Graphic Books Best Sellers: \'Green Lanterns Corps\' Tops the List

By GEORGE GENE GUSTINES

Three new books are at the top of the graphic books hardcover best-seller list this week. They are all from DC Comics, but that's about all they have in common. “Green Lantern Corps,” volume 1, at No. 1, is part of the company's “New 52” initiative, which last year reintroduced its characters as if for the first time. Some heroes, like Firestorm, were totally remade; some were significantly adjusted (Batgirl can walk again!); and others continued pretty much as they had been. “Green Lanterns Corps” is largely in that last category: it was and continues to be a galactic police organization trying to bring justice to every corner of the universe.

At No. 2 is the third book of the deluxe edition of “100 Bullets,” a noir series about a man named Graves who gives wronged people an untraceable gun to exact revenge. The original series lasted 100 issues and ran from 1999 through 2009. John Hodgman reviewed th e collected edition, “Samurai,” back in 2004. “Starting some 20 issues in, untying all its knotted character characters and back stories made my brain hurt,” he wrote. But when he started at the beginning, “the cumulative accomplishment of the story became clear. For while the backbone plot is occasionally preposterous, the self-contained, beautiful and uncompromising little crime stories that are its vertebrae are often astonishing.”

“World of Warcraft: Pearl of Pandaria” is at No. 3. It explores the world of the online role-playing game, of which I'm woefully unfamiliar. In the story, readers meet “the Pandaren, one of the most beloved (and mysterious) races in World of Warcraft,” or so the publisher's blurb says. Here's more: “The tale introduces Li Li Stormstout, a precious young student who lives atop a giant turtle called Shen-zin Su.”

As always, the complete best-seller lists can be found here, along w ith an explanation of how they were assembled.