Breaking: Manga Still Kicking U.S. Comics’ Ass
Marvel’s Secret Invasion #1 was one of the best-selling comics of the year this past April, with 250,000 copies sold. Everyone was pretty pleased with that number in America. It’s a good number.
Recently, One Piece released its 50th volume, or tankobon, and sold more a million copies in its first week. It’s probably still got more to sell. And the new Naruto tankobon sold 900,000 copies in six weeks, while is marginally better than the second place U.S. comic, New Avengers, which sold around 110,000.
Interesting to note that while Secret Invasion #1 cost $3 and had 32 pages, the One Piece tankobon cost about $5 (or 500 yen) and ran 160 or so pages. (Via Canned Dogs)
About The Author
Robert Bricken is one of the original co-founders of the site formerly known as Topless Robot, and its first editor-in-chief, serving from 2008-12. He brought the site to prominence with “nerd news, humor and self-loathing” as its motto, raising it from total internet obscurity to a readership in the millions, with help from his savage “FAQ” movie reviews and Fan Fiction Fridays. Under his tenure Topless Robot was covered by Gawker, Wired, Defamer, New York magazine, ABC News, and others, and his articles have been praised by Roger Ebert, Avengers actor Clark Gregg, comedian and The Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman, the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax, and others. He is currently the managing editor of io9.com. Despite decades as both an amateur and professional nerd, he continues to be completely unprepared for either the zombie apocalypse or the robot uprising.