The 22-year-old Watchmen continues its climb up the book charts, fueled by the trailer for Zack Snyder’s upcoming adaptation.
The collection of the Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons miniseries pushed another 14 places up USA Today’s Top 150 list to No. 15. Natsuki Takaya’s Fruits Basket reached the same spot in April 2007; that may be the highest position held by a graphic novel.
USA Today’s chart tracks all genres and formats of books sold in some 4,700 brick-and-mortar and online stores.
So, it probably comes as no surprise that Watchmen topped BookScan’s Top 20 graphic novels chart in July.
To meet increased demands for the trade paperback, DC Comics has ordered an additional 300,000 copies. (Previous reports placed the order between 200,000 and 250,000.) DC President and Publisher Paul Levitz told Publishers Weekly that BookScan recorded Watchmen selling 10,000 copies in just one week.
The Watchmen trailer was released July 17 with The Dark Knight, whose box-office success has given a boost to several Batman collections.
Batman: The Killing Joke, the 1988 graphic novel that served as inspiration for the movie’s version of The Joker, entered the USA Today list last week at No. 114. Although it fell off the list this week, it was No. 4 on BookScan’s July chart, followed by Batman: The Long Halloween at No. 8, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns at No. 11, and Batman: Year One at No. 13.
August 7th, 2008 at 11:00 am
I was riding the train to work here in Charlotte the other day, and I saw two people reading Watchmen. They were next to each other, so I thought maybe they were comic-reading friends or something, but then one got off at the next stop, so it really was just two random people reading Watchmen. I think it’s cool that it’s catching on with the mainstream more than it ever has, to the point where people are reading it unashamedly in public (which is as it should be, of course).
August 7th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Good to know that Alan Moore’s masterpiece is being acknowleged i wonder if Alan Moore hates the popularity.