Saga Undefeated as Top Selling Comic of 2023
...and Batman had plenty of prep time...
First off, a heads up — if Fantastic Comics is a little late in opening on this rainy Saturday, it might be because Uel is filling gaps in his collection several blocks down at the Berkeley Comics Show.
Next, a quick thanks to everyone who supported the store in 2023: the Well-Wishers, the Wednesday Warriors, the Whales, the Minnows, the Pull-listas, the Patreonistas, the Youtube Crew, the Friends of Gizmo — you all rock.
And if you’d like to support the store in a purely financial way in 2024, the best method is loading up on pre-auction credit via our Stripe link, which we have a little less than a year’s worth of free credit card processing on.
If you never redeem it, it’s a fee-free capital for the store, but of course you are always welcome to cash it out in our Never-Ending Auction (ahhh-ah-ahhh-ah-ahhh-ah 🎶)!
In the What Should Come as News to Nobody Department:
Seemingly beating Batman by an almost 2:1 margin, Saga swept the best-selling comics of 2023. It’s not even close…
Fantastic Comics Top-Selling Comics for 2023
Saga #62
Saga #61
Saga #63
Saga #64
Saga #65
Saga #66
Batman #135
Transformers #2
Transformers #3
Superman #1
… or is that the whole story? Why is Transformers #2 and #3 in the Top 10 but not Transformers #1? Uel clears up the mystery — and the answer is… drumroll…
…Variant Covers!
If you count all the variant cover sales, Batman slowly creeps from behind to stand toe-to-toe with Saga, and even outselling an issue or two in some cases, which goes to show you — never doubt the strength of variants!
But yeah, yeah, yeah without the variant assist, the marquee intellectual property of a multibillion dollar corporation falls to an indie artist/writer team. Part of this is just how steadfast and exceptional Saga’s fanbase is, and part of this is Marvel and DC’s declining ability to keep, much less, grow, its comics-reading audience, and believe us, we’re doing our part to keep up the excitement for tights and fights.
To wit, here are some big studio books that might appeal to Saga fans:
Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow
Basically True Grit in Space, this is a rollicking standalone space adventure story that wouldn’t feel out of place in the Sagaverse, and will apparently be adapted into one of the first forays of Gunn’s cinematic DC-verse reboot. Bilquis Evely’s art and character style is lush and slightly Baroque, conjuring equal parts Little Nemo and Fletcher Hanks, but shares a clean line with Fiona Staples’ eminently readable style on Saga. Also, for parents out there with kids who are turning their noses up at DC’s YA line but aren’t quite ready for the casual nudity and cursing in Saga, this book is surprisingly young reader friendly for, y’know, a revenge story with the requisite planetary-scale violence.
The pre-order for the June 2024 hardcover on bookshop.org is surprisingly cheaper than on Amazon, though of course Amazon is selling the trade paperback right now for “how can a brick and mortar ever compete with that” pricing.
N.K. Jemisin’s Far Sector (bookstore / amazon) is in a similar vein — the name Far Sector says it all — this is a story set nowhere near Earth with its Gothams and Arkhams and Metropoli, or even with the endless multiversal shenanigans — there is no need for a tedious back history of the DCU — this is a new Green Lantern taking on a mystery crime procedural in a highly parable-ized alien society that would also slot perfectly into Saga.
On the opposite spectrum with regards to backstory pre-requisites, Morrison’s weird, weird run on Green Lantern is all about mining the arcana of decades of lore, but ironically, it’s so, so much through the looking glass and down the rabbit hole that I’d venture that casual, beginners, and even seasoned DC comics fans will all be more or less in the same boat in terms of not fully comprehending what they’re reading while at the same time being dazzled by Liam Sharp’s feverishly dream-detailed art. — Uel goes into more depth with special guest, Max:
Also appropriately bizarre, the hardcover on Amazon right now is cheaper than the paperback.
And lest we forget Marvel, the decade-old Planet Hulk (fancy omnibus edition: Bookshop / Amazon) provided a lot of the raw material for Taika Waititi’s goofy alien diaspora in the Thor pictures, but the original is a bit more sober and closer to Saga (but really, much closer to Conan) in tone — the opening pages tell you the much, much sadder reason Hulk ends up on a gladiator planet, and also conveniently dispenses with any earthbound storylines you need to be familiar with.
If there’s a theme to all of these recommendations, it’s that space is, as Douglas Adams says, “vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big” which means there’s room for totally new stories, putting your familiar or brand new characters in situations that every fan hasn’t already seen a million times before, but when it comes down to it, sometimes there’s just no substitute for Saga than, well, Saga, and if you’re not yet onboard the Saga train, the paperback compendium (bookshop / amazon) is probably the most cost-effective ticket, though it’s both super-heavy and prone to falling apart so we prefer to carry the much more digestible volume one in the store.
As always, bookshop links will earn a hefty commission for the store (and we thank you for it — extra thanks to the hero who bought those omnibi! ) and amazon links earns a much smaller commission for our landlord (who will prepare a Cthulian curse in your honor).
Now it’s your turn to recommend books to Uel
No help to Batman’s sales last year was Uel’s bizarre pledge not to read any Bat-stories in 2023, and he largely stuck to it, but this is 2024 and the embargo is lifted.
What are the best BatComics and storylines that Uel missed out on in 2023? Let him know in the comments!
The Doom that came to Gotham will always be one of my top picks