Week In Comics Journalism

300,000 copies sold, Ping Pong, selling comics or produce, and more on Van CAF— Comic Bookmarks June 15, 2024

Comics link for the second week of June.

From Miracle Man #9 by Jack Kirby and Mike Royer

Seems like it was a bit of a quiet week but there’s still plenty of stuff in the world of comics this past week that’s worth checking out.

let’s start out with our entry into the discussion this week.

This was the book that made me start by “best of 2024” list. Let’s see if it stays on there until the end of the year. I have a feeling it will.

Headlines

Heidi MacDonanld on the latest moves at Image, D&Q, IDW and a whole lot more.

300,000 in sales for a TMNT comic? It's like 1984 again. I remember how long it took me to track down a copy of the Mirage first issue and even when I finally did, that was the third printing. I'll admit to being interested in this because of the creative team (Jason Aaron and Joëlle Jones) but I just noticed at the end of Chris Arrant's article he slips in a note that there will be different artists on future issues. Not too sure what to think about that...

No. Just no.

When King used Sheriff of Baghdad to work out any issues he had, that wasn't bad. But this just sounds icky. Very, very icky.

Comic Sites on Comic Sites

I'm at a point in life where I really don't care about interviews with creators. Been there, listened to that. But give me a good interview with a comics journalist and I'm there.

And this interview really made me miss What, What?

Starting in July, I'm teaching a class for SAW called From Story To Pitching!
Week 1: Narrative Questions In Building A Story
Week 2: Memoir Is A Genre
Week 3: Tips & Ideas For Getting Back To The Drawing Board
Week 4: How To Write A Pitch
You can do 1 session, or bundle them!
— Rob Clough (@RobCloughHighLo) June 13, 2024

Not so much to know how to create a comic but I would love to join one of these classes sometime just to get a glimpse about Rob's approach to these as well as just to sponge a bit of knowledge off of him.

I’m one of those familiar writers! 👋 Find me back at @TheAVClub in the coming weeks with some new comic recs. ☺️ https://t.co/vFeZsMwhro
— Oliver Sava (@OliverSava) June 11, 2024

Good for the AV Club and good for Oliver. I've really missed reading criticism by him.

Manga

Translating one language into another is a type of art, one that needs to understand the nuances of multiple cultures to recreate an experience that may be foreign to an audience. I'm grateful for all of the excellent translators of the books I've read.

"The story unspools with such intensity and sincerity that it’s easy to forget all this sturm und drang is over, well, ping-pong. The characters care about the sport, and their passion carries the reader along. At the same time, Ping Pong‘s offbeat visual style provides a constant reminder that, despite hitting familiar narrative beats, this is no run-of-the-mill sports story. "

This is just reminding me that I never finished reading Ping Pong. I need to correct that this summer.

Business

Somewhere in the first half of this podcast, co-owner Dal Bush compares selling single-issue comics to selling produce, where the merchandise only has a limited shelf life before it goes bad. When he talked through that comparison, it just unlocked all kinds of understanding about what trying to sell in comic‘ direct-market is really like. I heard one local shop a year or two ago describe new issues as a loss leader just to get people in the store but that his real business was back issues.

Interviews

I seem to have ran out of my free articles at PW for the month but this short interview with Jeff Trexler offers some good insight to the strategy of people who want to ban books in libraries. Hopefully you either have a PW subscription or haven't used your free article views for the month.