Bookscan Reveals that People Like Manga, Superheroes.
Publisher’s Weekly’s The Beat Blog has a nice little run down of last year’s Bookscan scan graphic novel numbers—the story itself links to a piece at Newsarama that’s a little too…industry for our coverage. The PW piece sums things up pretty nicely, however. The results are, not surprisingly, rather Manga and superhero-heavy, with a little relief wedged in by Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta, which was apparently made into a movie recently. Who knew?
What is a bit more surprising—at least to me, as someone who has been out of the Manga for, well, pretty much always—is the fact that the other top nine spots not occupied by Mr. Moore’s single top ten entry, are monopolized by different volumes of the same book, Naruto, which apparently is the literary equivalent to doing coke on a spaceship full of double-jointed supermodels, only you know, way better.
DC’s list draws on the classics—Moore and Miller both making appearances. Marvel, not surprisingly, is all about the X-Men, Spider-Man, and an adaptation of Halo. Though it’s nice to see both of Joss Whedon’s excellent Astonishing X-Men books on this list.
Okay, I’m going to cut it short here. It’s the first day, and already I’m talking about superheroes. This is a bad sign. Back the Fortress of Solitude with me…
–Brian Heater
