LADY DEATH - THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE - LadyDeathUniverse.com Top 25 Movie Franchises of All Time: #16 Attention, earthlings! IGN Movies has taken it upon itself to rank the "Top 25 Movie Franchises of All Time." We will count down from No. 25 to No. 1 each day for the next 25 days. We considered a number of factors in order to rank the best of the best. Be sure to check back each day and send us your feedback! Stax, Senior Editor: "You'll believe a man can fly," the ads for the 1978 original promised and we did. Brian Linder, Senior Editor: Without the Donner/Reeve Superman and its subsequent sequels, the superhero movie genre that's so prominent today might not even exist. Todd Gilchrist, Senior Editor: It's easy to look at the effects-driven spectacles of recent superhero movies and denigrate what was the first official "serious" big-screen adaptation of a comic book. Eric Moro, Editor in Chief: Perhaps no other property on our list of the "Top 25 Movie Franchises of All Time" has entrenched itself so deep into the pop culture psyche than No. 16, Superman.
Batman, Superman comic books set records for sale price Even through his shaded glasses, Tim Burton clearly was wide-eyed. The director who once begat a new legion of "Batman" fans was motioning toward the crowd at San Diego Comic-Con as he said, "I can't believe just how big it's gotten." He was referring not just to the physical size of the most recent convention, but also to the existential sense of this comics world itself: The scene shone a white-hot Bat light on just how massive comics have become as a financial force. Comics can flex such monetary muscle, even the insiders sometimes flinch. The comics world delivered a symbolic one-two punch when the Man of Steel and, just three days later, the Caped Crusader fetched record-setting million-dollar prices at comic-book sales. Holy Sotheby's, Batman. Why are people suddenly paying seven-figures for comic books? People, of course, could always invest in precious metals, so why Golden Age comics now? Once Superman crossed the million-dollar threshold, Batman was quick to follow.
DC Comics Relaunch Beats Marvel in 2011 Sales Figures (Exclusive) Courtesy of DC Comics The movies based on Marvel comic-book heroes (Thor, Captain America) might have bested their DC Comics-inspired rival (Green Lantern) at the box office in 2011, but DC can claim one major victory. PHOTOS: Comic Book Characters in Dispute The Warner Bros.-owned publisher’s gamble to relaunch its entire line of comics with 52 new series has hit a home run, outselling Marvel books since the reboot went wide in September. The “New 52” also helped reverse a four-year industry trend of downward sales, albeit with overall sales growth of just 1 percent to 2 percent. According to DC, its top books (Figures are accurate as of Dec. 13, 2011.) were: Those numbers, accurate as of Dec 13, easily rank those books as some of the decade's best. By contrast, Marvel’s best-selling 2011 comic was Ultimate Spider-Man no. 160, which featured the death of the hero and shipped 159,355 copies in June. DC’s 2011 success coincides with its strong push into digital.