Thursday 2 January 2014

New Year's Resolution: Must Diversify More

Would it surprise anyone that someone who collects, blogs about and annotates comics also has a slight interest in numbers, statistics and graphs? No, didn't think so.

As part of my year's end round-up I found myself wondering about what I'd bought this year in terms of ongoing monthly comics or one-shots. Five minutes later, thanks to the export facility of my comics database and the joys of Excel, I was able to produce this:


That's a break down of how many comics I bought each month by publisher. You can click on it to enlarge it but those tall red columns? That's DC Comics, folks - 90% of the comics I bought in 2013 came from one publisher with Image Comics in second place getting a mere 5%.

I've always been a DC fan - I started reading them as a kid and their characters and series (Green Lantern and the various Justice Leagues in particular) called to me more than Marvel ever did. But that graph shows me that I need to branch out a little more . . . hell, a lot more.

Am I going to go towards Marvel? No, I don't think so. There's only so much convoluted superhero history and continuity I can keep in my brain at any one time and it's still full of pre- and post- Crisis, Zero Hour, Infinite Crisis and the New 52 at the moment.

What I will be looking for, though, is more from other publishers, Image in particular.

Wonder what that graph will look like next year?

6 comments:

  1. I've tried to diversify for years, but I still lean heavily toward DC. Once you get past DC and Marvel, you really need to commit to another publisher outright because it's a matter of title-to-title with the others.

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  2. Likewise I don't even bother to graph that shit myself. I'm sure Dan from Itsadansworld.net might. I'm mainly a DC guy at heart as well, but ever since the reboot, I've been buying less and less, with an occasional interest in Forever Evil. Otherwise Batman's my favorite, and thus I stick with him. Otherwise some of Marvel's stuff isn't too bad. Deadpool and for right this minute, Uncanny Avengers has my attention. Otherwise, like Dan, I highly reccomend the indies,epecially Afterlife with Archie. It's fucking awesome.

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  3. Afterlife with Archie is great.

    I buy a few Dark Horse Star Wars titles. Might go after one or two of the upcoming Alien/Predator titles. Image gets a few here and there. IDW as welll. Dynamite pops in on occasion. I try and keep it pretty even.

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  4. Like I said, I've always been a DC bloke and in the main I follow characters rather than creators (though there are some exceptions) so it's hard to ditch a character I've been following for thirty years or so.

    I'm determined to branch out, though, and if a DC title I collect gets cancelled, I won't immediately think to replace it with another DC title.

    Another problem is I like to get in at the start of something so I'm looking for brand new series rather than jumping in after x amount of issues.

    We'll see what happens over the coming months, I guess.

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  5. I'm mainly a DC reader as well, at least at the moment. I have zero interest in getting back into Marvel. I've read IDW titles, Darkhorse and a couple others. So far I only plan on getting one Darkhorse mini series but I might get some TMNT trades. I just can't think of anything in particular I'd like to get outside that.

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  6. Aside from Marvel series that Garth Ennis has written (principally the Punisher titles) I've never really been a fan; if anything, I think I'm going to be looking more towards Image over the next year.

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