ICv2 has released the Top 500 Comics of 2012 “based on Diamond Indexes and Publisher Title Data”. See the disclaimer after the jump for more info on the basis of these numbers.

In a year dominated by Marvel and DC, Image Comic’s Walking Dead #100 took the top spot with Marvel titles filling out the rest of the top 10. In fact, we don’t even see a DC comic until the 17th spot. IDW made its top spot on the list ranked at 90. What book did IDW top out with at 90? None other than My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic #1.

Join us after the jump for more analysis and news.

Regular purveyors of this blog may remember we put together some statistics on the first issue’s sales to put some perspective on things.

These rankings were all based on sales quantities. There was a separate ranking based on sales revenue. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic actually did even better coming in at rank 61 for its slightly higher US$3.99 price point.

Disclaimer:
There was no real indication of what these numbers include. In the monthly rankings, a disclaimer is provided indicating that the numbers only reflect North American comic shops. This excludes digital sales, supermarkets and newsstands. Here is our normal disclaimer for the monthly posts:

This is strictly sales to comic specialty shops through Diamond and does not include newsstands, book stores or other channels, which I would assume to include digital sales. The disclaimer on the source page states:

“Most of the titles on this chart are also distributed to Europe by Diamond UK, which can account for significant sales for the publisher, ranging from 3-20% of the U.S. numbers. Sales by Diamond UK are not included in the numbers above.
One other factor to consider is that sales through Diamond and other comic distributors are non-returnable to retailers. That means that there is a considerable unknown percentage of books unsold at the retailer level, probably amounting to 5-20% of sales.”

So this also does not seem to include European sales. That being said, there is no place where this data is collated and publicly published. ICv2 is considered to be the most accurate publicly available data for comic sales.

This week’s episode of “Hot in Cleveland” featured a rare prime time portrayal of a Brony! It basically boiled down to an adult in a fur suit played for laughs but what can you expect from this show? The episode in question is season 4 episode 6 “Cleveland Fantasy Con” with an air date of January 2nd.

I had never seen an episode of TV Land’s “Hot in Cleveland” before today so you’ll forgive me if I’m not totally on board with the formula of old ladies making sex jokes and us finding it funny because … they’re old? I must say it’s refreshing to see a bit of a role reversal with older women being in relationships with relatively younger men but that didn’t make the bad jokes any funnier. Don’t tell the live studio audience about that though because the laughs that ensued after the most bland comments were enough to make the Big Bang Theory’s audience sound like guests at a funeral.

Now I understand the irony of a grown man who watches a show for little girls criticizing a show for old ladies so let’s just look at the episode in question. You can watch the episode on Amazon Instant Video using the links below or if you’re American you can watch it on the TV Land web site.

The crux of this week’s episode centered around an event called “Cleveland Fantasy-Con” which is a generic fan convention in this fictional world where you apparently can’t get in without a costume. Right out the show is setting the bar with unrealistic expectations. Now I’ve been to my share of conventions, I hit a few a year, and while costuming is common it’s still far from the norm even at the geekiest convention. Anime conventions are usually the most costumed events and you’d be lucky for find even half the people at one of those in costume. The idea of a convention that won’t grant admission without a costume is a bit of a parody, which seems to be what this show was going for. Ultimately this just seems like a flimsy excuse to show the costume department’s prowess in making costumes for all the old ladies in this show.

A typical skeptic convention

Enter the Brony! One of the show’s main characters Joy is in an elevator and in comes a man in a giant fur suit who hugs her, seemingly trying to accost her! I guess this convention has a skeptic track. It turns out the inappropriate advance is somewhat warranted as it’s Joy’s boyfriend of the week Sean who it seems is a Brony! Joy is dressed up as a typical princess expecting Sean to be a prince. He’s actually dressed Prince Silver Saddle, the strongest Pony in all of Equestria! Now Princes Silver Saddle is not a real character but he could easily have been Prince Shining Armor in this case. Sean goes on to mentions that he’s a fan of Friendship is Magic and part of a community called Bronies. Joy of course questions this asking if it’s the cartoon for little girls. Sean insists it’s for people of all ages. But isn’t it?

Sean defends his choice to cosplay in a fur suits saying that it’s no different than a guy wearing a dog’s mask to a Brown’s game (the Cleveland Browns being from the city this show takes place in). I’ve certainly heard geeks make similar arguments! Sounds like someone’s done their homework on geeks, though naturally they’re not attempting to paint Bronies in a good light at all.

Brony Seans asks Joy if she wants to go to Paris with him… for an international Brony convention next month! Well I’m not aware of any big cons in Paris but such conventions are certainly not unheard of in North America.

Bronies get dumped

Bronies are not portrayed flatteringly in this show. They’re mocked and the butt of jokes, but there isn’t really anything factually incorrect about the way they’re shown, this is just a chance to poke fun at a geeky guy. This seems to be par for the course for this show that also made fun of Star Trek geeks in the episode. Someone on the writing team seems to know enough about Bronies to be able to make things somewhat believable.

Ultimately as a cat lover I felt more offended by the subplot which had Heather Locklear (still working?) being mocked for loving her cat in what seemed like a perfectly normal reaction to losing a pet. This show doesn’t seem to be taking any kind of personal grudge against Bronies, this seems to just be how they like to roll and honestly the reaction the old ladies of this show had to this Brony isn’t completely unlike how the average person will react to being told by a grown man that they’re into My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

A new fan trailer has surfaced using the audio of the new Star Trek: Into Darkness teaser. The video of the trailer has been ‘ponified’ using clips from the show, most notably shots from the Crystal Empire Season 3 premiere two-parter.

Gameloft announced an update to the iOS version of their My Little Pony game. While the game is out on both Android and iOS devices, the news update on their site only mentioned an update for the iOS version. This winter update brings us many bug fixes along with three new ponies; Teacher’s Pet, Pip Squeak, and Bowling Pony. It sounds like an Ice Cream Shop and Log Cabin have also been added.

I think we can all agree here that the real story is that another Big Lebowski pony was added to the game.
(More after the jump!)

Fans of the show will know that the 6th episode in Season 2, The Cutie Pox, had a scene in a bowling alley featuring likenesses to several characters from The Big Lebowski. We first wrote about that episode here. This game has introduced the Walter Sobchak pony as Bowling Pony for the game.

What I also didn’t realize was that it appears that a couple of the other Big Lebowski Ponies were already in the game and given actual names. Jeff Letrotski and Jesus Pezuna.

And here they are as they appeared in the cartoon (and in our previous article).

You can get the game on iTunes here.

You can read a review another staff member made of the game here.

It should also be noted that several of the more expensive ponies have been dramatically lowered in price after significant user backlash.

The Hub sent out a press release letting everyone know that there is going to be a marathon for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic on New Years’ Day. The marathon will be a 10 episode block of programming running from 11am to 4pm ET on January 1st. No real indication of what episodes will be airing during the block.

Press release is after the jump!
[SOURCE]

RING IN THE NEW YEAR WITH SPECIAL EVENT

PROGRAMMING MARATHONS ON THE HUB TV NETWORK

Holiday Schedule Includes Marathons of Action-Packed

“Hercules: The Legendary Journeys” and Pop Culture Phenomenon

“My Little Pony Friendship is Magic”

LOS ANGELES – The Hub TV Network, one of the fastest growing basic cable networks, celebrates the New Year’s holiday with a special ten-episode marathon of “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys” that kicks off Monday, December 31 (8 p.m.-6 a.m. ET) with back-to-back favorite episodes of the internationally renowned fantasy-action series featuring the mythical hero Hercules (Kevin Sorbo, “Andromeda”). The series is distributed by NBC Universal Cable and New Media Distribution.

New Year’s Day programming on the network will include a festival of family fare including a ten-episode block of the Hasbro Studios-produced “My Little Pony Friendship is Magic” Tuesday, January 1 (11 a.m.-4 p.m. ET) featuring the studious young unicorn Twilight Sparkle who lives in the village of Ponyville, where she and her five pony friends teach one another about the most powerful magic of all, the magic of friendship!

Over the two-day holiday, the network also offers up a feast of other family favorites during a New Year’s Day “Hub Family Movie” marathon Tuesday, January 1 (4 p.m.-4 a.m. ET) featuring the network’s premiere airings of beloved family feature films Open Season (4-6 p.m. ET; encore 10 p.m. -12 a.m.), Ice Age (6-8 p.m. ET; encore 12-2 a.m.), and The Nightmare Before Christmas (8-10 p.m. ET; encore 2-4 a.m.).

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic #5
Katie Cook (w) • Amy Mebberson (a) • Stephanie Buscema, Mebberson (c)
Attention, everypony! Get ready for another unforgettable adventure in the land of Equestria. Twilight Sparkle and gang are confronted with a perilous new danger in the form of a long-unseen enemy! See how the Magic of Friendship prevails in the start of a brand new story arc!
*2 regular covers will be shipped in a 1-to-1 ratio
FC • 32 pages • $3.99
*Variant Cover:
Andy Price variant cover!

Bullet points:
• The My Little Pony sales behemoth starts its 2nd exciting story arc!

 

My Little Pony Micro-Series: #2 (of 6): Rainbow Dash
Ryan Lindsay (w) • Tony Fleecs (a) Amy Mebberson, Fleecs (c)
The next in a series of spotlights focusing on everyone’s favorite Ponies! Rainbow Dash takes her job patrolling the skies very seriously, but she may have met her match when a group of mischievous cloud gremlins threaten to block out the sun! Rainbow Dash will have her hooves full when it comes to these pint-sized menaces!
*2 regular covers will be shipped in a 1-to-1 ratio
FC • 32 pages • $3.99
*Variant Cover:
Sabrina Alberghetti variant cover!

Bullet points:
• Continuing the smash My Little Pony phenomenon!
• Variant cover by My Little Pony senior storyboard artist Sabrina Alberghetti!

The success of the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic comic is pretty incredible. We are not wont to just say things like that though. We wanted to provide some data to back that up.

Join us after the break for a brief look at some of the numbers regarding the MLP comics released for November 2012.
[SOURCE]

My Little Pony Friendship is Magic #1 ranked 15th overall among the top 300 comics for November 2012.
Frankly, this number ranking would have been higher, but the timing coincided with Marvel’s relaunch of many titles which led to significant increases in sales for each of those books.

Top 10 IDW Books for November 2012

MLP vs Non-MLP IDW Titles:

Only one of IDW’s 29 titles was MLP related in November 2012, or 3.4% of its offerings.

MLP Sales vs Non-MLP IDW Sales by Volume

If you get nothing else from this post, understand that MLP accounted for almost 22% of IDW’s sales for November 2012 despite 28 other books being on sale. That is phenomonal.

Sales will likely be much lower for December since the first issue of any series gets an automatic boost. There will likely be fewer incentive covers as well for subsequent issues. This first book had many alternate covers that are all grouped together in this data. Unfortunately there wasn’t any data available with a breakdown on specific cover popularity or statistics.

Also, since this is the first issue, there isn’t much data to compare, but we will have more data to play with in the coming months, so expect this column to expand a bit with each successive month.

Katie Cook, writer of the new My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic comic from IDW, has posted an auction on ebay. The auction is for an original piece of art that she did for a variant cover of the first issue of the comic. This cover was exclusive to some comic shops in the Detroit area. She announced the aution on twitter:
@katiecandraw:

The original art for my variant cover for MLP #1 is up for sale! item.mobileweb.ebay.com/viewitem?itemI…

The piece is signed and comes in at 11 by 17 inches.

 

Another fun My Little Pony shirt has popped up at a shirt a day site. For the next couple of days over at TeeRaiders for only $10 you can get this cool shirt of a Care Bear that looks like but isn’t actually Grumpy Bear riding a pony that looks a whole lot like Pinkie Pie! What a bizarre crossover!

The shirt’s artist is Rollbiwan. You can check out more of his work at his Redbubble page.

The first issues of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic comic will be released in just 10 days and it’s already selling like pre-ordered hot cakes! The buzz is so great that there’s already a side series planned. Starting in February 2013 a new micro series focusing on individual ponies will hit stores. The first issue will focus on Twilight Sparkle as she goes on a hunt for a reclusive author Jade Singer. No doubt this character is inspired by the real life reclusive author J. D. Salinger, best know for writing Catcher in the Rye. This six issues series will focus on all six of the main characters. There are already two variant covers!

Speaking of variants, be sure to check out this exhaustive variant cover guide for the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic comic. Issue 1 already has a whopping 19 variants confirmed!

Check out the subscription variant cover for issue 1 of this micro series: