Before 2010 becomes too much of a distant memory it's time for my annual look at a year's worth of Picks of the Week!
(As a point of comparison, you can check out the Pick of the Week numbers from 2009, 2008, and 2007.)
Let's get started!
There are 52 weeks in a year and, as always, there were 52 Picks of the Week in 2010.
Here is how the Picks of the Week (POWs) broke down. You will find the number followed by the percent of the total (rounded off).
Total POWs: 52
by Conor: 18 (34.6%)
by Josh: 18 (34.6%)
by Ron: 16 (30.7%)
This year was pretty well balanced but looking at the breakdown between Josh, Ron, and I says to me that there was one week that Ron had to be skipped. I don't remember why, but it's not uncommon that one of us has to skip their scheduled week. Otherwise, it was a fairly balanced year between the three of us.
People who are particularly partisan about their comic book purchases are always complaining that their preferred company isn't getting enough Pick of the Week attention. It's an inevitable and lamentable fact of life. This year there wasn't as much complaining as there has been in years past, though we did receive one e-mail addressing us as "Marvel Fanboys", which was nice. How did the Picks of the Week break down by company? Thusly:
DC Comics – 24 (46.1%)
Marvel Comics – 22 (42.3%)
Image Comics – 3 (5.7%)
Dark Horse Comics – 2 (3.8%)
BOOM! Studios – 1 (1.9%)
For the third year in a row, DC books were selected as Pick of the Week more than any other company but Marvel was a really close number two. In fact, that's the closest those two companies have finished since I started this feature in 2007. Unfortunately, this was a terrible year for independent Picks of the Week. Only 5 different companies made the list this year, as opposed to 7 in 2009, 8 in 2008, and 7 in 2007. That doesn't seem to bad until you add up the total number of independent Picks of the Week and you get 6 this year, 8 in 2009, 13 in 2008, and 8 in 2007. I know that for me personally, 2010 was the year that I went almost entirely to trade reading when it came to independent books. Trades are, of course, ineligible for Pick of the Week honors.
When people like to describe the iFanboys in a lazy shorthand they say that I am the "DC Guy", Ron is the "Marvel Zombie" and Josh is the "Indie Guy." Did our POWs prove those labels correct?
Conor
DC Comics – 10 (55.5%)
Marvel Comics – 6 (33.3%)
Image Comics – 1 (5.5%)
BOOM! Studios – 1 (5.5%)
Ron
Marvel Comics – 11 (68.7%)
DC Comics – 4 (25%)
Dark Horse Comics – 1 (6.2%)
Josh
DC Comics – 10 (55.5%)
Marvel Comics – 5 (27.7%)
Image Comics – 2 (11.1%)
Dark Horse Comics – 1 (5.5%)
Not a complete surprise this year with the individual breakdowns. Josh and I don't think that Marvel had the strongest of years, creatively, and Ron remains a stalwart Marvel Zombie. Of the above DC Comics Picks of the Week, 4 were from the Vertigo imprint — 3 were by Josh and 1 by Ron.
Comic books remain a primarily writer-driven medium and while we here at iFanboy love good art, we usually look for a good story more than anything else. Which writers received the high honor of Pick of the Week most often — either on their own or part of a writing team?
Brian Michael Bendis – 8
Geoff Johns – 6
Judd Winick – 3
These three writers accounted for more than 32% of the Picks of the Week all by themselves.
Writers who scored Pick of the Week honors twice:
Justin Gray, Grant Morrison, Jimmy Palmiotti, Jeff Parker, Louise Simonson, Dan Slott, Scott Snyder, J. Micahel Straczynski, Peter J. Tomasi, Mark Waid
And those writers with one Pick of the Week award for 2010:
Jason Aaron, Gabriel Ba, Kate Beaton, Nick Bertozzi, Ed Brubaker, Mike Carey, Amanda Conner, Paul Cornell, Toby Cypress, Michael Deforge, Paul Dini, Matt Fraction, Bob Gale, Keith Giffen, Kieron Gillen, Christopher Golden, Marc Guggenheim, Nicholas Gurewitch, Tim Hamilton, Dean Haspiel, Allan Heinberg, Jonathan Hickman, Jason Howard, Joe Kelly, Roger Langridge, John Layman, Jody LeHeup, Jeff Lemire, Benjamin Marra, Eduardo Medeiros, Brad Meltzer, Mike Mignola, Fabio Moon, Terry Moore, Ryan Ottley, Harvey Pekar, Rick Remender, Alex Robinson, Greg Rucka, Gail Simone, Nick Spencer, James Stokoe, Fred Van Lente, Len Wein, Zeb Wells
But let's not forget the artists. Without them it's not comics, it's prose! No one single artist received the high honor of Pick of the Week more often than any other, so which artist scored two honors — either on their own or part of an art team?
Cliff Chiang, Olivier Coipel, Amanda Conner, Alan Davis, Patrick Gleason, Stuart Immonen, Jock, Scott Kolins, Francis Manapul, Ivan Reis
And those artists with one Pick of the Week award for 2010:
Daniel Acuna, Raphael Albuquerque, Adam Archer, Paul Azaceta, Gabriel Ba, Kate Beaton, Joe Bennett, Jordi Bernet, Nick Bertozzi, Jim Cheung, Scott Clarke, Andy Clarke, Toby Cypress, Michael Deforge, Mike Del Mundo, Joe Eisma, Steve Epting, Max Fiumara, Peter Gross, Butch Guice, Rob Guillory, Tim Hamilton, Gabriel Hardman, Dean Haspiel, Jason Howard, Bryan Hitch, Georges Jeanty, Joelle Jones, Ryan Kelly, Karl Kesel, Don Kramer, Peter Krause, Adam Kubert, Andy Kubert, David Lafuente, Jeff Lemire, Aaron Lopresti, Alex Maleev, Benjamin Marra, Marcos Martin, Jamie McKelvie, Eduardo Medeiros, Fabio Moon, Terry Moore, Graham Nolan, JM Ken Niimura, Eric Nguyen, Jerome Opena, Ryan Ottley, Eduardo Pansica, Dan Panosian, Yannick Paquette, Sara Pichelli, George Perez, Whilce Portacio, Joe Prado, Javier Pulido, Alex Robinson, Marco Rudy, Chris Samnee, Steven Sanders, Ben Stenbeck, James Stokoe, Ardian Syaf, Ty Templeton, Kev Walker, Pete Woods, Skottie Young
Congratulations to all the writers and artists. You all have bright careers ahead!
We've said it before and we'll say it again and again: we here at iFanboy love number one issues. This year we chose 10 number one issues as Pick of the Week, which is down from 15 the year before. That's a big drop. Maybe we don't love number one issues as much as we used to? Which ones were chosen?
Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine #1
Avengers: Prime #1
Batman Incorporated #1
DC Universe: Legacies #1
The Flash #1
Morning Glories #1
New Avengers Finale #1
Sea Bear & Grizzly Shark #1
Scarlet #1
Uncanny X-Force #1
Two of the above were specials, but they was listed as number ones so we're counting them.
When you do the Pick of the Week every week for 10 years you live in fear of choosing the same books over and over. You don't want to become stagnant as a reviewer and you don't want to bore your audience. You never want to get to the point where the audience can predict the Pick of the Week before it is chosen, but at the same time when your mandate is to choose the best book that you read that week you have to stick by that, no matter what. You can't think about how many times a book or a creative team has been chosen in the past, you just have to go with what you liked the best that week. I take that responsibility very seriously and I know that Ron and Josh do too. And that is why I always find the following statistic to be the most interesting:
Out of 52 Pick of the Weeks, there were 45 separate titles chosen. There weren't very many repeat Picks. That's up from 42 in 2009. There being so few repeat Picks of the Week will explain the following statistic:
We had a SEVEN way tie for the book that was chosen most often in 2010 as the Pick of the Week, each one was selected twice:
Amazing Spider-Man
Avengers: Prime
Detective Comics
The Flash
Justice League: Generation Lost
New Avengers
Siege
Again, Marvel and DC are neck and neck. Marvel had four of the most repeat books and DC had three.
And there you have it – the Picks of the Week of 2010 by the numbers. I hope you found this all as interesting as I did.
See you back here in a year for 2011!
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With those statistics, Josh looks to be on his way to being the next DC Guy. Connor watch your back.
The Calculator strikes again!
I’ve always loved this article, Conor. (Or should I call you Egghead?) Really interesting to see the numbers behind the PotW. It also makes me want to page through my PotWs and see what comes out. For some reason I feel like even though I picked up less Marvel books this eyar, I had a high number of Marvel POTW in the August to October window.
So…are you guys renaming the site “Marvel Fanboys” or not?
@RapidEyeMovement I’m sure a year ago people were saying “DC Fanboys.” We always seem to have a bias. It just changes constantly.
Marvel Fanboys, lol, that just cracks me up.
math
@PaulMontgomery I can’t wait til you roll around to “Oni Press Fanboys” or something.
@RahUniQue I was told there would be none.
I like this Conor.
Very nice work (I think it’s safe to assume who the accountant at the iFanboy complex is).
While the numbers seem to bear it out, none of you strike me as a “____ fanboy”, and the fact the second-most uttered phrase on the POW podcasts seems to be, “This could have been pick of the week” is a testament to that.
Now, which one of you is going to swith to issues on “The Walking Dead” this year? That’ll boost your Image numbers for next year.
I love these posts. Love them. That is all.
Nice summary, although I would like some stats on books of the month too.
In addition I think you need to learn how to use spell checker. Some elementary spelling mistakes Mr Kilpatrick!
Thanks for another year of great comics info and opinion!
@har13quin This article isn’t about the Books of the Month, it’s about the Picks of the Week. Besides that, there are only 12 Books of the Month and the statistics would be boring.
Also, I’m trying to figure out in what world your second line isn’t extremely rude but I’m coming up empty.
By the by, in all seriousness, I actually found this article very interesting.
I couldn’t get the image of Connor stroking his beard out of my mind while reading this post. Interesting stuff though and I was suprised about the lonesome Image pick. I’m gonna take a guess and say you guys are reading Kirkman’s stuff in trades.
I really enjoy the POTW, and while I do think the lazy labels for the three of you are probably good for entry-level understanding of y’all, I like that all 3 fight the stereotype and all seem to be very open to the others’ recommendations. Case in point: Ron will read a Superman story if Conor and Josh rave enough.
Truth is I think inside my head there is a DC guy, a Marvel guy, and an Indy/Vertigo guy…they always fight about what I should have in my pull list…resulting in frequent erratic highway driving on my part, btw
Mostly I’m an Artist/Writer guy (I’m an artist first guy), in the end the creative team is what primarily drives my purchases, not the publisher, character, or genre.
Thanks for the interesting stats! Good luck in 2011!
@Urthona Ron won’t read a Superman story, no matter how much Josh and I rave about it.
Nice to see the stats..kinda shows how you guys have a pretty well rounded team. I was actually surprised, for some reason it felt that there was more non big 2 stuff being chosen. I guess Vertigo stuff counts as DC or was that not chosen at all?
i(DW)Fanboys what???
Weren’t a bunch of those picks Vertigo? It’s hard to decipher which picks were American Vampire, Hellblazer, etc. Those were picked repeatedly by Josh.
@KickAss Mentioned in the article.
Interesting stuff from the Calculator! Nice, Conor. Good stuff.
Just my own opinion. I know Vertigo is a DC imprint. But to me it has much more of it’s own identity, regardless it’s parent company. It’s not like Marvel’s Icon line. You go to the comic shop and there is a Vertigo section just the same as there is Image, Dark Horse, etc. There are people out there who read a ton of Vertigo stuff and do not care for DC at all. If it were me, I wouldn’t count it with all the DC stuff.
Crap. I forgot to make my post sound like a fanboy rant and accuse Conor of counting Vertigo as DC to skew the numbers for his fave. 😛 How dare you sir!!!
I thought Ron read All-Star Superman? Was a recent show, must have mis-remembered that.
Conor, can’t you frighten him into reading it?
@j206 If people read a ton of Vertigo stuff then they in fact DO care about DC books, since Vertigo books are DC books also. Any thoughts to the contrary are rationalizations.
My favorite time of the year. Always love to see the breakdown between the picks, always a great job conor.
For my list, I won’t go into huge detail just the top creators/companies for each list, the cream of the crop were:
Writer(s): 7-Geoff Johns, Jeff Lemire
Artist(s) 6-Jeff Lemire, 5-Various (I had a lot of comics as POTW with a slew of artists in each issue)
Character(s): 6-Batman, Sweet Tooth
Company: DC-25
Marvel-12
Vertigo-7
Image-4
Dark Horse-2
Avatar-1
Yes I know Vertigo is an imprint of DC, but I like to make it separate for reasons only I understand.
” I went almost entirely to trade reading when it came to independent books.”
Which balances out when it comes to the Book of the Month picks; almost all indie stuff (with exception for a Wednesday Comics here or an Absolute All Star Superman there).
@conor. Yeah, dude. Like I said, I know that Vertigo is TECNICALLY DC. But most people don’t view it as such. It’s big enough and has a large enough cache to stand on it’s own at least in SPIRIT, if not financially. When people talk about Vertigo books, they don’t refer to them as DC books. When Ron gives Josh crap about Vertigo books, he’s not talking about Green Lantern or The Flash. Yes, it is run by DC. But most people think of it as it’s own thing.
yes!! Stats!!! Who doesn’t love stats!!! I’m trying to figure out which books did Bendis write that get POTW. is avengers prime written by Bendis?
@conor Did Blackest Night or Brightest Day ever get picked for POTW? I’m even surprised that they were not repeated.
@j206 Right, and most people are wrong for whatever reasons they make up on their own to justify the distinction.
@excalipoor Once each.
@djd One is a multi-natioal corporation with many different subsidiaries in many different areas and one is a publisher with different imprints housed in the same offices and overseen by the same people. Not really the same thing.
I kinda want to see my own stats on this.
@conor–i understand your thinking on the whole Vertigo as part of DC thing, BUT the whole point of publishing imprints is to create separate brands within one company to specialize in certain niche markets to maximize the offerings of that company.
A Perfect example is Harper Collins. Their imprints include Pantheon, Knopf, Doubleday, Vintage and others. All big time book publishers on their own, but have a different focus that are part of one parent.
With Vertigo there is little to no crossover in the DCU, SO its not too far outside of reason to consider them a separate entity.
@wallythegreenmonster The same company is the same company. Sorry, I’ve been doing this article for four years and it’s not going to change.
There are good reasons for thinking of vertigo as being seperate. Vertigo has also been primarilty a creator owned (to varying degrees) imprint as well so, the ownership of the IP isnt necessarily DC. They were as autonomous as Wildstorm which didnt wasn’t in the same building and only the Publisher obersaw both. the editorial teams were independaen. There was also some competition between DC proper and Vertigo.
All of this is slowly getting phased out as Didio brings it closer into the fold. I fear that after her husband getting canned from DC, losing the DCU characters she made sell (swamp thing, animal man, shade etc) and worse deals for creators which may make some key vertigo creators go indy or icon, i expect Karen Berger will step down in 2011, paving the way for the elimination of Vertigo completely and the absorption of ALL its books under the DC logo (remember V for Vendetta, Ronin and many other mature readers, out of continuity books once had the dc logo). They couldnt do that if they were a different company.
Of course Icon would have to be considered a different company from marvel, and many companies would make up image with this reasoning
@abstractgeek Your last paragraph is a good reason why I break the analysis down by COMPANY and not by IMPRINT.
DC is Vertigo is DC.
End of story. Let’s move on.
@djd You saw when I said let’s move on, right?
I love reading this article every year. Thanks Conor!
@conor Thanks for taking the time to do this. I enjoy articles like this. It’s fun reading stats like these when I don’t have to compile them.
Regarding the stereotypes about you guys, I wasn’t aware of them when I first started listening to the POTW podcasts, and I know that Connor turned me on to more Marvel books, Josh got me reading more DC, and Ron hooked me on a number of independents. When I found out there was a stereotype/joke about your preferences, I was surprised because it was completely divorced from my experience with you guys.
Anyway, keep up the great work in 2011!
I agree with your sentiment about Marvel’s year creatively. We were talking about this at the comic shop this afternoon. It seems that when you think of Marvel’s line you think of saturation and uninteresting.
I will say that I’m looking forward to Fear Itself (as Fraction’s interview on Wordballoon made it sound cool), and with the editorial shake-up maybe we’ll see some interesting things in the coming year.
Vertigo picks count as DC picks because if DC (the powers that be thereof) wanted to shut down Vertigo tomorrow, they could. DC decided to publish the books, the company gets the credit. in case it wasn’t already simple.
One reason why I love this site so much and the community is the diverse amount of books covered. I would never have heard of many of these books, much less started reading them if it were not for the vast amount of articles and opinions expressed here. The comics industry has one more devoted reader in me due to this site, and for that I’m very greatful. This post is coming off more dramactic that I inteded, but what else can I say but thanks and look forward to more in 2011.
I’m fairly new to the site, so does a book have to be ongoing to count a #1 issue? I ask because I’m still obsessed with “Daytripper” (especially POTW issues #1 and #8) and would love any extra shout out it can get.
Thanks for sharing the number crunching!
@ABirdseysView You’d think it was simple, but apparently not.
@rjspring Awesome. that’s why we do it.
@AbeFroman DAYTRIPPER #1 came out in December of 2009. It is in last year’s analysis, linked above.
Love this post. Maybe one of my favorite of the year. Please don’t get caught in the minutia trap guys.
I always love this article. Thanks for all the work it probably took to put it together. I think it’s great how even it always turns out.
I ran my numbers and my most picked book was The Flash with 5(issues: 1,2,4,5,7). Biggest surprise for me was I actually picked Buffy not once but twice, wow did that book fall fast.
I was so hoping to have more indie titles in my POTW stats but all I got were 2 random Hellboy books and an Avatar book that isn’t even coming out any more. I mean Chew is an indie book, but Image has become so mainstream now it’s really hard to call it indie.
@j206: It’s okay man, we can come together with the same views on Vertigo!
This was a great column. POTW is the centerpiece of iFanboy. I looked forward to the comments. Unfortunately,many are snarky,negative and unintelligent. I ask the haters – What’s the point of posting?
My numbers:
Total Weeks: 52
DC – 33 (63.5%)
Marvel – 14 (27.9%)
Image – 3 (5.8%)
Dark Horse – 2 (3.8%)
Ummmm, I may be a bit bias. But 7 of the DC are Vertigo.
Good mix of books! I stopped reading Vertigo and most indie books this year to move to trades but I’m very pleased with myself. Also, surprisingly, I think Remender’s Punisher work had the most POTWs.
It feels like I was reading this post for last years stats just yesterday, boy does time fly fast. Awesome article Conor
@rjspring Agree.
I always enjoy the hell out of this breakdown. It’s just fascinating.
Sadly, if I broke down my own numbers, it’d would only be more boring than last year. And next year’s gonna be worse.
That said, I love the hell out of my Marvel titles. 🙂
Finally finished my 2010 books and went to look back.
Book of the Year: DC Universe: Legacies and Hawkeye & Mockingbird each had 4 picks
Writer of the Year: Len Wein, Jim McCann, and Geoff Johns each had 4 picks
Company of the Year: DC with 28 picks (Vertigo had 4 of those), Marvel with 17