Comics: Present, Past and Future

Well, tomorrow is another comic shipping day. I will be picking up:
- Fell #1 (why not give it a shot for $2?)
- Serenity #3 (Concluding issue. Only 23 more days until the movie!)
- Seven Soldiers: Guardian #4 (Another soldier's adventures are ending. Well, not really ending per se, since Shining Knight didn't exactly...have an ending.)
- Smoke and Mirrors #1 (Trying out the new Speakeasy series)
- Stardust Kid #2 (Yes, I did not like the first issue, but it's the creators of Abadazad, damn it! I have to give it one more shot.)
- Ultimate Spider-man #82 (I can't wait for Kitty to enter the book with the next arc.)
- Y-the Last Man #37 (Please stay good)

And next week, according to Diamond...
- All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder #2
- Fables #41 (more of the Homeland story!)
- Mnemovore #6 (Final issue)
- Pulse #11 (New story - baby time!)
- Ultimate X-Men #63 (Continuing the Magnetic North arc)
And as always, more will probably be added when things are reannounced next week, but that's it for now.

I also wanted to mention that icv2 has archived their top 300 comic and top 100 trade charts. It spans from the present back to May of 2001. It's kind of cool to see what was on top back then opposed to now and how the industry's numbers have strengthened. Back in May 2001, Ultimate X-Men #4 was on top, with less than 98,000 issues sold. If you look at this past July's list, that same book would have placed at #8, with the top book of that month selling 261,000 copies (All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder #1). Pretty crazy, huh? As for trades, they only started to have a regular column listing the top sellers in November of 2001, and then, they only listed the top 25. Obviously, the trade market has grown substantially in recent years, but it seems strange that trades used to be so disregarded when they're so integral to the industry today.

Anyways, I thought it would be kind of fun to turn back the clocks a bit and list the top ten comics four years ago, in September of 2001...

1. Origin #1
2. New X-Men #118
3. Uncanny X-Men #398
4. Ultimate X-Men #10
5. X-Treme X-Men #5
6. Amazing Spider-man #35
7. Green Arrow #8
8. Ultimate Spider-man #13
9. Wolverine #168
10. JLA #58

So how do these titles fare presently? Well, obviously, Origin no longer exists, nor does X-Treme X-Men. New X-Men (#2) has been succeeded by Whedon and Cassaday's Astonishing X-Men, which was #5 in July, selling 19,000 more copies than Grant Morrison's work. Uncanny X-Men (or X-Treme X-Men light, as I like to call it) was at #3 in 2001, where it sits at #10 presently, selling 21,000 less copies than it used to sell (right around the same amount as X-Treme X-Men sold, hmmm....) Amazing Spider-man is sitting at #21 nowadays, with 10,000 less copies sold, while Ultimate X-Men is down at #13 with 13,000 less. Green Arrow fell to #57 with 45,000 fewer copies (less than half of what it used to sell, earning the title of biggest loser). Utlimate Spider-man is still selling about the same amount, though it's position has dropped to that of #18, while Wolverine served to gain about 6,000 copies, even though it's only at #19. JLA sells about 20,000 more issues presently than it did back in 2001, and is still sitting at a healthy #12.

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