Over at the soon-to-close Engine (and reaction to the announcement over there is surprisingly muted so far, but it has been less than an hour… Me, I’ll be sad to see it go, because it could be a great place to learn), Warren Ellis suggests an interesting experiment:
Every month, Diamond releases its much-read, much-discussed, much-loathed Top 300 chart, a deeply flawed piece of business that purports to list the real sales of the 300 most-ordered comics of the month.
This chart, naturally enough, has its top third dominated by Marvel and DC, with Image and Dark Horse getting a look in. Due to this, indie and/or non-superhero stuff tends not to get discussed, except in a “oh shit it’s all not selling” kind of way.
To dig out one of last year’s memes: imagine a “New Mainstream” Top 100. For no other reason than to make the point and change the frame of the discussion a little, in full knowledge of all the idea’s flaws.
Strip out everything from Marvel except the Icon label, maybe. Strip out everything from DC except maybe Vertigo and maybe Wildstorm Signature. Strip out everything from Image except Image Central. (Yeah, superhero books will therefore fall into the mix, but fuckit.)
And once you’ve got the top 100 in order, strip out the sales numbers, just for the hell of it.
Maybe someone will get the time to do a few of those, just to see what they look like. JUst to see what the Direct Market end of the medium looks like if you strip out the dominating companies and material.
Dennis Culver does that very thing, and the results are interesting. Dark Horse rules the roost, with Dynamite not far behind – Licensed books being what the market wants when it doesn’t want superheroes, apparently. Later in the thread, Alex Cox posts the Rocketship Top 50 for June, and it’s an insight into one of the more high-profile “diverse” comic book stores…
August 7th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
What’s four lanes long, two lanes wide, smells like a steak and seats thirty-five?
August 7th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
I should know this one…
August 7th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Oh I’m sure Ellis would have said “oh take star wars books out too,” if he had thought of it.
I’ve got no use for this sort of thing.
August 7th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
For a view from the opposite end of this matter, here’s a look at how certain bestselling titles were stripped out of a national bestseller list, despite outselling everything else.
Examining the mid or lower levels of sales charts is interesting. But there’s no need to create a special chart just for it.
August 7th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
CANYONERO
August 7th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
So, even when all those filthy, filthy superheroes – whom Ellis HATES but still writes, like a whore – are stripped out of the charts, it turns out that the books that HE wants to be successful are still outsold by corporate-owned franchise characters?
Wow, color me Not Fucking Surprised.
For years, Ellis insisted that comic books were dying because they were dominated by superheroes, and he went on record with the opinion that the X-Men and Spider-Man movies would bomb at the box office, because “the mainstream audience wants to take its movies SERIOUSLY.”
Three movies of each movie series later, with the Spider-Man movies alone ranking as among the most money-making movies of all time, and Ellis must be very disappointed in “the mainstream audience” for loving filthy, filthy superheroes even more than the fanboys whom he so despises.
August 7th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
This is just the old schtick of trying to redefine “mainstream” to mean “things that the public would like if only they had the faintest interest in them.” The old mainstream is superheroes, the new mainstream is manga, and edited versions of the Diamond chart are as far from mainstream as you can get.
August 8th, 2007 at 12:55 am
Disliking the dominance of the superhero genre in American comics =!= hating superheroes.
August 8th, 2007 at 8:13 am
Thanks, K-Box.
I also wonder if this what-if idea has any significance at all?
What if we took all sports off TV ratings charts in the fall?
August 8th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
“whom Ellis HATES…”
Jesus, this crap again??
Can someone please pull up the EXACT qoute from Ellis where he states he HATES superheroes? And please, don’t paraphrase – saying he has no interest in writing or reading standard superhero books is not an admission that he HATES the genre.
Or, to put it another way, if I told you that I liked the movies Spider-man 2, Super-man, and Batman Begins, but really didn’t think any other superhero flicks were worth a damn, would it be fair to say I hate superhero movies in general, or just the ones I consider crap?