tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-168268312024-09-02T04:17:56.750-04:00The Graphic Novel BookshopSam Hobarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17194106036276210697noreply@blogger.comBlogger206125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16826831.post-81269258850973633572007-04-24T21:02:00.000-04:002007-04-24T21:10:28.085-04:00

Not exactly on schedule, but now for the rest of our FCBD ordering breakdown (for those who missed it, Part One):Comics Festival - (3.4% of dollars spent; 2.9% of total copies bought):As Mr. Butcher was kind enough to point out in the comments section of our last post, this is a very cool book. Essentially an anthology of short pieces from a variety of creators including personal favorites

Sam Hobarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17194106036276210697noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16826831.post-28175158249042956712007-04-10T20:20:00.000-04:002007-04-10T20:29:30.784-04:00

I promised awhile back that I would break down our order for Free Comics Book Day this year and so, here we go. I'm talking only in percentages here, although the breakdown will include percentage of money spent versus percentage of total copies ordered (that will make more sense as we go). First, let me say that it's only so much hyperbole to say that we had a metric ton of leftover FCBD

Sam Hobarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17194106036276210697noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16826831.post-80874311369740093692007-03-27T16:56:00.000-04:002007-03-27T20:26:39.501-04:00

The last two months have seen the release of a rash of what I like to call crossover comics, i.e. those books that bring new people into (or back into) comics in general and our shop in particular.Over the long term, I suspect that the most important of these will be Dark Horse's new Buffy the Vampire Slayer series. The wide-spread appeal of this comic is pretty amazing, so much so that, despite

Sam Hobarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17194106036276210697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16826831.post-82426176197505445242007-03-20T19:38:00.000-04:002007-03-20T19:55:49.449-04:00

Just a quick post to point out an unusual bit of coincidence:In the 3 months prior to and the month following the release of the film adaptation of V for Vendetta, MacGuffin made exactly $.14 more off of that book than we have off of 300 in the 3 months prior to and the 2 weeks since the release of that film adaptation. I found it rather unusual for the difference to be that small, especially

Sam Hobarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17194106036276210697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16826831.post-76867650037033851332007-03-05T20:57:00.000-05:002007-03-05T21:17:31.836-05:00

Over at Comics Worth Reading, Johanna Draper Carlson recently summarized some of the more important pieces of a conversation on the CBIA regarding the upcoming Free Comics Book Day offerings. The gist of the conversation is that many retailers are only willing to pay so much to promote a publisher's product via giveaways.There are 42 FCBD titles this year (a few publishers have more than one)

Sam Hobarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17194106036276210697noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16826831.post-59655861380021046852007-02-27T20:34:00.000-05:002007-02-28T13:06:04.905-05:00

DC finally announced what we all new was coming, Countdown, a weekly series follow-up to 52. I will give them credit for a creative numbering gimmick (starting at 51 and counting down, presumably to either zero or #1 of Crisis Management or whatever they call their next event series). And, while I don't know that another weekly series is necessarily the best idea, it does give editorial the

Sam Hobarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17194106036276210697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16826831.post-33175084198993583932007-02-20T19:50:00.000-05:002007-02-20T19:57:01.382-05:00

In the interest of actually posting something besides weekly release lists in the month of February, I'll point out that this is the sort of thing I like to see:According to a weekly e-mail distributed to retailers, DC Comics is extending the sales incentive offered on their first Minx title, Plain Janes, (the possibility of full returnability) to the entire 2007 Minx line.This isn't the first

Sam Hobarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17194106036276210697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16826831.post-83466724248637262712007-01-29T19:20:00.000-05:002007-02-01T14:28:21.097-05:00

Due to what are apparently creative rather than business reasons, The Boys has been cancelled by DC Comics. Or, more likely, the creative team (who own the rights to the work) refused to make certain changes to the content and therefore DC decided to stop publishing the title immediately.This is pure speculation, but I suspect that the transition of The Boys from DC's Wildstorm imprint to

Sam Hobarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17194106036276210697noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16826831.post-21628143160541976472007-01-23T19:35:00.000-05:002007-01-23T19:42:51.553-05:00

Continuing a look back at my favorites from last year we come to Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Sadness. I was a latecomer to Scott Pilgrim and something of a reluctant one at that. I'd heard wonderful things and I liked what little I'd seen, but I made three separate attempts to read the first volume, each time finding myself pulled out of the story despite my ability to easily identify with

Sam Hobarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17194106036276210697noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16826831.post-62540858385281032612007-01-16T18:36:00.000-05:002007-01-16T20:22:50.053-05:00

Wednesday sees the collected release of one of my favorite series from last year, Batman: Year One Hundred. It's a futuristic take on Batman that draws on two primary sources for inspiration: the classic first appearance, purple gloved The Bat-Man, wearing a cobbled together suit of cloth and leather rather than streamlined rubber and Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's Year One with a bit of

Sam Hobarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17194106036276210697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16826831.post-15523680224079955832007-01-02T12:23:00.000-05:002007-01-02T15:49:07.647-05:00

I may be jumping the gun here and Diamond may very well bend over backwards in an attempt to get this fixed, but it appears that West Coast comic shops are receiving roughly 10-15% of their Civil War #6 orders this week (with the rest presumably to follow next week). Any number of things could cause a problem like this, from a shipping issue which prevents most of the books from getting there (

Sam Hobarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17194106036276210697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16826831.post-29734101395916567702006-12-27T20:13:00.000-05:002006-12-28T18:33:11.289-05:00

The end of the year being the designated time to compare completely useless information, I thought I'd do just that and see how MacGuffin's best seller list compares to Diamond's sales figures. It should make for ridiculously inaccurate comparisons and spurious analysis. The caveats:A- I'm comparing apples and oranges here, sell-in (to stores) vs. sell through (to readers).B- We're a small store

Sam Hobarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17194106036276210697noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16826831.post-6019574938150884592006-12-12T19:10:00.000-05:002006-12-12T19:45:50.600-05:00

Competitive Advantage. It means pretty much what it sounds like, either offering the same benefits as one's competitors at a lower cost or offering better benefits than the competition. One of the first questions anyone gets asked when putting together financing for a new business venture is what sets this idea apart, why it is better than the competition.This is sparked by Matt Fraction's

Sam Hobarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17194106036276210697noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16826831.post-63358357995225858802006-11-28T19:55:00.000-05:002006-11-28T20:08:22.304-05:00

There's been much written about DC's new Minx imprint set to launch next year, from enthusiasm that there will finally be comics for teenage girls to cynicism that they are doomed to fail to concern that DC's a bit out of touch since such comics already exist and are called manga (which you'd think they already know since they do publish their own line of essentially DOA manga under the CMX

Sam Hobarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17194106036276210697noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16826831.post-1162328681032113922006-11-13T18:02:00.000-05:002006-11-13T18:09:18.743-05:00

A few weeks ago Dave Carter at Yet Another Comics Blog posted about The Long Tail as it applies to comics, specifically in determining where demand is being under served. He breaks down (in a very straightforward way) how the physical limitations of movie theaters limit the number of film that reach their full potential audience and compares this phenomenon to the world of comics. In other words

Sam Hobarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17194106036276210697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16826831.post-1162930811811623292006-11-07T17:32:00.000-05:002006-11-13T14:02:40.658-05:00

I offered some thoughts awhile back about DC's decision to publish a $.25 version of the first issue of Fables, a move we were extremely happy with at MacGuffin. I didn't mention that as a promotional tool for the Absolute Sandman volume, they reprinted the first issue of that series with the updated coloring and a few of the many extras contained in the Absolute volume.We've been giving both of

Sam Hobarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17194106036276210697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16826831.post-1161734846207390192006-10-31T18:52:00.000-05:002006-11-13T14:02:38.850-05:00

After several months of development more than should have been necessary, MacGuffin has launched the online portion of our store at MacGuffinComics.com. At the moment it essentially functions as an online mirror of the graphic novel selection available at our brick and mortar storefront and acts as one more way for us to provide access to the widest range of graphic novels possible. Our online

Sam Hobarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17194106036276210697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16826831.post-1161298017200979412006-10-23T17:20:00.000-04:002006-11-13T14:00:59.014-05:00

Fantagraphics has decided to open a brick and mortar storefront in Seattle, and thankfully the reaction has been mostly positive (if somewhat skeptical regarding the feasibility of such an undertaking). No retailers threatening not to carry Fantagraphics in protest to theoretically direct competition from what is theoretically a direct business partner, but then half the reason for opening the

Sam Hobarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17194106036276210697noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16826831.post-1159993406671952982006-10-04T17:34:00.000-04:002006-11-13T14:00:58.420-05:00

Publisher's Weekly debuted their list of the top ten bestselling comics and graphic novels this week (although the list includes only long form comic work). I believe that the titles are listed in order of units sold, but that is one of many assumptions about the list that we're forced to make because no methodology was offered. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as these sorts of general

Sam Hobarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17194106036276210697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16826831.post-1158966557153990132006-09-22T19:01:00.000-04:002006-11-13T14:00:45.978-05:00

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

Sam Hobarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17194106036276210697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16826831.post-1158076805537965382006-09-12T02:53:00.000-04:002006-11-13T14:00:45.122-05:00

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

Sam Hobarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17194106036276210697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16826831.post-1156882651444461582006-09-03T17:12:00.000-04:002006-11-13T14:00:21.914-05:00

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

Sam Hobarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17194106036276210697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16826831.post-1157073107435007062006-08-31T20:58:00.000-04:002006-11-13T14:00:22.280-05:00

This is the kind of thing that I really shouldn't get into but after a conversation with a few customers I couldn't keep my mouth shut.Those of you who read Rich Johnston's Lying in the Gutters column likely read about the printing error in the latest Gotham Central trade (it's about 3/4 down the page). Basically there's some missing dialogue which is annoying. Unfortunately, there's really no

Sam Hobarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17194106036276210697noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16826831.post-1156626428531811102006-08-29T14:55:00.000-04:002006-11-13T14:00:21.589-05:00

How important is it to have accurate sales statistics in the comics industry? I've been following the debate over at The Engine wherein the question is really being broken down into two parts.First, is it more of a benefit or detriment to have sales statistics available to the general public? Second, if some form of sales statistics are going to be available either through leaks or estimates,

Sam Hobarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17194106036276210697noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16826831.post-1156444500005210402006-08-24T14:29:00.000-04:002006-11-13T14:00:21.436-05:00

We've had a link to some photos of the store in the sidebar for months now, but we've had a few requests to post some new pictures, so I've done so here. Step right up and be the first to see how the store has filled out.Disclaimer:To be honest, I don't see much of a difference but I'm told there is and I'm here every day so I may not be the best judge (you can compare with these older pictures

Sam Hobarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17194106036276210697noreply@blogger.com0