Talk about stepping up your game — based on an announcement issued yesterday, you can tell that BOOM! Studios is dead serious about getting their books out.

Why do I say that? The company announced yesterday that they would be teaming up with Haven Distributors, who would distribute all second printings of both the BOOM! Studios lineup and BOOM! Kids — which by the way houses their line of Disney licensed comics — to direct market stores.

The English translation here: first and foremost, having an alternate distributor is a fairly big deal. When BOOM! Studios sells out a first printing of a book, the company no longer has to wait for Diamond to send second printings out, as they work with specific monthly distribution points. Instead, if a store runs out of a book and orders a second print, Haven is free to send stuff out whenever they want.

“Retailers have been begging us to get our second prints into their stores at a faster pace for the past year,” said BOOM! Studios CEO Ross Richie in a press statement. “We’re happy to be able to offer retailers another choice in getting an important part of our product line to their stores and into the hands of their customers.”

This deal goes in conjunction with BOOM!’s deals with Simon and Schuster and HarperCollinsCanada, who distribute the company’s graphic novels to the mass market in the U.S. and Canada respectively.

May proved to be a Crisis that wasn’t limited to the pantheon of DC Comics, as comic book sales plummeted by double-digit percentage points.

ICv2 reports that comic book sales dropped 19 percent in May from the previous year, with graphic novel sales dropping 13 percent. The overall drop totals at 18 percent. Here’s some more details:

A lack of potent #1 issues as well as the absence of Dark Avengers certainly didn’t help comic sales this May, a month in which no single title even came close to breaking the 100K barrier.  In contrast in May of 2008, which boasted seven titles over 100,000, comic sales were boosted by Final Crisis #1, Avengers/Invaders #1, Invincible Iron Man #1, and Giant Size Astonishing X-Men #1, all of which made the top ten along with 4 Secret Invasion titles and two issues of Batman RIP.  The paucity of big event titles and strong #1s, the continuing deep recession, and the financial drag of higher cover prices all worked together to help produce the steep decline in comic numbers in May.

The top three comics of May 2009 were New Avengers #53 (94,367 copies sold), Battle for the Cowl #3 (89,170 copies sold), and Wolverine #72 (87,075 copies sold).

This drop is the largest ever reported by ICv2. In addition, April 2008 and 2009 both had five weeks of shipping, whereas May had the typical four.

All right, New York fans — if you dig Steve Dillon, here’s your chance to meet and greet!

The Hero Initiative has announced that on Wednesday, June 24th, the Preacher and Punisher penciller will be hitting Jim Hanley’s Universe in Manhattan from 6pm to 8pm.

All proceeds, both for the $5 raffle as well as the $15 sketches, will go to the Hero Intiative, which helps out creators in financial or medical need. If you’re in the area, check it out!

This is for all our Midwest readers, specifically those in the Windy City:

Challengers Comics in Chicago is having their one-year anniversary party this Saturday night! Starting at 5pm, the shop (located at 1845 N. Western Ave #2R) will have food, drink, and $1.00 back-issues.

“We didn’t want this to be our store and customers just shopped here,” said Challengers co-owner Patrick Brower in a press release.   “We wanted it to be the customers store and we just happen to work here.” W. Dal Bush, the other co-owner, added, “We wanted a store that brought a high level of professionalism to our retail industry.  Comic books are now in the mainstream. More Hollywood blockbusters than not are based off them. The New York Times now has a best selling graphic novel list.  We are proof that the family unfriendly, grimy disorganized stereotype of a comic shop is history.”

Comics and community always go well together, so if you’re in the area, I’d suggest you check it out!

If you haven’t checked out the book that Sarah called “The Definite Bush Era Fiction” Khepri.com is ready to help you out. Right now, they have the first five volumes (all that have been released to date) for 43 bucks and change. That’s less than ten bucks a volume, and a real steal to get you up-to-date on this awesome Vertigo series. If you’re caught up and waiting for Vol. 6, which comes out next month, they’ve got it available for pre-order at a hefty discount, as well. Check out the deals here, and don’t say we never gave you anything.

The New York Comiccon has announced a tentative lineup of its panel schedule!

Here are some of the highlights for this year’s programming:

The Do’s and Don’ts of Being a Comic Professional: Creating the work is one thing, but what should you keep in mind in order to present yourself well to an editor? Do personality and rapport play a part in how you’re perceived? What’s the difference between a pro’s attitude and a novice’s? How do you balance doing quality work with making the deadline? What’s the proper way to pitch? (Friday, 2-3pm)

BOOM! Studios: BIG! BOLD! BOOM! Join Mark Waid, Ross Richie, and Chip Mosher as they run down the most exciting new projects at BOOM! Including a special announcement by Mark Waid that is sure to make your head explode! (Friday, 2:15-3:15)

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By Bon Alimagno

New interns always ask me whether they should develop their own projects as monthlies or another format (graphic novels, digital, etc). It’s taken some trial and error but I now feel confident of the answer: Format is Destiny. If you publish as a monthly, you’re wedding yourself to a host of expectations and complications that may taint your project, regardless of the quality of your work.

Maybe nothing inhibits the growth of new comic publishers more than the expectation they publish monthly full color comic books. While the average comic book store goer expects new publishers to follow this routine, they do so usually without realizing why. Where is it written that a comic book should be serialized every four weeks without break? It’s not written anywhere but has become the accepted way of doing things.

Yet it’s a way of doing things that vastly favors Marvel and DC Comics and immediately handicaps new publishers. Marvel and DC have rich, intellectual properties with worldwide recognition. Their characters possess archetypical qualities that can sustain a monthly grind, year in and year out. Even better for them, some of the best talent in the industry, having grown up on these characters, are now eager to work on them, refreshing these characters with every new generation. New publishers, when pondering whether or not to go monthly, have to consider whether their own characters and stories have the same sustainable qualities.

If not here’s what they face:

A monthly comic series loses a small fraction of their audience from one issue to the next due to the natural attrition of serialized storytelling. No serialized story will keep 100% of its readers with each succeeding installment. On average the typical comic probably loses 10% of its readership per issue. That may not sound bad but stretch those losses over the course of twelve or twenty-four issues and suddenly a comic that sold 25,000 copies its first issue is no longer breaking even within a few years of its debut.  At that point a publisher has to decide whether to keep going or cancel.  Now imagine if instead of one monthly a publisher had decided to launch many simultaneously, believing that a larger set of offerings would make their company look more impressive.  Maybe a company could offset the losses making up for it with related trade paperback sales and other merchandise. But say they have a half dozen or a dozen titles bleeding that much. The losses start piling up exponentially. That scenario has played out many times over the last few years and why you’ve seen new publishers fall as quickly as they have risen.

Now, say a new publisher stems the bleeding quickly and cancels a monthly. Such a cancellation won’t be viewed as a business decision done for the sake of the continued health of the company. It’ll be viewed against the other monthlies from Marvel and DC that carry on. It’ll be viewed as a failure. Thus when the publisher re-launches the title, they’ll be in the unenviable position to explain why. The publisher then has to present something new, something fresh, and for better or worse something potentially at odds with their original vision that ended in cancellation.

Setting aside the business considerations, let’s consider the creative problems monthlies have. A typical monthly comic story is twenty-two pages. Can the story of every comic book character be told in such neat twenty-two pages increments? Of course not, yet far too many stories, possibly better served as longer graphic novels, have been sliced and diced to serve this serialized format, diluting their narrative power. Or, as many have complained, stories that once would have satisfactorily ended in a single issue are now stretched to fill a three- or six-issue arc.

This all isn’t to say that no new publishers should ever consider the monthly. But they’ve been warned: this is what they are facing. Non-Marvel and DC publishers, like us, that still manage to publish serialized comics in some form (whether as miniseries or quarterlies or the like) usually have other means of generating income apart from the actual comic books themselves. This is vital to the survival of the so-called independents. Look through Previews and you’ll see that publishers who have not only survived but grown over the past few years have done so by carefully monitoring their monthly output and publishing serialized comics with established or licensed characters and popular creators. They’re built for the long haul.

New publishers may not want to play the same tune that frankly many have already mastered, but instead march to the beat of their own drum.

Till next time…

Bon Alimagno is Director - Publishing & Editorial for Harris Comics, publishers of Vampirella.

As we’ve reported in the past, the economic recession has hit media and publishing companies hard, with hundreds of layoffs and corporate restructuring at standbys like Warner Bros., MTV, and Random House.

While it’s only going to get worse, with even the most optimistic economists thinking an upswing won’t be possible until at least the latter half of 2009, comic shops have surprisingly weathered the storm pretty well.

According to ICv2, comic shop store counts are only down 2.5%, with overall Diamond Sales down 3%. Of course, the article adds, next month will really be a key point to see the full effects of the economic downturn, as some retailers may decide to make a “clean break” and close up shop as 2009 begins.

Why is this the case, you might wonder. In my opinion, it has to do with the fact that comics already had their meltdown, just over a decade ago. And just as the comic book companies had to be frugal with their numbers and their hiring, I think this trickled down to the retailers, as well.

Because comics are no longer an “investor’s market,” I think retailers have had to be much more careful with their purchasing and their sales, and with fans having typically propped up the comparatively-cheap comics industry during most recessions, it makes sense why the layoffs and closings aren’t matching those of newspapers, publishing houses, or Wall Street.

Artist Rob Liefeld, always the source of good internet conversation, is signing tonight at Midtown Comics’ Times Square location in NYC, in support of his new original graphic novel from Image Comics, Armageddon Now: World War 3. The OGN features a marked shift in art style for Liefeld, with digital painting over his pencils. The writer, Phil Hotsenpiller, will also be there, signing copies of the recently released hardcover GN about the end of the world. As a longtime and unabashed fan of Liefeld’s work and how nice of a guy he is in person, I’m excited to attend tonight. Full details after the break. (more…)

Diamond Select Toys and Toys R Us are excited to announce a new partnership that will bring the latest DST products to Toys R Us stores nationwide!  That’s right, now you can find all your favorite collector toys by visiting the greatest toy store there is!

The geek-chic U.S.S. Enterprise from the classic Star Trek series can now be found on Toys R Us shelves just in time for the holiday shopping season and this is just the tip of the interstellar iceberg for Star Trek fans.  We’ve also got two exclusive Star Trek action figures shipping very soon and a host of other new and best-selling surprises to unveil over the coming months.

To make this announcement even better, our newest Toys R Us exclusive Minimates can now be found on store shelves!  Two exclusive sets are included in this first series of Minimates, get ready to bring home Stealth Iron Man & Gauntlet Tony Stark as well as Hulk & Abomination - stars of this year’s biggest Marvel movies!  Plus be on the lookout for our other Marvel Minimate two-packs: Spider-Man & Shocker, Back in Black Spider-Man & Kraven and Cosmic Spider-Man & Transformation Venom!

Plans are already underway to deliver more fantastic and exciting new exclusive releases as well as a selection of the very best new products over the coming months, so stay tuned for more updates!

Comics readers will find several things to be thankful for this week, including the debut of the new Umbrella Academy miniseries, the end of the “R.I.P” storyline in Batman, and the long-awaited Body Bags one-shot.

(Yes, I know Thursday is Thanksgiving only in the United States, but you can still be thankful for something — like, say, the arrival of Mesmo Delivery in comics shops.)

If you’re looking for more books to keep you entertained between parade viewings, food courses and football games, Wednesday also sees an American Elf collection, another Captain America Premiere Hardcover, Scott Morse’s Tiger Tiger Tiger, and … Tijuana Bibles.

To see what other titles Chris Mautner and I think are worth mentioning, just keep reading. As always, let us know your choices in the comments below.

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In the wake of the cancellations by DC Comics of Birds of Prey, Blue Beetle, Checkmate, Legion of Super-Heroes and Manhunter, Marc-Oliver Frisch spies two more titles that seem to have crossed the line of death: Jonah Hex and Simon Dark.

They’re the only remaining DC Universe ongoing series that sell below 24,000, at least according to ICv2.com sales estimates for October. Actually, they’re well below: Jonah Hex #36 moved an estimated 12,629 copies, while Simon Dark #13 sold an estimated 10,404.

“Given that both titles are selling significantly below that marker,” Frisch writes, “there’s probably not much rope left for them, either.”

It seems like not that long ago, 20,000 was that magical point of no return for most books at DC and Marvel (not that a 4,000-copy shift would move either book back over the line). But the newly canceled She-Hulk supposedly sold nearly 23,000 copies in October; likewise, Legion and Birds of Prey were above that 20,000 mark.

I guess times change … quickly.

If I’m running a little late this week, blame it on the winter weather. Or, at the very least, the avalanche of comics based on movies, television shows and video games.

Angel, Battlestar Galactica, Dead Space, Doctor Who, Halloween, Heroes, Star Trek, Star Wars, Street Fighter II, Transformers, The X-Files, World of Warcraft — they’re all represented on shelves this week.

If those aren’t your thing, there’s also an omnibus edition of Jack Kirby’s The Demon, a Walking Dead oversized hardcover, a collection of Stan Lee’s old monthly columns, Mark Waid’s debut on the Brand New Day-era Amazing Spider-Man, and yetis. Well, at least one yeti.

To see what other titles Chris Mautner and I think are worth mentioning, just keep reading. As always, let us know your choices in the comments below.

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Repeated references on the campaign trail by then-candidate Barack Obama to Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln sent Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book rocketing up the sales charts.

Likewise, when the president-elect mentioned Sunday on 60 Minutes that he’d read “a new book out about FDR’s first 100 days,” he caused a bit of a stir as authors and publishers scrambed to lay claim to the title. (It turns out there are several “new” books about Roosevelt’s first 100 days. However, Obama actually was referring to two titles: Jonathan Alter’s 2006 book The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, and Jean Edward Smith’s more recent FDR.)

However, the influence of the 44th president may not end with historical nonfiction. Note that I wrote may.

According to this article in Canada’s Financial Post, news that Obama collects Spider-Man and Conan comics has given a boost to sales of the wall-crawler’s title. At least in Victoria, British Columbia.

“I used to sell three or four Spider-Man comics a week,” says Gareth Gaudin, owner of Legends in downtown Victoria. “Now I’m selling 30 or 35 a day and almost everyone who is buying is mentioning Obama.”

Hardly empirical evidence, I know. But it’s probably enough to make a few retailers and publishers cross their fingers and hope that Obama gives a nod to a few other comic books.

Why should Obama limit himself to Lincoln’s “team of rivals” concept for assembling a Cabinet when he could go with, say, “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes”?

If you’re a fan of comics with spines, this is a good week for you.

Image Comics brings out the first volume of the Ted McKeever Library and a new printing of Bill Sienkiewicz’s Stray Toasters, while Dark Horse collects the “Wolves at the Gate” storyline from Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight. Marvel returns to Civil War with a 512-page hardcover, and gives Hulk the premiere treatment.

DC Comics, meanwhile, releases the much anticipated collection of James Jean’s Fables covers titled, appropriately enough, Fables: Covers by James Jean.

On top of that, there’s another volume of CF’s Powr Mastrs, the beginning of Kevin Smith’s Batman: Cocophony, and a complete set of Kia Asamiya’s Junk.

To see what other titles Chris Mautner and I think are worth mentioning, just keep reading. As always, let us know your choices in the comments below.

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• Toy company Mattel, which creates numerous lines of toys for DC Comics, has posted images of its DCU Classics Wave 8 on their collector’s site. Wave 8 of the toy line will include Dr. Fate, Gentleman Ghost, Hawkgirl and Vigilante, among others.

• Former Marvel editor Carl Potts shares memories of working with artist Steve Ditko and trying to convince the artist to let him see two Dr. Strange stories that never saw print. “I told him that I’d be happy to look over his shoulder as he flipped through the pages,” Potts says. “That way the pages would never leave his hands, but he still declined to bring them in. Since then I’ve fantasized about what those pages look like and what the story was about. I wonder if I’ll ever find out!”

• Comics retailer Rocketship has an interview with Raina Telgemeier, the artist of the Baby-Sitters Club graphic novel adaptations, up on their blog. On her own site, the artist reveals her webcomic Smile! will be come to print courtesy of Scholastic. She’ll be at Rocketship this Sunday, along with Dave Roman and Matt Loux. Details on the event can be found here.

• Sparkplug Comics posted a video they made at the Alternative Press Expo last weekend.

• Zippy the Pinhead creator Bill Griffith will be at the Fantagraphics store in Seattle this weekend. Details here.

• The Comic Book Club in New York will host Matt Fraction, Ed Brubaker, Brian Michael Bendis and Jeff Katz next Tuesday. Details here.

• Via Drawn comes news that United Features is offering its comics content, including years of archives, for free.

• Kevin stole my headline for this one earlier this week: Salman Rushdie says he’s “a world expert on superhero comics.” He also says he’s been approached about doing a graphic novel, but hasn’t said yes yet.

• Here’s two names that might look familiar … Tim O’Shea talks to Frank Santoro, and Chris Mautner talks to Art Spiegelman.

• Colleen Doran shares more agents who work with comics folks.

• Jim Rugg adds to Kevin Church’s J. Jonah Jameson sketch collection.

• This weekend’s Wordstock Book Fair in Portland, Ore. will feature several comic creators, including Mike Mignola, Alison Bechdel and Lynda Barry. Oni Press, Dark Horse Comics and other comic companies will also be there.

If it’s November, it must be time for the best-of-the-year lists to begin, right? I’m convinced that Best-of Season eventually will start sometime around May.

Amazon.com and Publishers Weekly lead the charge, each with fairly diverse lists.

Amazon ranks its selections, and divides them into Editors’ Picks and Customer Favorites, with Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba’s The Umbrella Academy, Vol. 1 (Dark Horse) topping the former, and Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules (Amulet Books) leading the latter.

The unranked Publishers Weekly list includes Marguerite Abouet and Clement Oubrerie’s Aya of Yop City (Drawn & Quarterly), the Sammy Harkham-edited Kramers Ergot 7 (Buenaventura Press) and Takehiko Inoue’s Slam Dunk (Viz Media).

The full lists can be seen at the links.

As if victories in the Electoral College and popular vote weren’t enough, Sen. President-Elect Barack Obama also has won the battle of the biographical comic books.

ICv2.com reports that sales of IDW Publishing’s Presidential Material: Barack Obama handily defeated those of John McCain by 59 percent to 41 percent. That’s a wider margin than the popular vote, which now stands at 52 percent to 46 percent. (Final results from Missouri and North Carolina haven’t been included in that tally.)

According to the website, the sales figures are based on copies sold to direct-market retailers, not actual sales to customers.

The biographical comics still can be ordered through IDW’s Presidential Material website.

SLG Publishing will open their own “Boutiki” in San Jose, Calif. this December. The shop will carry graphic novels, books, toys and art prints, and will display art by comics artists.

Per the press release:

The Boutiki’s December 5 grand opening will feature a gallery show with fine art by SLG comic artists, including Evan Dorkin, J.R. Goldberg, James Turner, Camilla d’Errico, Lesley Reppetaux, S. Eddy Bellows and Evan Waldinger. Limited-edition prints of some of the pieces will also be available to purchase. There will also be a special signing by S. Eddy Bellows to mark the release of his new graphic novel Lulu and Mitzy, live music and refreshments.

Keep an eye on their blog for “in progress” pictures of the store as they prepare it for the grand opening.

Ah, Election Day, when a citizenry whose collective brain has been scrambled by 24-hour news channels and poll-tracking websites finally stumbles, zombie-like, into the voting booth.

What’s that have to do with this week’s comics shipping list? Nothing, really. But as “Can’t Wait for Wednesday” is a couple of hours late, I’m pointing to the election as an excuse.

If you’re not as election-obsessed as I am, your attention may be turned to what titles are hitting comics shops tomorrow.

From DC Comics, we’ll see the final volumes of New Teen Titans Archives and The Absolute Sandman, as well as Final Crisis: Resist and the first issue of The Sandman: The Dream Hunters adaptation. Marvel rolls out the Daredevil & Captain America: Dead on Arrival and Wolverine: Chop Shop one-shots, and the first issue of the big Ultimatum event. Dark Horse, meanwhile, collects Dean Motter’s Mister X sci-fi saga.

Elsewhere, IDW Publishing releases Kevin Colden’s Xeric-winning Fishtown, Macmillan publishes the autobiographical Alan’s War, and … Chris Mautner recommends porn. Really.

To see what other titles Chris and I think are worth mentioning, just keep reading. As always, let us know your choices in the comments below.

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