The Late Returns Look Good (and Bad)

So the inevitable backlash to Civil War has begun in earnest with the unfortunate coupling of what was possibly the weakest issue of the series thus far coinciding with the longest wait and the anger caused by the delay. Personally I can't say I disagree with the negative sentiment on a story level (Brian Cronin is particularly insightful if equally brutal) but I think this issue had quite a bit of hype to live up to and, quite frankly, would be getting a pretty similar pounding from some corners no matter how good it was.

All that said, Mike Sterling is right: issue #4 is going to sell like crazy. At MacGuffin, in its first 3 days issue #4 has outsold each of the three previous issues in their first 3 days on sale. This issue has doubled sales of #1 and shown an increase of 50% over issue number three in the same windows. Only issue #2 came close and we've still seen almost a 15% increase over that issue. While some of that can be attributed to the store's growth over that period, we've only seen roughly a 15% increase in the sale of singles since Civil War started. On top of that, the Civil War tie-ins has sold an all time high for us this week with several customers who had been waiting for issue #4 coming in and catching up on the tie-in series.

There's certainly some who would love to see this series flop as some sort of payback for Marvel. While I'm all for voting with our wallets, its entirely too late to make any such statement with Civil War. Four issues of this series have already sold over 250,000 copies (or much more if you're Mark Millar). The next issue will as well because its pretty much too late for retailers to jump off the series en masse unless readers do, and even then we won't really see any effect of that until issue #6. And has been pointed out ad nauseum, we're talking about comic fans here. What are the odds that most or even many readers of Civil War are going to stop at this point and be left out of the conversation from here on out? Marvel (and the comics industry in general) is going to make a nice chunk of change off of this series no matter how good (or late) the rest of it is.

News From the Summit

All sorts of comic news out of Baltimore this weekend (including some fun Whedon news that I'll touch on later this week), most of which Tom Spurgeon sums up at The Comics Reporter. A few quick thoughts, though:

*A deal between Marvel and the Dabel Brothers makes much more sense than I'd like to admit. While theoretically the Dabel's lincenses tap the mainstream book audience, in reality nearly all of the properties they've obtained the rights to are in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre which has a nice chunk of crossover among comic fans. What this will likely do is increase the presence of these titles in direct market stores that barely look past the front quarter of Previews. What it will also do is allow many stores to stock these titles a bit deeper assuming they will be released under Marvel's standard discounts of 50+% rather than the Dabel Brothers previous discount which topped out at 45%. I know we've had several customers wondering what happened when these comics stopped showing up (especially the Anita Blake comic) and if these titles do ship in October as is now planned, they may very well make it into more shops than they would have previously.

*Marvel finally seems intent on diversifying which I certainly applaud, including the announcement of a slate of graphic novel adaptations of classic (public domain) novels (to my knowledge the only confirmed title thus far is Last of the Mohicans). Puffin tried this recently in conjunction with the now defunct iBooks to varying degrees of success and Sterling Publishing has their All-Action Classics line (presumably for young readers) due out by the end of the year. This isn't exactly a new strategy in the book world, as Penguin and even Barnes & Noble have been making a nice profit off of classic books in the public domain for quite some time. Still, several publishers trying this approach at the same time could lead to a quick death for all of them, but I certainly can't complain about a company as focused on superheroes as Marvel attempting to do something new (well, new for them -- well, okay, new for them this century).

*Apparently we won't be seeing League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier until 2007 (January is what I'm hearing, but I'm not going to hold my breath). Personally I was really looking forward to reading this book, but if it's not done it's not done (and somehow I don't think anyone wants to see a fill-in artist). Then again, this was originally supposed to hit shelves the week after the new Fables graphic novel 1001 Nights of Snowfall, so some breathing room there doesn't hurt either title. Even so, this a book that would have done well during the holiday season and will now miss some of those sales.

Gene Yang's ABC

With First Second's fall catalog about to hit shelves, I thought it was about time to offer my thoughts on their newest releases.

First up is Gene Yang's American Born Chinese, which begins as three straightforward stories addressing Asian American stereotypes before a nice twist drives the message home.

The book begins with what would seem to be an ancient fable with modern sensibilities about a magical monkey king whose mastery of kung fu leads to a massively inflated ego. This story is incredibly engaging and is constantly working as both a comedic adventure and as a larger metaphor. The third section is a racist, over the top sitcom complete with mindlessly inappropriate laugh track that follows high school student Danny's growing frustration with his cousin Chin-Kee. Both of these stories seem to function as commentary for the middle story, which follows Jin, a Chinese American boy as he tries to adjust to life as one of the few Asian students among his milquetoast classmates. Yang repeatedly sets up cliches in Jin and the monkey king's stories and proceeds to subtly turn them inside out while more obvious cliches of the sitcom story pile high until their thematic purpose is revealed.

Yang's art is deceptively simple but occasionally stunning and makes for an attractive package with this level of production value. The ending breaks more than a few of the story's own rules, but it does so in service to the book's deeper themes and holds together well enough if you don't stare at it too long.

Is this graphic novel groundbreaking? Not exactly, but it's certainly entertaining, and who can ignore a story that features the adventures of a kung-fu monkey king and actually has something important to say?