasn’t so hard. Problem solved!

Huh. Probably should’ve done that sooner.

Wait… I think multiple sclerosis is still a problem. And I think there are people that may not have read this yet that don’t know about MS. I guess I’m not done after all.

As I’ve shared in the past, my wife Nahleen was diagnosed with MS over 8 years ago. Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease that damages the ability of the body’s nerve cells in the brain and spinal chord to communicate with each other. This leads to a variety of symptoms, usually different for each person, that can include coordination and balance problems, muscle weakness, fatigue, pain, speech difficulties, cognitive lapses and other fun stuff. The severity can vary wildly but generally (but not always) gets gradually worse over time. The cause is unknown. There is no cure.

The National MS Society is trying to change that. They do amazing work to raise money for research and treatment. They also organize workshops, seminars and other activities to help people live with this disease. They have been a great resource for us and their proactive involvement has helped produce the first oral medication for MS, Gilenya, which Nahleen started taking a few weeks ago.

Before that, Nahleen treated her MS with one of four self-injected medications. Yes, self-injected involves stabbing oneself with a syringe deep enough to get between the fat layer and muscle. Depending on the type of medication, this is done either daily, every other day, three times a week, or once a week. The worst thing in the world? No. But the process was not a good time. Pre-medication (Tylenol for the pain and numbing of the injection site with ice), preparation, injection, clean-up. Then there are all sorts of awesome side effects for each version. For Nahleen, she experienced flu-like symptoms like a fever (she would usually wake up in a sweat in the middle of the night after each injection), muscle aches, fatique, depression (Hey, aren’t these some of the symptoms for MS? Why yes, yes they are.), and injection site reactions (bruising, swelling). Oh yeah, and it hurts. Sometimes barely at all, but sometimes quite a bit.

So yeah, switching to a pill kind of feels like winning the lottery. Side effects are minimal to nothing so far. (Although we might need the real lottery to pay for it.)

If that’s all the National MS Society did, I would love them forever, but they do so much more. Like organizing Walk MS events, which we usually do (but sadly not this year), Bike MS, and MS Awareness Week, where they’re asking what MS means to people. You can post your answer at that last link, or tweet including the hashtag #msequals, make a video on YouTube or post a blog like I’m doing.

My answer is in the title of this blog. MS = 1 day at a time. One thing I had to abandon was what I expected to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, forever. Every day is different for Nahleen, and I have to be willing to allow for a drastic or slight change of plans. Whether it’s about grocery shopping tomorrow, flying back east to visit our families this summer, or great big life decisions and dreams 5-10 years from now, I have to be able to let them go. Sure, it can make RSVP’ing for birthday parties challenging, but we’ve found that most of our friends understand. It takes being patient, forgiving and willing to… improvise. Why yes, maybe there’s something to those improv comedy shows I do with the Magic Meathands that help me accept and adjust. Even comic books offer a way to look at life that can help in dealing with all of this. Comics, or sequential art, break up life into snapshots or moments of time. Appreciating that moment, within and without the context of the moments (and life) around it, give me a gratitude for the times Nahleen and I have together regardless of whether it was the big date we were “supposed” to have, or a quiet and careful night at home.

Nahleen and I may not be doing Walk MS this year, but we would still love to help raise money for the National MS Society. We’d like to refer you to two Walkers this year, and hope you will consider donating to them. Michelle Hazan is a friend of ours and has been on our Walk MS team for several years now. Through the magic of Twitter, I met Angelina Fuller (@Symph0ny) who is doing her very first Walk MS this year. It would be amazing if our people could help them reach their goals.

Also, if you’re in the west LA area around lunchtime (12-2 PM), there will be a different food truck camped out at the National MS Society Southern California office at 2440 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles 90046 each day of the week, to celebrate MS Awareness Week. 10% of sales goes to the National MS Society. Naan Stop and The Surfer Taco trucks were there Monday, yesterday saw Cali Cuisine (aka the Calitruck), and today will have three trucks hanging out in the So Cal office parking lot: Don Chow’s Tacos, White Rabbit, and the Calitruck! I heard there was a 45-minute wait yesterday with only one truck there, so the lines should be moving faster today. Check out the Facebook page for Walk MS SoCal & Nevada for tomorrow and Friday’s food trucks, and to hear more about their efforts to fight MS.

Voices From Chornobyl – suddenly way too relevant

Next month marks the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl Disaster. And here we are days after the terrifying earthquake and tsunami in Tohoku, Japan that has resulted in an unstable situation at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.

It’s true that the two incidents do not have a direct 1:1 correlation. The nuclear power plant industry learned from that previous horrible incident but there’s still so much that we don’t know about this method of powering electricity. And there are still a lot of disturbing parallels between April 26, 1986, and the days and weeks that followed, and what is happening now.

“This is for thousands of years.”

I’ve seen some people dismiss the warnings and concerns with figures of low death counts from nuclear incidents. But our attention should not be determined by loss of life. The quality of life in Chernobyl was irreversibly changed, just as it is being changed forever in Japan.

In 2008, I served as associate producer for the above short demo of a dramatization by Cindy Marie Jenkins of a book of interviews of Chernobyl survivors. It’s called Voices from Chornobyl. If this video captures 1/10th of the heartbreak the people of Chernobyl went through then, or that the people of Japan are going through now, and gets you or someone you forward this on to, to consider helping the people of either region in the ongoing aftermath, I’ll feel like maybe I did something right.

Smiles for Japan: $25 art commissions by manga artist Nina Matsumoto will send 100% to Japan Society's Earthquake Relief Fund (click image for more info)

To fit in the comics side of me, manga artists in Japan have been expressing their support and encouragement through a wonderful series of art with a “Smiles for Japan” theme. Robot 6 has links to work by popular creators like Takehiko Inoue (Vagabond), Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball), Naoki Urasawa (20th Century Boys), Kanata Konami (Chi’s Sweet Home), Arina Tanemura (The Gentlemen’s Alliance Cross), Nina Matsumoto (Yokaiden) and more. (If only I could read Japanese.)

Also, Meltdown Comics (7522 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90046) is holding an art auction called We Heart Japan this Thursday, March 17, 8 PM – 11 PM, with 100% of proceeds going to the Japan NGO Earthquake Relief and Recovery Fund. The event was organized by anime voice actor Stephanie Sheh (Naruto) and comic book artist/graphic designer Pinguino Kolb.

To learn more about the ongoing Voices From Chornobyl project, please visit their website.

To donate to the Red Cross and their efforts to help the Japanese Red Cross respond to the earthquake/tsunami disaster, please visit their website.

And to get activisty for a moment: To learn more about the risks of nuclear power, visit NukeFree.org.

(For detail freaks like myself, the alternate spelling of Chernobyl in the title is a more accurate English spelling of the original Ukrainian name of the city.)

Read This: Scenes From An Impending Marriage

I firmly believe there’s a comic book or graphic novel for everyone. Yes, there’s even a comic for soon-to-be newlyweds in the form of Scenes from an Impending Marriage: A Prenuptial Memoir by Adrian Tomine (published by Drawn & Quarterly).

This little book is a quick read but endlessly enjoyable. Anybody who has gotten married, no matter how smooth or not it went, will relate. The memoir goes through a number of brief anecdotes of writer/artist Adrian and his fiancée Sarah Brennan going through all of the planning stages of putting together a wedding. It stays light and humorous instead of getting overwhelmed with family drama. And there are occasional single-panel cartoons that provide a great running gag.

The author and now-wife were interviewed on NPR’s All Things Considered recently and their really quite adorable.

This would make a great wedding present. Or if you’re the one getting married, you can even add it to your Amazon.com wedding registry.

Here’s Drawn & Quarterly’s write-up (and the blurb on the back cover):

Scenes from an Impending Marriage

Adrian Tomine

YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED
to witness the hilarious true story of one couple’s long march to the altar. Best known for his cover illustrations for The New Yorker and for the critically–acclaimed graphic novel Shortcomings, Adrian Tomine now opens the pages of his private sketchbook to reveal a witty, intimate account of the heady months prior to getting married. Through a series of comic vignettes, Tomine captures the amusing, taxing, and often absurd process of planning a wedding, as well as the peculiar characters and situations that he and his fiancée encounter along the way. Filled with incisive humor, keen observations, and unabashed tenderness, Scenes from an Impending Marriage is a sweet-natured document of the little moments leading up to the big day.

Hardcover, 4.25 x 5.5, black and white, 56 pages

ISBN: 9781770460348

$9.95 US / $10.50 CDN

Here’s a page from the preview posted at NPR to give you a taste.

Comic Book Sales – 10 Years of Stagnation

The worst-selling best-selling comic of all time? Click to read ICv2's analysis of comics sales for February

Sales numbers for the comic book direct market in the month of February have been released and they’re getting the monthly armchair analysis (notably, at ICv2 and ComiChron). The direct market, if you don’t know, is essentially the comic book stores, specialty shops and book stores serviced by Diamond Comics Distributors.

The big eye-catching headline is that the highest selling comic book for February is the weakest top-seller in 10 years, possibly ever. DC Comics‘ Green Lantern #62 by Geoff Johns and Doug Mahnke shipped only an estimated 71,500 copies. For a bit of context, February 2006‘s top seller moved over 140,000 copies. As ComiChron points out, Green Lantern in the 1960s was selling over 200,000 copies a month. Comics have also sold in the millions per month.

So is the end nigh? After January’s poor showing, and now this, there’s certainly plenty of hand-wringing and window jumping. It’s easy to draw that conclusion, but as both sites point out, the entire month’s sales are actually just barely up. That’s due to a modestly better sales through the mid-list and lower selling comics, or the long tail. Without those sales, the industry would indeed be hurting due to a lack of breakout hits and lackluster ordering of the top 100 comics. A dive was also averted due to high priced graphic novels sold in February, such as the Batman: Return of Bruce Wayne deluxe hardcover by Grant Morrison and various artists, with a suggested price of $29.99.

There are lots of factors at play here. DC Comics has rolled back their cover prices to $2.99. The first quarter is traditionally weaker. Diamond started shipping comics on Tuesday for a Wednesday on-sale date, and the transition threw off some orders.

While it seems like comics sale are constantly falling and that this is an all-new low, I think the notable observation made is that comics sales are largely where they were 10 years ago. In this economy, that’s a victory. But then you consider that 10 years ago, comic stores had nowhere near as many resources. These newer resources should theoretically be pulling in customers. Graphic novels and manga in book stores and libraries were just ramping up ten years ago. The first X-Men movie had arrived with much enthusiasm but the huge success of Spider-Man, Iron Man, Batman Begins and a slew of other comic book adaptations were just around the corner. During the decade, web comics would continue to expand and diversify, becoming a (more) accepted form of syndication and distribution. And digital comics on iPhones, iPads, Playstation PSPs, Androids, on the web and elsewhere were beyond most people’s imagination and are now a quickly growing infant. Educators at libraries and schools have embraced comics as literacy tools and are helping their reach increase. This decade has started with a mass awareness and enthusiasm of comics that has never been higher.

And yet for comics stores, it’s like none of the progress from the last 10-15 years has even happened. All of these elements should serve as feeders to comic book stores. A percentage of readers from each of these places would theoretically be curious to more fully dive in to this world, and the comic book store is the best place to go. Or it’s supposed to be. Maybe it isn’t the best place. Or maybe it isn’t the most welcoming place for people coming from those other places. Or maybe we’re losing too many readers from old age or dissatisfaction and the new readers are causing us to break even. If that’s the case, I guess we get credit for stopping the hemorrhaging.

Diamond is trying to tie in the digital element but it’s criticized as inconvenient and counter-intuitive to the instant gratification of the digital world. Why would someone drive to a comic book store to buy a code that they use to download something to their device of choice when they can just do the same thing without driving anywhere either illegally or by waiting a month? Good question. But at least they’re trying. That same experimentation (or, preferably, better experimentation) should be applied to book stores, schools, libraries, movie theaters, TV, and anywhere else someone might discover that comics can be as good a way to be entertained as any other form of entertainment.

Diamond and its network of independent comic stores have a chance to turn the halted hemorrhaging into real growth. While there are a few stores out there that are doing what they can on their own, a series of coordinated efforts is what is needed. And if they don’t do it, one of those feeders will do it instead and become the dominant space in the industry. Comics aren’t going anywhere. It’s how you get them and how they get to you that is changing.