Image Comics

Every week, Image Comics sends a newsletter about our upcoming releases to retailers with a letter at the beginning. This letter, by Image Comics Publisher Eric Stephenson was in the January 16, 2012 newsletter.

The numbers are in, and Image Comics held the number two spot in unit sales for graphic novels in the Direct Market during 2011, beating Marvel Comics by more than 12,000 books and trailing DC Comics by only 8,000. These numbers prove that together we’re giving your customers the comics they want to read – every single month and in whatever format that they prefer. That’s a baseline for sustainable growth that we can all appreciate. And there’s far more to come in 2012.

We’ve moved forward together since the turn of the century – readers, retailers and publishers, united by the freedom that diversity of format has granted us.

And so here we are in January 2012, and Image Comics is one of the leading producers of trade paperbacks and graphic novels in the Direct Market. Books like THE WALKING DEAD, INVINCIBLE, CHEW, HACK/SLASH and MORNING GLORIES have redefined our business, not by telling the same four stories over and over again, or through contrived “events,” but by sharing the boundless creativity of the writers and artists who drive our company.

Books like FATALE, PROPHET, THE MANHATTAN PROJECTS, AMERICA’S GOT POWERS, SECRET, SAGA, GLORY, HELL YEAH, HAUNT and NO PLACE LIKE HOME are poised to stand chin to chin not just with our other guaranteed sellers, but with the likes of Y: The Last Man, Criminal and Hellboy. And not just as single issues, which bring customers into your shop each week looking for the kind of excitement they can only get from the best creators in the comic book industry doing their own work on their own terms. These comics will endure over the long haul as successful trade paperback collections that offer all of us the kind of sustainability this industry needs.

And we’re not owned by the Walt Disney Company.

And we’re not owned by Warner Bros.

And we rely on neither glut nor gimmick.

Twenty years after the foundation of this amazing company, Image Comics is riding a supersonic rocket ship into the future, giving the industry’s greatest creators the freedom they need to create the best creator-owned comics ever made.

But we can’t do it without you. We can make the best creator-owned comics, but it’s only through your support that we can make them the best-selling comics as well.

In 2011, you and your customers made us the number one publisher of creator-owned comics. And you made us the number two publisher of graphic novels in the direct market.

But that was last year.

Over the course of 2012, we’re giving you all the great books you sold week in and week out during 2011 – plus, we’re bringing you the best new comics and graphic novels that you will sell week in and week out, not just this year, but for years to come.

We thank you, and we challenge you to look at what’s coming up from us and not feel the same thrill we feel for the future of Image – and the future of comics.