One Piece Sells Big and Taking Back The Industry
on February 10, 2011 at 3:30 pmI am a fan of American comics but way back in my early Internet days I had an affair with a manga called One Piece. The comic by Eichiro Oda tells the tale of Luffy and the crew of his ship as the search for the treasure One Piece that would allow Luffy to become King of the Pirates. I read the comic for three years devotedly online before taking a break, losing the translation site I found (they were asked to close) and not taking the time to find the translations again because I had college.
One Piece started in 1997 in Japan, written and still controlled by Eichiro Oda and since then has followed a fairly strict weekly updating schedule minus a yearly break or two.
When Comics Alliance posted their daily Link Ink article today, I was surprised. The most recent One Piece volume sold over 2 million copies in 3 days. That isn’t global either! That is just in Japan.
The number for me seemed sort of low though. I thought to myself – “American video games sell several million copies in the first few days. What about American comics?” (Note: This is not true except in very rare cases.)
According to Comichron, the best selling American graphic novel last year was Walking Dead Volume 1. I can see that. The show started off this year, pulled in some big viewing numbers. What was the sales number – no whammy, no whammy – 43,900 estimated orders. Ff we look at the newest and best selling graphic novel it would be Walking Dead Volume 11 with 35,800 estimated sales. The best selling single of 2010? Avengers #1 with 175,100.
The markets are slightly different though. In Japan, One Piece single equivalents are released as parts of larger magazine comic anthologies and then are collected in the books and it transfers much faster. In America the singles are released as single issues and then are possibly collected. Additionally in Japan the initial anthology magazine are printed in black and white and general cost loss.
Still, these are bad numbers. Is America doing something wrong with comics? Does this mean that maybe we need to look at our past?
Death of Superman, the infamous single issue sold 2-3 million issues early on but guess what. That was a single collectors issue deal. It was something hyped up for months. It was a single issue. One Piece in general sells very well!
So what can American comics do?
I’d heavily consider longer creator runs once again. Let the writers go their own way for a year or two. As much as I have an issue with some of Geoff Johns’ work, he is shaping up to big stuff with the Brightest Day/ Blackest Night stuff. On a positive note, Grant Morrison has done amazing work over the past few years working on Batman series.
Stop doing so many cameos and crossovers. There is certainly crossover pain that the readers feel. I’ve heard from too many people that they’d read more comics if it wasn’t for the events. One Piece and most mangas on the same company never need to crossover. Hell, the only one I can think that One Piece did was the non-canon Dragon Ball Z Cross Epoch crossover. The general thing though is that story independence lets people build things over time.
If there will be a big event, let it happen as the story needs it to happen. One Piece follows in story arcs where they build up to the climax and then restart again bigger and bigger. When a character needs to die, Oda has planned it and it makes you feel something. Oda has left so many Chekov’s guns around the series the police are arresting him (not really).
Basically comic companies, if you want better sales, you have work to do. Which is to say, do less work controlling the writers. Let stories develop. If Alan Moore had an corporate editor Rorschach probably would have lived and that is pretty scary. Take your hands off the reigns, let people work on single issues, don’t have so many titles and help to let the artists choose when to crossover. Let there be comics growth again, let the writers be free and people might buy more comics again.
