For All Its Hype...

Champions Online, the City-of-Heroes-warmed-over MMORPG that skews more towards action, couldn't even come close to selling out Amazon's allotment of half-priced copies of the game.

Selling for under $20, only 7% of copies were claimed by Amazon buyers. As video games go, $20 is as much an impulse buy price as a pack of gum in the supermarket checkout line. But on the biggest online retailer's site, they couldn't even move 10% of the stock set aside for the deal.

Is the game that bad? Has the market for MMOs not named World of Warcraft just dried up that much? Is this an indication that many dismissed it for its similarities to City of Heroes (including being made by the same studio)? Or is this a preview of how any super-hero MMO (cough DCU Online cough) will perform in the marketplace?

On a side note: they made Marvel change the name of a comic book for THIS?!?

Only Real Wizards Can Magically Make Mistakes Disappear!

As you can see in the press release below, Wizard Entertainment's CEO bought New England Comic Con. Apparently, it gets them into Boston in a big way.

You're shitting me, right? They already had a WIZARD WORLD BOSTON that they ran into the fucking dirt, but they want to laud this as a way to get into a market in a big way. It just shines a light on the fact that they fucked it up so bad before that they don't even want to acknowledge that it is their RE-ENTRY into the market, doesn't it?

You know, I shouldn't be surprised by this sort of thing coming from them...but when people won't learn from their mistakes, it is dumbfounding.

GAREB SHAMUS, WIZARD ENTERTAINMENT CEO, ACQUIRES NEW ENGLAND COMIC CON

Wizard World Comic Con continues Tour Expansion

New York, NY (November 20, 2009) - Gareb Shamus, CEO of New York based Wizard Entertainment, announces today that he has purchased New England Comic Con, in a move to further expand the Wizard World Comic Con tour.

"We've known Larry for many years, and his exceptional 35-year old New England Comic Con gets us into Boston in a big way. New England has a long legacy of cartoons and comics embedded in their history, making the fans there very appreciative of comics' impact on society and pop culture," said Shamus. "I'm excited to bring these discerning fans an even better Con experience and everything they expect from a Wizard run show."

Larry Harrison, owner of Harrison's Comics & Collectibles, and Jimmy Tournas, the former owners of New England Comic Con, will be intimately involved in the new show production to ensure fan favorite traditions are maintained.

"Working with Gareb is an awesome experience. The folks at Wizard World have a great sense of how to grow the show in a way that I've always wanted to see it flourish. This should be the best comic con the city of Boston has ever seen," said Harrison.

The New England Comic Con acquisition is the first of several Comic Con tour expansion announcements expected in the weeks ahead.

“We bring together more fans, in more cities than anyone, to celebrate their passion for pop-culture. We've had such a strong positive fan and industry reaction to our new show launches that expanding the tour just made sense," said Shamus.

New England Comic Con venue and dates will be announced soon.

About Gareb Shamus:
Gareb Shamus founded Wizard Entertainment in 1991. Today, Wizard Entertainment publishes consumer magazines Wizard, ToyFare, FunFare, and numerous books about pop-culture's top talent, comic books and toys. Gareb also produces a North American Comic Con tour.

Wizard World 2010 Comic Con Tour:
Toronto Comic Con, Direct Energy Centre, March 26-28, 2010
Anaheim Comic Con, Anaheim Convention Center, April 16-18, 2010
Philadelphia Comic Con, Philadelphia Convention Center June 11-13, 2010
Chicago Comic Con, Donald E. Stephens (Rosemont) Convention Center, August 12-15, 2010
Big Apple Comic Con, Pier 94, October 7-10, 2010
New England Comic Con, TBD

Quantcast Physics

I got the following from someone claiming to be Mr. Anonymous. It was a different address than normal, but what I fact-checked of the list seems to check out...so I'm running it anyway, in light of all the hub-bub that started recently around TCJ's tweaking of their web-strategy. Mr. A, if this isn't your stuff, my apologies...but it's worth displaying, regardless.

I compiled these on Quantcast. Post them if you want.

CBR 303,000 US

Newsarama 269,000 US

However, Newsarama led the month before; trending, they switch places about every other month.

At 183,000 US, Ain’t It Cool is still almost 100,000 US BELOW Newsarama in total readers; they don’t have a comics subdomain.

Now, the other "big name" sites and subdomains:

ComicsAlliance.com 86,000 US (benefiting from being part of AOL)

Blog@Newsarama 76,000 US (113,000 world)

Comics.ign.com 49,000 U.S.

Robot 6.comicbookresources.com 47,000 US (71,200 world. Yes, Blog@ has a higher U.S. than Robot 6's world.)

WizardUniverse.com 46,300 US

Comixology 37,600 US
The Beat 37,600 US

ComicsBulletin 33,600 US

Comicmix 29,100 US

SplashPage.mtv.com 26,400 US

Major Spoilers 19,000 US

ComicMonsters.com 18,700 US

ComicsContinuum 17,000 US

ComicsReporter 11,800 US

ComicRelated 11,600 US

Comicon.com (Pulse) 11,400 US

Broken Frontier 10,600 US

Comics Worth Reading 9,900 US

Bleeding Cool 8,800 US

4thLetter.net 6,000 US

SavageCritic.com 4,000 US

ComicNewsI.com 3,600 US

TCJ 3,400 US (Journalista doesn't chart as a subdomain)

Factual Opinion 2,700 US

Later,

Mr. A

Champions Online: Shades Of CoH Issues?

Many of you will remember how NC Soft/Cryptic Studios got in trouble for how players could create virtual carbon copies of established IP from Marvel Entertainment and DC Comics in their CITY OF HEROES offering.

Well...Cryptic Studios is the group behind Champions Online. In IGN's review, they clearly show how they were able to create a Superman copy in the game, a character that seems to have been around for at least the first few weeks of the game being live without removal by the studio.

Their recent Blood Moon event?

It involved an undead villain raising fallen heroes from the dead to attack the heroes. Unless I'm mistaken, it appears those heroes are all wearing black versions of their previous costumes.

With DC Comics not only having plans for their own MMO involving their IP, but it nearing completion, one wonders if they won't approach this situation much the same way Marvel did last time. With some people having complaints that they can't be an existing DC character in the DC Universe Online game, there can be a legitimate argument that allowing people to recreate those characters on Champions Online negatively effects their ability to draw subscribers.

THE UNKNOWN: THE DEVIL MADE FLESH #2

I plan on reviewing this book sometime in the next week, so I thought I'd pop up this preview of the book that BOOM! Studios provided. Enjoy!

Wow, Has It Been Over A Week?

Sorry. Certainly didn't mean to leave the blog stagnant for so long. Been working on some side projects and attempting to be gainfully employed with what I lovingly call a "day job". Led me to be completely oblivious of how much time had passed since the last update.

I'll be posting more often, I swear.

Whoa...deja vu. It feels like I've said that before.

This time...I mean it.