Crunching Early Numbers

[Augie De Blieck Jr.]

It's not quite the end of the year with its inevtiable End of Year lists, but I did look at some interesting numbers from the records I keep here at Pipeline World Headquarters:

* I've reviewed 73 trade paperbacks/original graphic novels/hardcovers so far this year. I have two planned for next week right now, with a possible third. I reviewed 60 in total last year, and had hoped for 100 at year's end 2005. Unless I really get going, it looks like I won't hit 100 this year. I'd have to average three or four reviews per week for the rest of the year. Don't think that's going to happen.

* I bought 396 single issues as of November 2, 2005. Last year, I had bought 694 32-page books as of November 3, 2004. I wish I tracked my trades purchases better than I have, because I bet ALL the money I saved on individual issues went straight to that.

* I don't think I'll be doing a Best Of column for the end of the year. In the past, I've done it for on-going series, but I just don't read enough of them to come up with an honest list. Maybe I'll pick my favorite books based on reviews I've written over the course of the year. I have two months to figure it out, though.

-Augie

[Sabrina_Fried]

Wow,

I haven't crunched enough numbers yet, but now that The Purge is in effect I know I have bought at least half as many comics as I did last year. At the same time however, counting tankoubon, I've probably bought at least three times as many TPBs. Some were part of the Conversion phase of The Purge, but most were new stuff that I am following in trade instead of in monthlies/Shonen Jump/etc.

As a rule, I don't do "Best of" lists in my column, but I'll be doing my traditional "State of the EU" article sometime in mid to late December-ish. Scarily enough I was fairly bang-on with some of my predictions last year.

Sabrina

[torippu]

After all of my talk about the big purge of 2005, looking at my spreadsheet for 2004 & 2005, it looks like I had purchased 358 comics from my LCS/eBay/Mile High Comics at this same point last year and have already purchased 385 books from my LCS/eBay/DCBS this year! Yikes - now I know why I have so many long boxes of comics in storage these days.