"... The unreachable star": In the latest "Tilting at Windmills," Brian Hibbs divines some BookScan numbers, and compares them with what we know about the direct market:

"Humor kicks the most ass in the bookstores. The number one book for the year? Nearly 77k copies of Get Fuzzy. Huh, it was also #2. FoxTrot, Boondocks, Zits, Far Side, and Dilbert all sold better than almost anything else. Even Calvin & Hobbes, which ceased publication as a new strip eight years ago, devastates most of the competition.

"What I love about this is how the pundits say we should be more like manga, while no one ever suggests we should move more towards humor comics format. Why not? They rip up everything else in sales. If only we were to switch everything over to a four panel gag format, we’d solve all of our problems, right?"