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Also: 14% drop in units sold, anime accounts for 23% of the market Market research firm GfK Japan revealed last week that the total Blu-ray Disc and DVD home video market for the first half (January-June) of 2017 had reduced in both sales volume and revenue compared to the same period in 2016. The market moved 17.23 million units in the time period, which is a 14% decrease from last year. The market earned 82.6 billion yen (about US$755 million), a 10% decrease from last year. The figures do not count purchases by rental stores. While sales of Blu-ray Disc units have gone down, they account for a higher proportion (51%) of the total. Since Blu-ray Discs have a higher average price, this change in proportion may account for some of the drop in sales volume. Sales of Japanese anime now account for 23% of the market, down from 24% last year. In addition, the anime home video market alone has seen at least a 10% decrease from last year. Japanese anime is the second-largest c

Spider-Man is one of the most popular characters in comic book history. And across all the films, comics, TV shows and games we’ve seen hundreds of different looks for the wall-crawler. Some have become just as iconic as the original red and blue costume, like Miles Morales’ red and black suit. In each of the movies, we’ve seen Peter designing his new costume or tinkering with his current one. Because of the type of hero that he is, artists have a lot of free rein with the character. Comics gave us the Symbiote black suit, the Iron Spider costume and then there’s the Spider-Verse, in which resides hundreds of different versions of our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, some great and some not so much. RELATED: A Whole Other League: 15 Insane Fan-Designed Versions Of The Justice League Thankfully, fan artists can create some incredible pieces of work that play up on the different aspects of Peter Parker. For example, many have used the free running/parkour aspect of his heroics and inco

Writer Rick Remender and artist Wes Craig’s creator-owned series Deadly Class takes place at the clandestine King’s Dominion School of the Deadly Arts, where the adolescent children of criminals, spies and terrorists train to become the next generation of assassins. As such, it has all the machinations, personal drama and raging hormones of a normal high school, but conflicts between students can — and will — become lethal, especially if they’re school-sanctioned. One of the most brutal bouts of violence came when the freshmen class of 1987 were forced to battle each other. Recent issues of the Image Comics series, which are set in 1988, have revealed new developments about the survivors of that conflict while bouncing those sophomores off the new freshmen class. Those reveals and interactions have lit the match of several powder kegs and in October’s Deadly Class #31 they’ll explode. RELATED: Remender & Opeña’s Seven to Eternity: The New Twists, Turns & Characters CBR spoke

Company owns Uta no Prince Sama, Di Gi Charat, Galaxy Angel franchises Media company Broccoli reported on Friday that its individual sales from the March 1 through August 31 time period as 2.252 billion yen (about US$20.13 million), a 19.17% decrease from the same period last year. The company's operating income is 99 million yen (about US$885,328), a 73.39% drop from the same period last year, with an operating profit of 85 million yen (about US$760,130), a 76.8% drop. Operating profit from sales dropped from 13.15% during the same period last year to 3.77% this year. The company predicted that its operating income for the 12-month period from March 1, 2017 to February 28, 2018 would be 700 million yen (about US$6.25 million), but as of the halfway point the company is at 14.14% of that goal. Broccoli is known for its media franchises Di Gi Charat, Galaxy Angel, Aquarian Age, Z/X Zillions of enemy X, Uta no Prince Sama, and Kamigami no Asobi, all of which have inspired

Yoshimasa Ikeda: Decline mostly driven by Yu-Gi-Oh!, Duel Masters sales drops Future Card Buddyfight card game co-creator and Studio Iketti President Yoshimasa Ikeda revealed last week that the Japanese card game market achieved sales of 5.45 billion yen (about US$47 million) for September this year, an over 40% drop from September 2016's 9.34 billion yen (about US$81 million). Ikeda noted he received his information from research firm Media Create. Ikeda attributed most of the loss to the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game's dropping in sales by 52% compared to sales in September 2016. Duel Masters similarly displayed a 32% drop in sales compared to sales in September 2016. Yu-Gi-Oh! and Duel Masters are the #1 and #2 highest-selling card games in Japan for the past 17 years, but Ikeda noted that the distance between their gross sales have never been closer than this fiscal year, with Yu-Gi-Oh! grossing 10.4 billion yen (about US$91 million) from April to September this year, and Duel

Live-action Saiki Kusuo drops to #7, Sensei! to #8 The Eiga Kirakira ☆ Precure a la Mode: Paris to! Omoide no Mille-Feuille!​ (Kirakira ☆ Precure a la Mode the Movie: With Paris! Mille-Feuille of Memories) anime film dropped from #1 to #4 in tickets sold at the Japanese box office in its second week during the November 4-5 weekend. The film, which is the 23rd in the Precure anime franchise, earned 120,520,400 yen (about US$1 million) over the weekend, and has earned a cumulative 450 million yen (about US$3.9 million). In its opening weekend, the film sold 170,659 tickets on 217 screens to earn 193,101,900 yen (about US$1.7 million). In the anime's story, the Precure members go to France as part of a cooking competition. The film is related to the Kirakira ☆ Precure a la Mode television anime, the 14th entry in the Precure series, that premiered in February. The live-action film of Shūichi Asō's Saiki Kusuo no Psi Nan (The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.) manga fell from #4 t

A day after officially debuting on Rotten Tomatoes with an aggregate score of 43 percent, Warner Bros.’ Justice League has seen its rating drop even further. As of this writing, the film stands at 37 percent on the Tomatometer, well below the 92 percent the DC Extended Universe’s previous release, Wonder Woman, scored. REVIEW: Superman Mesmerizes, But Uneven Justice League Stumbles When the movie’s initial rating leaked ahead of time via the social app Flixter, it had a disappointing but perhaps not lethal 48 percent Tomatometer rating. The 5 percent drop from that to the 43 percent it had when Rotten Tomatoes officially announced its rating was certainly not the development Warner Bros. executives were hoping for, and the further drop overnight does not bode well for the film’s ultimate rating. At this point, the big-budget ensemble is lagging behind Man of Steel (55 percent), but remains ahead of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (27 percent) and Suicide Sq

Following a bit of prognostication, and a pair of cryptic clues from directors Joe and Anthony Russo, we finally have official word that the teaser trailer for Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War will debut on Wednesday. Although that’s a little sooner than anyone expected, one question remained: when on Wednesday? RELATED: Marvel Debuts First Avengers: Infinity War Poster That window has been narrowed, at least a little, by an announcement that ABC’s Good Morning America will host the trailer’s world premiere. That means sometime between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. ET, although odds lean toward the latter, ensuring that viewers stick around for the official first look at the highly anticipated Marvel Studios release. Tomorrow.@Avengers: #InfinityWar. World trailer premiere. Only on @GMA. pic.twitter.com/ZWTEAVuVpC — Good Morning America (@GMA) November 28, 2017 It’s a bit of corporate synergy, as Disney owns both ABC and Marvel Studios. The entertainment

Marvel has dropped a teaser trailer for Wolverine: The Long Night, a scripted podcast starring The Hobbit star Richard Armitage as the X-Men’s Wolverine. The teaser, which is available to listen to on Stitcher’s website, teases a murder mystery that appears to lead back to Logan. The trailer opens with a man recalling an encounter with Wolverine. He describes Logan as a wild man with a bloody face who runs through the woods with wolves. The teaser then cuts to a flurry of other voices, which refer to Wolverine’s claws and the body of a young girl who was discovered cut “in ribbons” on a hiking trail. It also provides the first clip of Armitage in his role as Logan. RELATED: Richard Armitage Plays Wolverine In Serial-Inspired Scripted Podcast The synopsis for Wolverine: The Long Night reads: The story begins with two agents, Sally Pierce (Celia Keenan-Bolger) and Tad Marshall (Ato Essandoh), who arrive in the fictional town of Burns, Alaska, to investigat

As Batman and Catwoman‘s nuptials rapidly approach this July 4 in the pages of Batman #50, prolific cosplayer Marissa Floro, known in the cosplay community as Celeste Orchid, has crafted an immaculately detailed re-creation of Selina Kyle’s wedding dress as shared on her Twitter feed and YouTube channel. Here is my newest COSPLAY!! It's Catwoman herself in… A WEDDING DRESS!! Which I died when I saw it. I had to create such a gown. ALSO I AM SO EXCITED FOR THE NEW #CATWOMAN COMIC BOOK SERIES!!! PLEASE @Joelle_Jones KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK 💜 pic.twitter.com/efYKsFzGsR — Marissa Floro (@CelesteOrchid) April 8, 2018 I'm so overwhelmed by the support the community has given me. Thank you so much! Words can't even describe my happiness! Even @TomKingTK and @Joelle_Jones have retweeted the gown. I'm just so happy to recreate such a fashion-comic book masterpiece! Selina is still my fav!!<3 pic.twitter.com/U5qkB91kEt — Marissa Floro (@CelesteOrch