I don't really object to another SANDMAN project if Neil Gaiman is writing it. Gaiman wrote a good hardcover SANDMAN graphic novel a year or two after he concluded the monthly series. It's his baby if he wants to return to it.

Of course, I do wonder if Dan DiDio leaned on him -- said, "Hey, Neil, did'ja see what we did to WATCHMEN when Alan Moore wouldn't play ball? How would'ja like to see BEFORE SANDMAN, by Dan DiDio and Jim Lee, covers by Rob Liefield?" -- and shuddering, Gaiman said, "No, fine, I'll do it myself."

Fans of general fantasy, including young women who would not touch BATMAN or GREEN LANTERN, tend to buy his books and go to his movies. In fact, even if you look at comics exclusively, SANDMAN is one of the few comics other than Manga that I've ever seen a female reading.

Oh wow. Those are not very promising figures at all.

I thought that was pretty funny. I bet she's never read any comics.

I'm glad I didn't read 300 before the film. The movie version is much better.

They had a great line or two of books targeted toward manga fans and women/girls. Did they bother to examine why those lines failed? Did they ever make it past the comic shops?

I have a friend who is pretty closeminded when it comes to anything that can be considered "for geeks." However, he's a huge fan of The Walking Dead. He told me that he's actually interested in reading the comics considering that's where it started. I bought him an issue #5. After reading it he told me he was pretty disappointed. He said the comic was too short, thought I spent too much money, and felt like it was half the story of what a normal episode shows.

...He said the comic was too short, thought I spent too much money, and felt like it was half the story of what a normal episode shows.

I don't think he's alone. The traditional comics format doesn't appeal to a lot of people anymore. They want bigger formats with more pages like manga or Archie digests or trades.

I wish they would try a Shogun Jump style, anthology format for alternative genres. It'd have a high enough price point for news stand distribution too.

I tried Shogun Jump but the stories seemed pretty bland. Like a bunch of Inuyasha's.

Maybe someone with marketing and distribution experience at a traditional publishing company, might teach them how to get their books to the right hands. And accept the fact that the Superhero market is already over-saturated.

With Minx, though, DC has taken what, for it, is the unusual step of seeking outside help. It has joined with Alloy Marketing + Media to promote Minx. All told, DC, a unit of Time Warner, will spend $250,000 next year to push the line.

“In terms of consumer marketing, it’s got to be the largest thing we’ve done in at least three decades,” said Paul Levitz, the president and publisher of DC Comics. “It’s not large by the scale of consumer marketing and advertising as it’s done in America, but it’s a large-scale commitment, I think, for a publishing company in general.”

Alloy Entertainment, a division of the marketing company, has helped to make hits of books like “Gossip Girls” and “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.” Alloy was also the so-called book packager behind “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life,” a first novel by a 19-year-old Harvard sophomore named Kaavya Viswanathan that was pulled from stores earlier this year when it was learned that numerous passages had been copied from novels by other writers.

Still, Alloy is offering DC access to a large audience of teenage girls, through Web sites and the Delia’s shopping catalog, which has a mailing list of nearly five million, according to Samantha Skey, Alloy’s senior vice president for strategic marketing. Ms. Skey said Minx would be the first graphic novel publisher to be included in the catalog.

What is "shogun jump?"