The Top 30 Selling Graphic Novels for June
Here are the sales charts, sales figures and smart comments by Me.
1 LONE WOLF & CUB VOL 23 TEARS OF ICE TP (MR) 12,928
Still the best comic being printed, the brilliantly done story of a masterless Samuri and his son as they travel Japan. Only 4 volumes left to be printed, and it is amazing to me how what seemed like stories that were loosely connected now are coming together to a conclusion while each volume reads as a complete entity. I don't think I could give a higher recommendation.
2 WITCHBLADE OBAKEMONO 11,842
This is just about 1/4th of the number of the regular comics. I'll be honest, I gave up reading this book at about issue 10 when I realized it was all about getting a woman with huge breasts into metal bikinis as fast as possible and not much else. So, I have no idea if it is any good or not.
3 TWISTED TOYFARE THEATRE VOL 2 TP 8,961
This is an incredibly funny book, reprinting fumetti of super-hero action figures that make silly and mildly offensive stories. I thought it would only appeal to comics fans, but one of my friends who hasn't read a comic since they discontinued Little Annie Fanny thought it was incredibly funny. While I don't like Wizard, this book is Highly Recommended.
4 WONDER WOMAN HIKETEIA HC 8,198
It is wrong that I have no interest at all in Wonder Woman? This has a horridly fetishistic cover and a story by Greg Rucka, but I'll still wait until it's in paperback.
5 100 BULLETS VOL 4 FOREGONE TOMORROW TP (MR) 4,667
I keep hearing how great this book is, but I read the first trade paperback's worth of stories and was unimpressed. Maybe because I read crime fiction outside of comics, so I find this stuff to be a retread of Elmore Leonard's stuff.
6 ESSENTIAL TOMB OF DRACULA TP 4,581
While the early issues are not as good as the book would become, I am happy to see that Marvel is starting to reprint some of the best work of the 70's in a way that makes it easier to read. Gene Colan's art on this book (with Tom Palmer inks) was the best of his career, and Marv Wolfman literally took the horror genre in comics a HUGE step forward from the short twist ending stories to long form novel-esque horror that went beyond the sourse material. Highly recommended.
7 GI JOE VOL 1 REINSTATED TP 4,485
Yep, they don't even have 10 issues out and they are already making trade paperbacks of the new series. It's GI Joe. If you liked the 80's series, you're buying this no matter what anyone says.
8 ASTRO BOY VOL 5 TP 4,349
I know that Dark Horse brought this series to the US, hoping it would be the next Lone Wolf and Cub, but I am just uninterested.
9 NEW X-MEN VOL 2 TP IMPERIAL 4,199
Grant Morrison's X-Men series has an energy and intensity that took a long boring book and made it the Most Interesting Super-Hero Book again. If you don't have these issues already and like Super-Heroes, buy this book.
10 FORGE #3 4,040
CrossGen's collected series that reprints 9 comics worth of stories for $10. It's a nice package, worth the price, but like with most anthologies, there are one or two great stories, one or two pieces of crap and the rest is just sort of there.
11 INCREDIBLE HULK VOL 1 TP RETURN O/T MONSTER 4,026
Bruce Jones took The Hulk and decided to go Vertigo with it, and it works. While some people it is aimed at say that it's super-hero twaddle, and the super-hero people are upset that it doesn't have Hulk vs the Rhino again, it is a new look at a 40 year old character and worth a glance. Mildly recommended.
12 TRANSFORMERS VOL 4 GN MATRIX QUEST 4,013
Could someone wake me up when we remember that the Transformers was an annoying pain in the ass?
13 EDGE #3 3,985
See what I wrote about Forge.
14 JSA DARKNESS FALLS TP (RES) 3,872
This book was delayed by DC because it featured a plane being blown up by a super-villain. Oddly enough, the writer wrote it because of his death of his sister on a plane, and it is a very complex super-hero team book with a story that never goes where you think it is going to go. Highly Recommended for super-hero fans.
15 SOJOURN VOL 1 TP 3,785
Another CrossGen trade paperback. Looks pretty and the story is pretty...pretty bland. Like all of their stuff. Is that why older fans seem to like it?
16 RESIDENT EVIL CODENAME VERONICA VOL 1 TP 3,245
Reprinting Wildstorm's attempt at a Resident Evil comic about 5 years or so ago to try and cash in on the video game, but came out after the interest had waned. Now the reprint comes out after the interest in the movie has waned. Notice a pattern?
17 JONNY DOUBLE TP (MR) 3,158
18 DAREDEVIL WAKE UP TP 3,158
A brilliant story by Bendis and drawn by David Mack. Just buy it, you'll like it unless you can't stand comics that make you think. Highly Recommended.
19 CLASSIC STAR WARS LONG TIME AGO VOL 2 TP 3,145
More reprints of Marvel's comic, this is more of the stuff between Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back, so you can see how hard they had to work to have stories that Darth Vader was involved in, while not knowing anything about Luke Skywalker. It shows just how poorly defined the "Star Wars" universe was, and how bad SF comics were in the late 70's as it feels like you are reading leftover scripts from Star Trek Dell comics.
20 COWBOY BEBOP VOL 2 GN
3,067
21 TANK GIRL VOL 2 GN (MR) 3,017
These sales aren't bad for another comic from the early 90's that didn't do very well. It's very British, and not a bad comic, just not as great as people have said it is.
22 ENEMY ACE ARCHIVES VOL 1 HC 2,886
Reprinting DC's stories about a WWI German Flying Ace. What should have been a one shot character turned into one of DC's better War series, and this from someone who does not like war comics unless Jack Kirby drew them.
23 PHANTOM VOL 2 GN SINGH
WEB 2,849
24 STAR WARS HUNT FOR AURRA SING TP 2,831
Remember what I said above about 70's Star Wars comics? They had one thing that modern Star Wars comics don't...characters that were in the movies. I am utterly uninterested in comics about people from 4000 years before Episode One. Once Dark Horse figures that out, their sales might go up a bit. Maybe.
25 GREEN LANTERN ARCHIVES VOL 4 HC 2,708
I was a Marvel fan when I started reading comics, and while I AM collecting the DC Archives, it is easy to see why Marvel got so much more fan interest. They are filled with rough and tumble action, Stan Lee's fun scripting and a feeling that every story moved things forward even if they didn't. DC, by contrast, would set up a premise and just re-work it over and over and over. These are competent stories and all, but reading too many of them in a row makes you think you have already read the story before.
26 EXILES VOL 2 TP A WORLD APART 2,699
Marvel's most fan-friendly and new reader unfriendly series collected. Exiles is a group made up of mutants from alternate universes who travel to different "What If...?" type worlds to fix things. If you aren't a fan, you won't get the stories, but if you are a long-term comics fan, this is a fun romp through Marvel's history.
27 JUST IMAGINE STAN LEE CREATING DC UNIVERSE BOOK ONE TP 2,608
Stan Lee put together a deal to write all of DC's main characters as if he would have created them himself (altering the origins and powers, etc...) It's not the grand slam everyone seems to have wanted it to be, but they are fun, well drawn stories that are mostly entertaining. Mildly recommended.
28 WOLVERINE DEADPOOL WEAPON X TP 2,554
Reprinting a mini-series that replaced Deadpool for 4 months, and some random issues of Wolverine that had some tangential connection to it. I didn't care for the mini-series, as it was a parody of the Death of Superman story...which has been parodied to death. Avoid it.
29 ALIAS HC (MR) 2,522
Marvel's best series about a female private eye who used to be a minor super-hero. The opening story is well done, has a GREAT plot and dialogue that leaps off the page into your mind. Well done enough for non-comics fans to like it, and for the people who are upset that there was a suggested sex scene in the first part of the story, GET OVER IT. Highly Recommended.
30 X-MEN VISIONARIES JIM LEE TP 2,463
Jim Lee is the artist who finally drove me off reading the X-Men, so I am NOT the norm, but his scratchy art was very poor at telling a story, and when you have Chris Claremont as your writer, the story is going to be hard enough to slog through. For Jim Lee fans, but if you want to read a good X-Men book, get the two Grant Morrison books and "Death of Phoenix."