Super-Hero Bailout Plan?

According to USA Today, the comics market is booming thanks to films like The Dark Knight and Iron Man.

Really?

Because the #1 selling comic book of 2008 was Marvel's Secret Invasion #1.

The #1 selling *ahem* "graphic novel" was Watchmen.

So The Dark Knight did what exactly? According to Diamond, the top 10 comics of '08 were:

1 Secret Invasion #1 (Marvel)
2 Secret Invasion #2 (Marvel)
3 Secret Invasion #3 (Marvel)
4 Secret Invasion #4 (Marvel)
5 Secret Invasion #5 (Marvel)
6 Secret Invasion #6 (Marvel)
7 Uncanny X-Men #500 (Marvel)
8 Secret Invasion #7 (Marvel)
9 Final Crisis #1 (DC)
10 Secret Invasion #8 (Marvel)

and the top 10 Graphic Novels were:

1 Watchmen (DC)
2 Batman: The Killing Joke (DC)
3 Joker (DC)
4 Y the Last Man Vol. 10 (DC)
5 Walking Dead Vol. 8 (Image)
6 Batman: Dark Knight Returns (DC)
7 Fables: The Good Prince (DC)
8 Wanted (Image)
9 Buffy the Vampire Slayer: No Future for You (Dark Horse)
10 Y the Last Man Vol. 1 (DC)


Sure I guess you could chalk up The Killing Joke's sales to The Dark Knight, same with DKR and Joker, but everything else on that list sold on it's own merits without the help of the "Hollywood Bump".

What I find most interesting from these numbers is while the top 10 comics list was dominated by Marvel, they don't even appear on the top 10 list of Graphic Novels.

Where's the Iron Man or Hulk books on those lists? Where's the Spirit and the Punisher?

I think we're just seeing patterns where none really lie. The only thing that seems to really have gotten any huge media hype is the Watchmen trade. It's a "new" property that not a lot of people outside the medium know about, nevermind the fact that even before the movie the Watchmen tpb was always on the best selling of the year list anyways.

Sure maybe not #1 but it was always ranked somewhere on the top 100 list. Which for a book that was first published more than 20 years ago, that's quite a feat.

My main problem with this article is that it's almost trying to make it sound like there's some big comic boom going on.

There's not.

Sure there's some really good stuff out there right now, but there's also lots of crap. I'm spending less on comics now than ever before. Yes, there are other economic factors at play but the main thing about comic books is: if there's something I love, I'll buy it.

What we're seeing is a lot of movies based on comics coming out because there were a few that performed really well, and the market got flooded. Think back to penguin movies a couple years ago.

See what I mean?

With quite a few underperforming films this and last year, what I think we're going to see is studios being a little more wary when it comes to not only grabbing rights for comic properties, but also putting more care into the films themselves. The studios have now realized that you can't fill seats alone with the tagline "Hey look, Comics guys!"