Comic book fans hit the floor at NYCC's Javits Center, eager to put the "comic" in Comic Con. From classics like Spawn to TV adaptations like True Blood to up-and-comers like The Outfit, here's convention-goers most wanted comics.
It is, at least in theory, the focus of any comic con - the opportunity to expand your collection. Robert Kirkman's Walking Dead was a big hit for Image, thanks to AMC's adaptation. And the floor was abuzz with some big announcements: IDW just acquired the rights to Godzilla, and Dark Horse will be doing a Dollhouse series. And fans were clamoring for a wide variety of releases, from big names like True Blood to up-and-comers such as the Parker adaptation series and one old school property, in the form of Spawn.
But, at the end of the day, word of mouth doesn't matter much if it doesn't translate to people actually picking up the books, and here were the bestsellers at Comic Con. Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse weren't directly selling any of their books at NYCC, but the other smaller publishers had a lot of books they couldn't keep on the shelves.
A lot of the bestsellers were fairly predictable, being comic adaptations of popular TV and movie franchises. Along with The Walking Dead, other big sellers included the first volumes of True Blood (IDW), Spike (IDW), Doctor Who (IDW), 28 Days Later (Boom! Studios), Farscape and Farscape Scorpius (Boom), and The Return of Buzz Lightyear (Boom). Other unsurprising bestsellers including long-running titles like Spawn (Image), the Alan Moore penned Neonomicon (Avatar), Witchblade #138 (Boom), and hardcover prints of FREAKANGELS (Avatar).
There were a bunch of other successful titles that casual comics fans might be less familiar with. There's The Hunter and Outfit (IDW), the first two volumes of New Frontier author Darwyn Cooke's adaptation of Richard Stark's Parker series, following the exploits of a master criminal. There's also Artifacts #138 (Top Cow), in which an industrialist and a gun-runner search for relics of apocalyptic importance.
Image Comics had a bunch of interesting comics that sold out. There's 5 Fists of Science, which imagines a world where Nikola Tesla and Mark Twain (who were actually friends!) join forces to force world peace. Elephantmen shows how genetic engineering run amok produces human-animal hybrids, raised as killers for a massive corporation. Marvel universe architect Brian Michael Bendis wrote Goldfish, the noir story of a grifter who returns to town in search of his son. And for readers looking for something a little off the beaten path, there's always Girls, which is, in brief, about egg-laying monster women taking over a small town.