Diamond reported graphic novel sales down 5.7% in March, and a 12.6% gain in April.  Those percentage changes are based on the wholesale value of Diamond’s shipments to comic stores for those months. But the retail value of the Top 300 graphic novels, calculated based on our estimates of the quantities sold in those two months tells a different story, with graphic novel sales up 24.4% in March and 27.0% in April.  That’s around a 30% difference in the March rate of change, and over a 14% difference in April.

The difference, apparently, comes from distributor sales appearing down due to liquidated stock even though customer sell-through was actually up. Confusing, perhaps, but as the site puts it, the bottom line is that “graphic novel sales in comic stores are even better than the 9.5% year over year increase they showed for the first four months of 2012.” Did we somehow back into the beginning of another boom, and if so, how…?

GREEN LANTERN ANNUAL #1
Written by GEOFF JOHNS
Art by ETHAN VAN SCIVER
Design cover
On sale AUGUST 29 • 48 pg, FC, $4.99 US • RATED T
• The conclusion of “THE REVENGE OF BLACK HAND”!
• Everything changes here! EVERYTHING!

And not just that one, either…

SUPERMAN ANNUAL #1
Written by KEITH GIFFEN
Art by CAFU and others
Cover by TYLER KIRKHAM and BATT
On sale AUGUST 29 • 48 pg, FC, $4.99 US • RATED T
• Abducted by a group of mysterious aliens, Superman is dragged to a remote alien galaxy to take part in THE GAMES, a world hopping game of cat-and-mouse where players are hunted for sport.
• Can even the help of a mysterious new GREEN LANTERN overcome the might of an alien empire?

If the new GL is making his debut in Superman Annual and not the Green Lantern series, then that’s an interesting way to (a) bring some attention to what otherwise looks like a generic one-shot, and (b) tie the various DCU families together before next year’s Trinity War storyline. But would they really dare do it…?

I can’t recall anyone coming to us with an interest in those UK characters. That said, I am interested in some of those characters – Death’s Head, for instance. Be cool to see what Warren Ellis or Garth Ennis would do with him. I’m also intrigued by the 2099 Universe – thought at this point, maybe it needs to be 3099. In the current market, either would be a challenge, but given the amazing sales of “Avengers Vs. X-Men,” and the fact that we’re entering into another daring period for publishing, who knows what we might attempt?

Not only is the idea of a “another daring period for publishing” at Marvel an interesting tease in and of itself – Does this mean that Alonso would consider the current period conservative? – but specifically mentioning Death’s Head and 2099 by name is either a great red herring (Personally, I think 2099 is kind of burnt out these days unless it’s a massive reworking; wasn’t Timestorm a relative failure fairly recently…?) or a surprise hint of things to come.

[Editor Mike] MARTS: For the first four books, we’ve brought in Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray, Adam Beechen, Sean McKeever, and Tony Bedard. These are our key writers who will be working with Paul in the beginning, but also that doesn’t stop us from bringing other writers in to work on the project… If we choose to crossover with another storyline or a book which is being driven by another writer, we can allow that writer to come onboard and tell their portion of the story inside Countdown and working with Paul. That way, there will be a real feeling of cohesiveness between the series and Countdown, but it also allows the writer to maintain some level of input and control over the character they’re writing on a monthly basis.

In case anyone is curious, this never happened.

MARTS: [The artistic lineup is] pretty much set…the artists that readers will see over the first ten or so issues are for the most part our “core” group: [Jim] Calafiore, Lopez, Saiz and Magno.

Calafiore drew four issues (50, 45, 39, 36), Lopez drew parts of three issues (48, 43, 37), Saiz drew six and part of a seventh (51, 46, 38, 34, 30, 19, 12) and Magno drew eight (49, 44, 42, 33, 27, 25, 22, 8). In all, the “core” group had art appear in only 21 out of 51 issues, with the bulk of the series drawn by eleven other pencillers and a total of sixteen inkers.

It’s a brutal, spectacular, depressing look at a series that sums up what may justifiably be called DC’s lowest point in recent memory. Seriously, go read and feel bad about comics.

Marvel’s The Avengers from Disney broke $100M in its second weekend for the first time in movie history (beating Avatar‘s 75M). Saturday’s number is about $43.1M after Friday’s was $29.1M for an estimated weekend total of $103.2M with Sunday’s expected $30.9M. That’s down only 50% from its massive opening a week ago. The projected domestic cume now is $373.2M for its first 10 days of release. The international figure is $628.9M after adding $95.4M from overseas this weekend playing in almost every movie territory. Disney says Avengers will cross $1.002B worldwide Sunday. Yowza! That makes Avengers #11 on the all-time money making list, past The Dark Knight (not adjusted for premium ticket prices or inflation). And it should shoot up to #5 very quickly. It will be the first Marvel film and fifth Disney release to reach $1B.

Seriously, everyone involved should be feeling very happy right now – and, hopefully, a movie this successful will translate into renewed interest in the comics in some form, right…?

Deadline.com reports Friday afternoon the CW has officially picked up Arrow – the Green Arrow-based hour-long drama.

30 year-old Canadian Stephen Amell plays the title role. The series is helmed by David Nutter, who directed the Smallville, Supernatural and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles pilots, and written and executive produced by Andrew Kreisberg, Greg Berlanti and comic book veteran Marc Guggenheim.

More importantly to our readers, CW has also picked up The Carrie Diaries, a Sex and the City prequel series.

CW’s official description follows after the jump.

“After a violent shipwreck, billionaire playboy Oliver Queen was missing and presumed dead for five years before being discovered alive on a remote island in the Pacific. When he returns home to Starling City, his devoted mother Moira, much-beloved sister Thea, and best friend Tommy welcome him home, but they sense Oliver has been changed by his ordeal on the island. While Oliver hides the truth about the man he’s become, he desperately wants to make amends for the actions he took as the boy he was. Most particularly, he seeks reconciliation with his former girlfriend, Laurel Lance. As Oliver reconnects with those closest to him, he secretly creates the persona of Arrow – a vigilante – to right the wrongs of his family, fight the ills of society, and restore Starling City to its former glory. By day, Oliver plays the role of a wealthy, carefree and careless philanderer he used to be – flanked by his devoted chauffeur/bodyguard, John Diggle – while carefully concealing the secret identity he turns to under cover of darkness. However, Laurel’s father, Detective Quentin Lance, is determined to arrest the vigilante operating in his city. Meanwhile, Oliver’s own mother, Moira, knows much more about the deadly shipwreck than she has let on – and is more ruthless than he could ever imagine.“

Peter Phillips: [The reaction has] been fantastic! People are clamoring for more. We are receiving great feedback not only from consumer response in downloads but through customer service, media outlets and conventions. Marvel had an overwhelming positive response last month at C2E2.

David Gabriel: The program has proven so successful, that we looking to integrate AR into collected edition, as well as other comics. AR content will definitely be used in the upcoming AvX collection available in November. The collection will contain all original AR applications along with new content created exclusively for the hardcover.

So now we know. I admit that I find myself a fan of AR in theory, but not so much in execution, so far. But what about you, dear readers? Is it something you’re enjoying, or are you wishing that you could see that AR logo disappear from the rest of the series?

Stan has thick fingers (like the people in Jack Kirby’s drawings do, oddly enough). Stan’s glasses are bi- or possibly trifocals, tinted like the windows of a sports car, and the arms rest high up on his head, well above his ears. He’s wearing a tan cashmere sweater, tan slacks, tan Nikes. His hairline is implausible.

It’s hard to be fully charmed by someone when you know ahead of time that they have a reputation for being charming, but Stan is pretty charming. He asks me to talk a little slower because he doesn’t hear as well as he used to; otherwise, he seems remarkably sharp for 89. He punctuates each answer with a grin, as if smiling is a resting state he’s returning to.

Must-read of the day: Alex Pappademas’ profile of Stan Lee for ESPN’s “sports and pop culture” website, Grantland. It’s a wonderfully nuanced look at the co-creator of Marvel Comics that is neither puff piece nor brutal attempt at a take down, but something that admits the confusion of the Smilin’ Stan/Corporate Stooge stereotypes that Lee is often characterized with. A really, really fun piece; go read.

The other majorly (seemingly) secret is that “Free” Comic Book Day comics aren’t actually “free” to the retailers — we pay anywhere between 20 and 39 cents per giveaway book. Retailers are also “forced” to buy a selection of books — the “gold” sponsors, of which this year, there were ten of these that we have to commit to having books in stock of.

This isn’t so brutally heinous except when its titles that you can’t sell as a store — like, for Comix Experience, a good example of “Transformers.” We don’t sell a single copy of “Transformers.” Not even a subscription order (“Atomic Robo” has those!) — but because IDW is a Premier (front of the catalog) publisher, and, therefore semi-automatically a “Gold” FCBD participant, I’m obligated to give away “Transformers” comics that aren’t even within the demographic alignment of my store, or what I’d like to represent to the general public.

I believe that the FCBD committee needs to seriously rethink the way stores become “participating” stores — I totally understand the value in demanding that stores have a range of the “official” free giveaways, but mandating that we stock things that we don’t/can’t/won’t sell seems absolutely counter-productive.

Retailers have to stock the Gold level books? I didn’t know that, but at least now I understand the difference between Gold level books and the others (Also, that’s ridiculous for the very reason Hibbs mentions: What good is it forcing a store to buy something they literally won’t even be able to give away?).

I know I just keep saying the same things over and over, but really the direct market reorders and pre-orders have just really been great.  I’ve been doing this for a long time, but the last time I saw this level of excitement and optimism in general was back in the heyday of Death of Superman or launch of Image Comics.  I’m not saying numbers are anywhere near what they were in those days, but it does feel like there’s this sense of optimism in the industry and the impression that sales are up.  If you talk to comic retailers you get a generally positive reaction from them.

Wait, are we… not dying as an industry for once…? I don’t know how I feel about that.

Sales of the average DC Universe title are at 32,897 units in March, which is well within the spectrum of the last few years, as the average-sales charts at the end of the column show. Likewise, DC’s total unit and total dollar sales are firmly back in familiar territory. Of the individual “New 52″ titles, 18 sold fewer than 20,000 units in March, up from 14 in February. Also notably in this context, the overall DC Universe imprint had 32 titles below the 20K mark in March 2012, which is three more than it did in March 2011 and more than twice the number from March 2010.

Even discounting the lower-selling licensed adaptations, which were published by WildStorm prior to 2011, it’s still 15 DC Universe titles below 20,000 in March 2010, versus 22 in March 2011, versus 29 in March 2012. So while the top-selling series remain relatively stable overall, there is a considerably bigger drop-off the farther down the chart you go.

…Ouch.

Go and read all of Frisch’s column for more detail on the winners and losers at DC right now (and, as ever, to get depressed about Vertigo).

In time to coincide with the movie, AA #3 resurrected this guy:

Thanos was last seen in the Thanos Imperative mini-series that ended Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning’s rein as Marvel’s Comic Czars, being trapped in the Cancerverse with Nova and Star-Lord. We’ve already seen a Nova in Avengers vs. X-Men, with Tom Brevoort being particularly cagey about whether or not said Nova was the Ultimate Spider-Man character Sam Alexander or the original, Richard Rider; given the reappearance of Thanos, it’s looking very likely that the post-Avengers project that Bendis has mentioned would be hinted at in AA is going to be a Guardians of the Galaxy reboot… which, possibly, signals that mention of a GotG movie heralds that project’s official announcement soon (The team also showed up on Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes this past weekend. Holy synergy!). All that’s left is to wait for Star-Lord’s reappearance, I guess…

UPDATE: Tom Brevoort talked Thanos on Marvel.com: “More than simply bringing him back, this storyline will be setting him up for bigger things that are just off on the horizon—it’s the first step towards something we’ve been working on behind the scenes for a while now.”

Despite some less-than-favorable press from sources including Newsarama itself, AMC’s reality series Comic Book Men — set at Kevin Smith’s Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash in New Jersey — has been renewed for a second season, as has Walking Dead post-show The Talking Dead, hosted by Nerdist’s Chris Hardwick. Both will run for 16 half-hour episodes.

The lack of females in the Comic Book Men cast was a point of contention during its first season, with Smith indicating on Twitter that the plan was, “Saving them for season 2, to have somewhere to go story-wise.” Premieres dates aren’t yet publicly known for either show, but will likely coincide with the forthcoming third season of The Walking Dead.

Joss Whedon is now officially the director and writer of the movie with biggest opening weekend of all-time, and he spoke out Wednesday about the success of Avengers on long-running fan blog Whedonesque.

Balancing his trademark self-deprecation and irreverence with genuine sincerity, Whedon thanked his fans, writing, “What doesn’t change is that I’ve had the smartest, most loyal, most passionate, most articulate group of — I’m not even gonna say fans. I’m going with “peeps” — that any cult oddity such as my bad self could have dreamt of. When almost no one was watching, when people probably should have STOPPED watching, I’ve had three constants: my family and friends, my collaborators (often the same), and y’all.”

Whedon also commented on the impending box office battle between Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises, stating that if the latter outgrosses his Marvel Studios film, he will “feel sad,” but “Our successes, whoever has the mostest, are a boon to each other. We’re in the business of proving that superhero movies aren’t just eye-candy (they’re eye-TRUFFLES!).”

His full commentary, along with faux Q&A, is here.

We are very excited about Prophecy.  Prophecy is our first huge crossover.  The majority of retailers that I spoke with at the Diamond Seminars said that having a focused crossover was the best thing we could do.  They were extremely supportive of the fact that we tried something different.

I did make the joke to each of these retailers: we did what you wanted.  You say you want one event title, just one series, with no spin-offs, and one cover.  We gave you everything you wanted and this is a situation where we’re absolutely giving you what you’ve said you asked and we’re doing no variants at all. If this doesn’t sell, I can’t believe you moving forward and we’ll just have to go back to the way we do standard business that we’ve done to date.

The August-launching series features writing from the great Fred Van Lente and art from the equally wonderful Clayton Henry. Here’s a taste of what to expect:

Kick-Ass 2: The Movie

Universal is in talks with Matthew Vaughn to make and distribute Kick-Ass 2, the sequel to the 2010 cult hit movie based on the Mark Millar-John Romita Jr. comic-book miniseries. Vaughn directed, produced and self-financed the action movie, which was distributed by Lionsgate and grossed $96 million worldwide on a budget of $30 million. He is only producing the sequel, but has handpicked Jeff Wadlow, who helmed 2008’s Never Back Down, to direct.

The sequel will adapt not only the Kick-Ass 2 comic, but also the upcoming Hit-Girl mini, and is intended to start shooting in September. Over at Millarworld, fans seemed underwhelmed with the choice of Wadlow as director, leading Kick-Ass co-creator Mark Millar to offer the following:

Vaughn is the toughest judge I have ever met. He’s a strictly no bullshit guy. He told me he had his eye on Jeff for this eighteen months back. He knows what he’s doing. His track record speaks for itself. And the script is seven shades of fantastic. I’m very, very happy.

More news on the project, he promised, would come soon.

Thought #1: So, America’s Got Talent is six issues, right? So we’ve got, what, until San Diego before DC announces a special Bryan Hitch-illustrated project, do you think?

Thought #2: Isn’t it kind of amazing how iconic the t-shirt and jeans look already is for Superman, less than a year after it debuted? How did that happen?

Stan is under contract to Magazine Management and his job is to produce comic books that will make them money. Readers think of Stan as such an idealist, they are shocked to learn that money is a consideration. He had just gotten a letter this morning that said, “I’ll never read another comic book, and screw you Stan. We always thought that money didn’t mean that much to you, and if you drop the Silver Surfer because of money, it means you’ve been fooling us just like everybody else has, and up yours.” Stan said he wanted to sit down and write the guy, but there was no return address. He wanted to tell the kid that if they didn’t make money, the comic book department would be closed down, and then they wouldn’t be able to do any good at all.

The whole article, scanned and posted at John Byrne’s forum, is worth a read. There’s just something about that paragraph in particular, though, that seems particularly in synch with current attitudes towards Marvel and the cravenness of things like Avengers vs. X-Men or whatever. Same as it ever was, however.

Marvel fans will enjoy continued access to single-issue digital comics via the Marvel apps available for Apple iOS and Android, as well as the new web-based Marvel Comics Shop, all powered by comiXology. Marvel comics can also be found on the comiXology platform available on Apple iOS, Android, Kindle Fire and comixology.com.

I’ll admit, I thought that Marvel already was digital-singles exclusive with ComiXology, but this is the change that’ll interest most people:

In addition, starting today, Marvel’s digital comics will be available through comiXology’s Digital Storefronts for brick-and-mortar retailers.

Me, I’ve got fingers crossed that this might mean that Marvel will finally adopt a “$1 price drop after four weeks of release” policy for day-and-date books.

There hasn’t been a change to Beast’s physicality, this comes down more to differing artists’ styles. Our friend Dr. Hank McCoy is still very feline in nature and you can see that in “Wolverine and the X-Men.” It is interesting that several artists in a certain Executive Editor’s books seem to downplay the feline aspects but there hasn’t been a change.

Rough translation: Stop letting your artists forget the Frank Quitely redesign, Tom Brevoort. And, really, that Secret Avengers issue did seem rather unexpected because of the RetroBeast…

Starting with the 06/06/12 On-sale items, all 32 page Marvel Universe comics that don’t carry a digital code will be printed with 50# Coated interiors and will be Self-Cover.

That’s this week’s books, for those bad with calendars. It’s odd that that is starting so soon, considering the “All $3.99 books get digital codes” policy isn’t scheduled to start until next month. What I’m curious about is whether or not we’ll see more 24 page $2.99 books a la the recent Fury’s Big Week…

Apparently, #13 – out now – and next week’s #14 are great jumping-on points for the series, and I’ll be trying out that theory for myself. What convinced me? It’s not wondering about the secret of the gun – although, I admit, I’m kind of curious now that I think about it – but the captions at the bottom of the full page. Something that knowing and parodic of comic book convention that still works? Yeah, I’ll check that out, definitely. Any Skullkickers fans out there want to tell me what I’ve missed so far?

When I pulled the original art out of storage a few years ago, all the pages from this section of the story were an archival disaster. I’d used a lot of zip-a-tone (or as we called it in the UK, ‘Letratone’) and this stuff hadn’t stood the test of time well. Letratone came in big sticky-backed sheets and you stuck it down over the area you wanted to cover and then cut out the bits that you intended to remain white with a scalpel. Every single page of O, America that had dotscreen tone on it (most of them) needed some kind of restoration work done.

Ink had also changed color – these are pages almost 20 years old, after all – or bled outwards over the course of time, and everything, it seemed, required some level of crack Photoshop touch-up in order to keep it presentable. “Photoshop and the advent of digital image manipulation technology makes undertaking this kind of meticulous work easier, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t laborious,” Abadzis notes, adding that “Realistically, it took me years, on and off.” Think about that next time you wonder why a collected edition of classic material ships a week or two late…

Even though the second season of the AMC adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead ended in March, the TV-drive sales of a phalanx of The Walking Dead graphic novels continued to dominate bookstore graphic novel sales in April according to a report from Nielsen BookScan.  Just as in March The Walking Dead took seven out of the top ten spots, though this time Kirkman’s collections swept the top four spots, whereas in March they just took the first and the fourth positions.

Overall, The Walking Dead has twelve of the top twenty spots on Bookscan’s graphic novel chart for April, which is just… amazing, really. The other spots are taken up by manga, the collected edition of Dynamite’s Game of Thrones adaptation, Gene Yang’s Avatar: The Last Airbender comic for Dark Horse and an Avengers Character Guide from DK Publishing that isn’t actually a comic; nothing from Marvel or DC at all. I love looking at the shape of markets outside the direct market, and seeing what they’re like, but… Man. Kirkman and Adlard, you’re doing well in bookstores…!

You know what? I was reading almost nothing last year.

It felt a lot like 1999 where I’d barely read a comic in 2 years. Last year none of the big companies were really putting out much I was excited about and Walking Dead was about the only thing I was reading consistently. But how much things have changed in just 12 months. DC’s reboot worked out really well for them and there’s a few really interesting books (not least of which being Snyder’s Batman), Marvel’s spiked in the charts again with a fun crossover done by all their biggest writers and the sleeping giant of creator-owned has just begun to stir… Saga, Fatale, Mudman, America’s Got Powers and a half a dozen other new books in the last few months (not to mention Kick-Ass 2, Jupiter’s Children, Supercrooks and many OTHER Millarworld books) really makes the shelves look completely different from last year. It’s like all my favourite creators are back and working full blast again, a bunch of brilliant new ones coming of age too.

In contrast, I was just telling a friend the other day that I was feeling a little burned out on Marvel and DC for the most part recently – Although I loved Action and Earth 2 a lot this week – and have really been focused on indie books… I’m curious: How’re you feeling about the industry’s output these days? Is everyone riding high? What’re you reading? And what could be better?

Giveaway comics were a major source of new readers for the comics industry over its history, from the March of Comics issues given away at shoe stores to the Big Boy comics still distributed in restaurants. I’ve done a lot of research into those and several other giveaway lines over the years — and it’s plain that many of the people who learned to read comics (and, odd as it sounds, the storytelling language of comics is something one does have to learn to read) learned it from ones they got for free. Most of those comics went completely away in the 1980s and 1990s. Joe’s suggestion in the article was that publishers could create sampler comics for their different lines — “just as Baskin-Robbins has 31 flavors of ice cream… a selection of samplers available from different publishers would allow stores to better cover the disparate tastes of those who’ll show up.”

Miller reprints the original column by retailer Joe Field suggesting the concept, along with a “Response From Diamond,” putting the whole thing in a historical context that almost seems surreal now. Joe Field, you did everyone in comics a solid with this idea. Thank you.

I have to confess that part of the reason I brought Judges Fear, Fire and Mortis back is that I’m considering writing a new story to reunite the four, with the excellent Greg Staples on art. My problem with the Dark Judges, and the reason that I’ve left them so long, is that I find it difficult to write any story without adding large dollops of black humor. This, however, tends to diminish characters like Judge Death, to dilute their level of menace. If I couldn’t handle them in the way they deserved, then it was better to leave them alone. So I’ve been prevaricating on a new story ever since Greg suggested it — until last week when he sent me a Dark Judge illustration he’d done. It was out of this world, simply stunning, and it made me think more seriously about a comeback. I’ll be considering it over the coming weeks. If I can find a way to make it work (without the humor!), then the project is on.

Maybe I’m so used to a more American, more “on” interview where everything is relentlessly upbeat and confident – “This is the greatest thing I’ve ever done!” and so on – but there’s something charming to me about admitting that you tend to write against the characters you’ve created and need to get over that in order for a future project to happen. Let’s have more reflective creator interviews in comics!

In total McFarlane has paid over $2,200,000 to get himself out of the Chapter 11 bankruptcy hole that he voluntarily dug himself into back in late December 2004.

Half of that went to the Neil Gaiman lawsuit over ownership of Angela and Medieval Spawn, which just goes to show two things: Firstly, if you have the patience and money to spare, lawsuits can occasionally right wrongs. And secondly, if Gaiman owes you money, this might be the best time to try and collect.