Comics Q and A
Column 1
Welcome to the debut edition of Comics Q&A. Have a question about the comic scene or a character? If so, drop me a line at solitaire.rose@gmail.com or leave a comment below and I'll feature them in a future edition. Until then, enjoy!
I remember that Superman died, and yet he's still around. Did he die and if so, how did he come back?
Looking for a big event for the Superman books, DC did a story called "The Death Of Superman" which got a LOT of news coverage and sold huge numbers of the issue where he died (Superman #75) in 1992. In the story, Superman survived his death by entering into a hibernation-like state, and another character's use of his as a 'conduit' in a Kryptonian Regeneration Chamber which allowed that character to absorb solar energy the way Superman does 'restarted' Superman's body.
What is the best selling comic book of all time?
In the 40's and 50's, comic books would routinely put claims like "3,000,000 readers every month" on their books, and most successful comics sold around a million copies (with anywhere for 3 - 10 people reading each comic sold), but the highest selling comic that has been verified was the first issue of the Second X-Men comic, launched in 1991. It sold 9,000,000 copies, had five covers that appeared weekly with the Cyclops cover one week, the Storm cover the next week, and so on. Uncanny X-Men, the series that started in the 60's, was selling around 400,000 copies a month at the time, and the new series settled down to that level within 4 issues. Now, the X-Men sell about 90,000 copies a month of the two books, and the best selling comic currently "Shonen Jump", which reprints Japanese comics like "Naruto", "One Piece" and "Yu-Gi-Oh!" and sells around 215,000 copies a month primarily through mail subscriptions.
Was there really cursing in a recent Batman comic and they had to destroy them all? And how did some get on eBay?
All Star Batman and Robin was a comic created so that Frank Miller (creator of 300 and Sin City) could tell the kind of Batman stories he wanted to tell. One of the things he does is actually write curse words the characters say and have a black bar put over them during production. In the past, comics would just replace them with things like #@%$!!!, but Miller just lets DC black out whatever they are uncomfortable with. However, since all lettering in comics is now down via computer, the black bars didn't exactly match up when printed the way they did in production. This wasn't discovered until after the books were shipping, so DC ordered them destroyed and will be sending comic shops new copies. Some shops said they destroyed them and instead put them on eBay.
The Watchmen movie ad says the graphic novel was by Dave Gibbons. Wasn't it written by Alan Moore?
It sure was, but Alan Moore asked that his name be taken off anything adapted to movies. He has been in a dispute with DC since the late 80's over his contract for Watchmen and V For Vendetta, and has asked that his name not be in the movie's credits and he wants none of the money he would get in royalties from those movies.
Have a question about the comic scene or a character? If so, drop me a line at solitaire.rose@gmail.com or leave a comment below and I'll feature them in a future edition.