Bloggasm

I was as astonished as anyone that the movie 300 managed to make $70 million in its opening weekend. I mean, I knew the movie had some hype to it, but I thought it was mostly within the comic and film geek world.

It turns out that the small comic book company Dark Horse Comics, wasn’t very prepared for the onslaught of book sales following the movie’s success. Which is kind of silly really since this wasn’t the first time they’ve had a comic book of theirs turned into a movie.

On the heels of my musings about 300’s “gateway” potential, and its record-breaking weekend at the box office, ICv2 is reporting that Diamond, the book’s exclusive distributor to both the direct and mainstream markets, was out of stock of the $30 hardcover as of last Thursday, March 8th. In this case, though, the finger of blame doesn’t point at the much-maligned monopoly, but rather at the publisher, Dark Horse, who once again has a hit movie tie-in (Hellboy, Sin City) but is faced with a shortage of books to fully take advantage of it.

The company quickly sold out of its 15,000-copy print run, and their next shipment will barely cover the back orders. If they don’t act quickly, they might lose out on a lot of the 300 craze and lose a lot of potential profits as well.