The Top 50 Graphic Novels in Canada, courtesy of BookManager. The full list is available here. The list is compiled by BookManager based on sales through over 400 independent bookstores. Sales through comic shops and larger retailers like Chapters-Indigo are not reflected in this list. For balance, you might want to try the Amazon.ca and Chapters-Indigo lists. This list has two parts, the top 50 overall and (at the bottom) the top 30 by Canadian creators. See here for last week’s list. I’ve added last week’s ranking in parentheses, with a (-) indicating an absence from the top 50 last week –although books that were not in the top 50 last week were most likely in the top 100, with the possible exception of a few newly published hits.

Top 50 Comics and Graphic Novels in Canada

1. (1) Naruto 28, Masashi Kishimoto (VIZ)
2. (2) Fruits Basket 19, Natsuki Takay (Tokyopop)
3. (3) Vampire Knight 4, Matsuri Hino (VIZ)
4. (-) Home Sweat Home, Lynn Johnston (Andrews McMeel)
5. (5) Naruto 27, Masashi Kishimoto (VIZ)
6. (4) Fullmetal Alchemist 16, Hiromu Arakawa (VIZ)
7. (19) Dark Wraith of Shannara, Terry Brooks et al (Random House)
8. (30) Skim, Mariko Tamaki/Jillian Tamaki (Groundwood)
9. (10) Naruto 1, Masashi Kishimoto (VIZ)
10. (9) Death Note 1, Tsugumi Ohba Takeshi Obata (VIZ)
11. (6) Negima! 17: Magister Negi Magi, Toshifumi/Hiroe (Random House)
12. (7) Senior’s Discount, Lynn Johnston (Andrews McMeel)
13. (8) Death Note 2, Tsugumi Ohba Takeshi Obata (VIZ)
14. (13) Death Note 4, Tsugumi Ohba Takeshi Obata (VIZ)
15. (11) Naruto 2, Masashi Kishimoto (VIZ)
16. (-) Naruto 9, Masashi Kishimoto (VIZ)
17. (39) Naruto 4, Masashi Kishimoto (VIZ)
18. (12) Jellaby, Kean Soo (Hyperion)
19. (-) Bleach 2, Tite Kubo (VIZ)
20. (21) Garfield Goes Bananas, Jim Davis (Random House)
—–
21. (33) Persepolis 1, Marjane Satrapi (Pantheon)
22. (-) Naruto 10, Masashi Kishimoto (VIZ)
23. (14) Complete Persepolis, Satrapi (Knopf)
24. (23) Bleach 22, Tite Kubo (VIZ)
25. (15) Vampire Knight 2, Matsuri Hino (VIZ)
26. (17) Naruto 3, Masashi Kishimoto (VIZ)
27. (-) Louis Riel, Chester Brown (D+Q)
28. (20) Death Note 3, Tsugumi Ohba Takeshi Obata (VIZ)
29. (49) One Piece 17, Eiichiro Oda (VIZ)
30. (16) Naruto 26, Masashi Kishimoto (VIZ)
31. (-) Bleach 1, Tite Kubo (VIZ)
32. (32) Naruto 24, Masashi Kishimoto (VIZ)
33. (18) Death Note 12, Tsugumi Ohba Takeshi Obata (VIZ)
34. (-) Naruto 25, Masashi Kishimoto (VIZ)
35. (-) Naruto 6, Masashi Kishimoto (VIZ)
36. (-) Naruto 8, Masashi Kishimoto (VIZ)
37. (-) High School Debut 2, Kazune Kawahara (VIZ)
38. (22) Fruits Basket 1, Natsuki Takaya (Tokyopop)
39. (-) Naruto 7, Masashi Kishimoto (VIZ)
40. (26) Death Note 13, Tsugumi Ohba Takeshi Obata (VIZ)
—–
41. (-) Fairy Tail 1, Hiro Mashima (Random House)
42. (27) Death Note 7, Tsugumi Ohba Takeshi Obata (VIZ)
43. (24) Naruto 20, Masashi Kishimoto (VIZ)
44. (40) Death Note 6, Tsugumi Ohba Takeshi Obata (VIZ)
45. (46) Naruto 5, Masashi Kishimoto (VIZ)
46. (-) Best of Pokemon Adventures: Red:Red, Hidenori Kusaka Mato (VIZ)
47. (50) Vampire Knight 1, Matsuri Hino (VIZ)
48. (-) Asterix the Gaul, Goscinny/Uderzo (Orion)
49. (25) Naruto 19, Masashi Kishimoto (VIZ)
50. (38) Naruto 22, Masashi Kishimoto (VIZ)

A strong debut (#4) for the latest Lynn Johnston collection, published last week. The pattern that emerges from looking at these lists over a period of weeks is that certain books, especially manga series, continuously jostle with each other, sliding up and down the longer list on the strength of a new volume or a spate of purchases for the kiddies.

The BookManager List is a wondrous, scary place, where everyone from Todd Hignite to Charles Schulz to Dan DeCarlo to Oor Willie to Avril Lavigne duke it out and where one sale in one tiny bookstore can move a book from #999 to #200. This is also the place where you find books by Canadian creators and where our Canadian Top 25 comes from:

Sequential’s All-Canadian Top 30
from BookManager

1. (-) Home Sweat Home, Lynn Johnston (Andrews McMeel)
2. (3) Skim, Mariko Tamaki/Jillian Tamaki (Groundwood)
3. (2) Jellaby, Kean Soo (Hyperion)
4. (1) Senior’s Discount, Lynn Johnston (Andrews McMeel)
5. (3) Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography, Chester Brown (D+Q)
6. (22) Zombies Calling!, Faith Erins Hicks (Slave Labor)
7. (5) The Spirit (Hardcover), Darwyn Cooke Jeph Loeb J Bone (DC)
8. (8) Essex County 1: Tales From the Farm, Jeff Lemire (Top Shelf)
9. (6) The New Frontier 2 (Paperback), Darwyn Cooke (DC)
10. (7) Paul Goes Fishing, Michel Rabagliati (D+Q)
—–
11. (10) Extraction!: a comix reportage, Tessier/Dubois (Cumulous)
12. (11) Teaching is a Learning Experience!, Lynn Johnston (Andrews McMeel)
13. (-) The New Frontier 1 (Paperback), Darwyn Cooke (DC)
14. (13) I Never Liked You, Chester Brown (D+Q)
15. (14) She’s Turning into One of Them!, Lynn Johnston (Andrews McMeel)
16. (15) Keep the Home Fries Burning, Lynn Johnston (Andrews McMeel)
17. (16) Milk Teeth, Julie Morstad (D+Q)
18. (20) Northwest Passage, Scott Chantler (Oni)
19. (21) Just One More Hug, Lynn Johnston (Andrews McMeel)
20. (23) Middle Aged Spread, Lynn Johnston (Andrews McMeel)
—–
21. (9) Invaders from the North: How Canada Conquered the Comic Book Universe, John Bell (Dundurn)
22. (-) Rememebering Farley, Lynn Johnston (Andrews McMeel)
23. (26) White Rapids, Pascal Blanchet (D+Q)
24. (29) Dramacon 3, Svetlana Chmakova (Tokyopop)
25. (-) Graphic Witness, George F Walker (Firefly)
26. (17) Therefore Repent! Jim Munroe Salgood Sam (NMK/IDW)
27. (18) Scott Pilgrim 4, Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni)
28. (19) Never Wink at a Worried Woman, Lynn Johnston (Andrews McMeel)
29. (-) 365 Days, Julie Doucet (D+Q)
30. (24) The BackBench Collection, Graham Harrop (Ronsdale)

No new entries, only the return of previous listers –with the exception of #1.