Thursday, 14 January 2010
The Pipes of Pan
Just stumbled across an ace website, a guide to all the Pan paperbacks published from 1945 to 1970, complete with cover scans. I can see myself poring over this one for a while, and making multiple visits to AbeBooks as a result.
The Blunderer
Comics may be leaving me cold at the moment, but there's still lots of fun to be had with books! I just won this on eBay:
That's a 1958 first UK paperback edition, purchased for £3.50, including post. Fab. I'm still reading my first UK paperback edition of Strangers on a Train (well, that, and Casino Royale, and Dexter in the Dark), so this'll be the next Highsmith novel I read. I've also seen this for sale online:
Same book, but the first US paperback edition, which carried a different title. I rather like the cover though, and it's dead cheap. Hmm...
That's a 1958 first UK paperback edition, purchased for £3.50, including post. Fab. I'm still reading my first UK paperback edition of Strangers on a Train (well, that, and Casino Royale, and Dexter in the Dark), so this'll be the next Highsmith novel I read. I've also seen this for sale online:
Same book, but the first US paperback edition, which carried a different title. I rather like the cover though, and it's dead cheap. Hmm...
It's not just me then.
This post by J. Caleb Mozzocco laments the dearth of comics shipping this week that Caleb is interested in buying. Basically, there's nothing for him this week. And the way things are heading with me, that's likely to happen more and more in my case too.
And that kind of chimes with something I've been pondering, and wondering if I can be arsed to blog about, which is that, based on no real evidence whatsoever apart from anecdotal and a cursory glance at Diamond's monthly sales figures, the audience for monthly pamphlet-format comic books is eroding markedly. Now, this is something that people have been saying for years, and if you look at the Diamond sales, the figures aren't remarkably different to how they were a few years back, before Civil War and subsequent 'events' artificially distended the figures. A good indicator is usually what the titles around the 100 mark on the charts are selling, which is just over 20K, the same as it has been for years.
But I don't think that's the whole picture. As I say, anecdotal evidence suggests a lot of people are either moving to trade paperbacks, or simply just stopping buying comics in any form altogether. The recent Marvel price hike has put a lot of people off, and it seems to me any drop-off in sales is being disguised by the extra revenue the price hike brings in.
I dunno. I'm feeling somewhat divorced from comics anyway now, so it's hard for me to care too much. But I think, in a few years' time, we'll reach a point where we'll either see a wholesale shift to graphic novels, or Diamond will collapse and that'll be that.
And that kind of chimes with something I've been pondering, and wondering if I can be arsed to blog about, which is that, based on no real evidence whatsoever apart from anecdotal and a cursory glance at Diamond's monthly sales figures, the audience for monthly pamphlet-format comic books is eroding markedly. Now, this is something that people have been saying for years, and if you look at the Diamond sales, the figures aren't remarkably different to how they were a few years back, before Civil War and subsequent 'events' artificially distended the figures. A good indicator is usually what the titles around the 100 mark on the charts are selling, which is just over 20K, the same as it has been for years.
But I don't think that's the whole picture. As I say, anecdotal evidence suggests a lot of people are either moving to trade paperbacks, or simply just stopping buying comics in any form altogether. The recent Marvel price hike has put a lot of people off, and it seems to me any drop-off in sales is being disguised by the extra revenue the price hike brings in.
I dunno. I'm feeling somewhat divorced from comics anyway now, so it's hard for me to care too much. But I think, in a few years' time, we'll reach a point where we'll either see a wholesale shift to graphic novels, or Diamond will collapse and that'll be that.
Monday, 11 January 2010
Less and Less Comics....
My local comic shop in Brighton finally got their delivery on Saturday, so I popped over on Sunday to pick up these:
Mighty #12
Orc Stain #1
Punisher Max: Get Castle #1
Siege #1
Stumptown #2
Unfortunately they'd already sold out of Stumptown, which is a Greg Rucka-written crime miniseries, the first issue of which I rather enjoyed. So that's one less comic I'll be getting. A few weeks ago I didn't get to the comic shop on delivery day and I missed out on the latest issue of Ex Machina. I'll try and pick that up somewhere as there's only a few to go till the final issue now, but the trend of getting less and less comics looks set to continue in 2010.
It's getting to the point now where I'm seriously thinking of knocking comics on the head. I keep missing issues, which is annoying, but not as annoying as it once would have been, and ultimately means I buy less and less each month as I lose track of series. I get maybe three or four comics a week at the moment, none of which really thrill me to any great degree. Could it be time to just give up?
So I had a thought. I'm going to list all the comics I can think of I'm still getting every month. And then I'll be able to see if there's anything I'd really and truly miss if I stopped buying comics. To the list!
Batman & Robin
Captain America
Captain America Reborn (miniseries, only one more issue to go)
Chronicles of Wormwood (miniseries)
Criminal
Crossed (only one more issue to go on this)
Dark Avengers
Ex Machina (if I can find #47)
Invincible Iron Man
Kick-Ass (miniseries, one issue left)
New Avengers
Punishermax (possibly, undecided on this one)
Siege (possibly, depending what the first issue's like, which I haven't read yet)
Unwritten
I think that's it. Take out miniseries and any series I'm uncertain about continuing with, and that leaves maybe eight comics per month. And of those, there are only two DC/Vertigo series. A couple of years back DC would have dominated that list, and the list itself would have been maybe three times as long, possibly more. And if I stopped going to the comic shop tomorrow, I think the only ongoing ones I'd really miss would be Captain America, Criminal, and maybe New Avengers.
Blimey.
Well, I don't know if I'll be completely stopping trips to the comic shop. But I can definitely see myself only going every other week a lot of the time.
Mighty #12
Orc Stain #1
Punisher Max: Get Castle #1
Siege #1
Stumptown #2
Unfortunately they'd already sold out of Stumptown, which is a Greg Rucka-written crime miniseries, the first issue of which I rather enjoyed. So that's one less comic I'll be getting. A few weeks ago I didn't get to the comic shop on delivery day and I missed out on the latest issue of Ex Machina. I'll try and pick that up somewhere as there's only a few to go till the final issue now, but the trend of getting less and less comics looks set to continue in 2010.
It's getting to the point now where I'm seriously thinking of knocking comics on the head. I keep missing issues, which is annoying, but not as annoying as it once would have been, and ultimately means I buy less and less each month as I lose track of series. I get maybe three or four comics a week at the moment, none of which really thrill me to any great degree. Could it be time to just give up?
So I had a thought. I'm going to list all the comics I can think of I'm still getting every month. And then I'll be able to see if there's anything I'd really and truly miss if I stopped buying comics. To the list!
Batman & Robin
Captain America
Captain America Reborn (miniseries, only one more issue to go)
Chronicles of Wormwood (miniseries)
Criminal
Crossed (only one more issue to go on this)
Dark Avengers
Ex Machina (if I can find #47)
Invincible Iron Man
Kick-Ass (miniseries, one issue left)
New Avengers
Punishermax (possibly, undecided on this one)
Siege (possibly, depending what the first issue's like, which I haven't read yet)
Unwritten
I think that's it. Take out miniseries and any series I'm uncertain about continuing with, and that leaves maybe eight comics per month. And of those, there are only two DC/Vertigo series. A couple of years back DC would have dominated that list, and the list itself would have been maybe three times as long, possibly more. And if I stopped going to the comic shop tomorrow, I think the only ongoing ones I'd really miss would be Captain America, Criminal, and maybe New Avengers.
Blimey.
Well, I don't know if I'll be completely stopping trips to the comic shop. But I can definitely see myself only going every other week a lot of the time.
Friday, 8 January 2010
Oh rats.
Tomorrow's Lewes Book Fair has been cancelled. Bollocks. I was looking forward to that. Bloody snow!
The Eleventh Doctor
Well at least the new Doctor Who Magazine has turned up. That's something.
I wouldn't normally be quite this excited about a new DWM (not quite), but this is the first one of the Eleventh Doctor's era, and it's got interviews with Matt Smith and Steven Moffat in it. And the Doctor does look rather good on the cover:
Only a few months to the new series...
I wouldn't normally be quite this excited about a new DWM (not quite), but this is the first one of the Eleventh Doctor's era, and it's got interviews with Matt Smith and Steven Moffat in it. And the Doctor does look rather good on the cover:
Only a few months to the new series...
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