Before 2007 becomes too much of a distant memory, I thought I'd take a quick look at a year's worth of Pick of the Weeks.
There are 52 weeks in a year and as luck would have it, there were 52 Pick of the Week's in 2007.
Incidentally, the book 52 itself was only chosen once in 2007.
Here is how the Picks broke down. You will find the number followed by the percent of the total.
Total PoWs: 52
by Conor: 18 (34.6%)
by Ron: 18 (34.6%)
by Josh: 16 (30.7%)
Looks like Josh shouldn't have taken that two week vacation.
We got a lot of e-mails (and some comments on the website) this year that we were skewing way too much to the Marvel "side" of things with the PoW. I take it that meant that people thought we favored Marvel Comics over the other publishers, mainly DC Comics. How did it break down by company? Thusly:
Marvel Comics – 25 (48%)
DC Comics – 19 (36.5%)
Dark Horse Comics – 2 (3.8%)
Image Comics – 2 (3.8%)
Abstract Studios – 2 (3.8%)
Avatar Press – 1 (1.9%)
Virgin Comics – 1 (1.9%)
If you look at that list it almost mirrors the market share for each company. We definitely chose more Marvel books — I think on the whole, Marvel had a stronger year, creatively — but I would say that it wasn't as lopsided as some people thought. Unless you take into account books from anyone not Marvel or DC, and then yes, it was terribly lopsided.
When people like to describe the iFanboys in 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
Marvel Comics – 8 (44.4%)
DC Comics – 7 (38.8%)
Avatar Press – 1 (5.5%)
Virgin Comics – 1 (5.5%)
Dark Horse Comics – 1 (5.5%)
Ron
Marvel Comics – 11 (61.1%)
DC Comics – 4 (22.2%)
Image Comics – 1 (5.5%)
Abstract Studios – 1 (5.5%)
Dark Horse Comics – 1 (5.5%)
Josh
DC Comics – 8 (50%)
Marvel Comics – 6 (37.5%)
Abstract Studios – 1 (6.2%)
Image Comics – 1 (6.2%)
Okay, one thing is clear – Ron is definitely a Marvel Zombie. It is a bit surprising to find that of Josh's eight DC books, only three were from Vertigo. I would have thought there would be more of those.
These days comic book are primarily a writer-driven medium. Here at iFanboy we love good art but we love a good story even more and those stories come from writers. (Brilliant bit of analysis, that) Which writers received the high honor of Pick of the Week most often – either on their own or part of a writing team? Brace yourself, the top guys are going to be a bit of a shock!
Ed Brubaker – 6 (11.5%)
Brian Michael Bendis – 5 (9.6%)
Geoff Johns – 4 (7.6%)
Warren Ellis – 3 (5.7%)
Shocking, no? Between Brubaker and Bendis alone that's almost a quarter of all the Picks.
These fine gentlemen scored Pick of the Week honors twice:
Adam Beechen, Bill Willingham, Brian K. Vaughan, Matt Fraction, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, Jeph Loeb, Judd Winick, Terry Moore
And those writers with one Pick of the Week award for 2007:
Brian Reed, Chris Claremont, Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Dan Slott, Darwyn Cooke, Matt Sturges, Garth Ennis, Jeff Katz, Richard Donner, Eric Trautmann, Mark Waid, J. Michael Straczynski, Jason Aaron, Jay Faeber, Jeff Smith, Joss Whedon, Marc Andreyko, Marc Guggenheim, Mike Cary, Orson Scott Card, Paul Dini, Rick Remender, Robert Kirkman
Congratulations to all the writers. You all have bright careers ahead!
When you do the Pick of the Week every week for seven 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 pick the best book 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 you just have to go with what was best that week. I take that responsibility very seriously and I know that Ron and Josh do too. And that is why I found the following statistic to be the most shocking of all:
Out of 52 Pick of the Weeks, there were 47 separate titles chosen. There weren't very many repeat Picks. I did not expect that at all.
What I did not find shocking was the book chosen most often in 2007 as the Pick of the Week:
Captain America – 3 (5.7%)
It was selected twice by me and once by Josh.
And there you have it – the Pick of the Weeks of 2007 by the numbers. I hope you found this all as interesting as I did.
See you back here in a year for 2008!
Find us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
Subscribe to our RSS Feed
Some rights reserved.
Conor thanks for taking the time to analyze and put together the data, it was really interesting to read how the statistics broke out. (Esp appreciated once I saw the time of the posting…4am?!?!)
Great rundown. Looks like you guys do spread the love around – and not in that porno way. Thanks for a great year.
Can’t remember what the Avatar book was – was it the Lady Death Swimsuit issue?
And I still can’t believe Ron picked New Excalibur.
Nice breakdown Conor.
The number that surprised me most was the number of picks per host. It felt like Conor did the pick like every other week. Weird.
Can’t remember what the Avatar book was – was it the Lady Death Swimsuit issue?
Crecy
Dammit, I could of used this for the raffle questions at your 100th episode!!
Crecy!! That’s it – completely forgot it was an Avatar book, what with the lack of variant covers and insanely endowed women.
Wowie, kazowie. That’s pretty neato! Thanks for doing that. I’m going to return to the 1940’s now.
I find it somewhat interesting that no one indie company has ever been picked by all three of you.
And I think we’re all clear on the fact that the numbers would better represent you guys if each of you did your own pick every week (tiring as that might be).
I noticed that first issue of a comic series get the POW a lot. I don’t knock this because there have been many a time that I have loved the first issue of a series. Just an observation.
What was the abstract press one? I don’t seem to remember that one
@deezer – Strangers in Paradise.
That’s actually really interesting… Super cool awesome times looking at that… Thanks, Conor!
Thanks for all the hard work Conor. Some of those stats are shocking. I hope that we see this at the end of this year also.
awesome post.
i would have liked to see a break down of marvel and dc’s imprints too. but, i could always just look it up myself.
does this make josh the dc guy now?
This was very well crafted. Great job dude. I really enjoyed reading this and found it very interesting,
Cap is a fantastic book, and well deserved as a multiple pick. I Dare say that Brubaker’s run has even surpassed Mark Gruenwald’s epic run on Cap as my favorite. I’m very fickle when it comes to my favorite comic character, and the fact that I can say that even though Ed killed him should speak volumes…
Of course Josh is the DC guy, he’s got a DC tattoo!
Good post, Conor. One of the things I appreciate about the podcast is how often you guys say, “This came very close to being the pick of the week.” or “This would’ve been my pick of the week.” It underlines that there is plenty of quality entertainment out there in comic form. It also increases the positive vibe the podcast has.
Nice way to divide up the End of the Year posts.
Just for the hell of it, I dug down into some of my choices, and found this out.
Out of 8 DC books, 3 were Vertigo, and 1 was the Spirit. So that only leaves 4 typical DC superhero books. Those were Robin, JSA, Trials of Shazam (appendicitis pick!), and Detective Comics. I’m not sure what that says, but I find it interesting.
When I look at my Marvel picks, I picked Powers once, and New Avengers twice, so that’s half Bendis, cuz clearly I’m a Bendis fanboy. Then, oddly enough, I’ve got Warren Ellis’ first Thunderbolts, and 2 Burbaker issues, and finally Ultimate Iron Man, which no one else liked.
Man, there were some weeks I just wish I had the pick, and others I sure wish I didn’t.
What I find even more amazing about Captain America being picked most is, I distinctly remember you guys saying in one podcast that you have a certain rule about not picking it, because it is so good week in and week out.
Brubaker is awesome on Cap – who else could write the whole year without the main guy being in the book?
Ed Brubaker FTW! 🙂
That’s really cool Conor…I especially liked it that you posted at exactly 4:20…yeahhh 420 maaannnn
What I find even more amazing about Captain America being picked most is, I distinctly remember you guys saying in one podcast that you have a certain rule about not picking it, because it is so good week in and week out.
There’s no rule. It’s just that sometimes, it’s hard for a book to stand out when it’s so consistently good. Not a rule though. The only rule is that it has to be the best issue you read that week.
Do you ever wonder what the numbers would look like if all three of you had to pick every week?
I’m gonna call it…who needs a statistician? I love Excel…
Do you ever wonder what the numbers would look like if all three of you had to pick every week?
Except there are some week’s when I so glad I don’t have to pick, either because they were great or they were all terrible.
I’ve got to say, one of the things I like about ifanboy is that, although you guys have clear preferences based on what they grew up reading (I tend toward Marvel myself for that reason), you all seem to have moved past that on some level, and enjoy work from all the publishers in all the universes. I think people tend to show excessive “loyalty” (or whatever you want to call it) to DC or Marvel–a kind of tribalism that doesn’t really make sense, ultimately. It’s good when people can look past their fanboy biases and just appreciate and love comics.
it was really interesting to read how the statistics broke out. (Esp appreciated once I saw the time of the posting…4am?!?!)
To be exact the posting time was 4:20…I wonder if there were any foreign substances helping Conor crunch out those statistics.