It's a sleepy start to the New Year, with only one newcomer among graphic books best-sellers this week. That honor goes to volume one of “Blood Lad,†by Yuuki Kodama (Yen Press), which is at No. 2 on the manga list. The series is about Staz, a vampire whose tough exterior hides a love for and curiosity about human culture, especially all things Japanese. When he meets a Japanese girl, he thinks he's finally found someone he can ask questions, but her life is tragically cut short. His new mission becomes restoring her ghostly form to human life. The first volume was released in December. Volume two follows in March and volume three in May.
Over at The Beat, the news blog of comics cult ure, Torsten Adair published an impressive year-end analysis of the 2012 books that appeared on our hardcover, paperback and manga lists. DC Comics was the pacesetter in the hardcover category, Image was the leader in paperbacks and VIZ was at the front of the pack in manga.
As always, the complete best-seller lists can be found here, along with an explanation of how they were assembled.
