SAMWAF

I'll have to re-read it more in depth, I sped-read through it last night. First impressions: This is going to be really nit-picky, but I absolutely hate the binding on the physical copy. The first book was smyth sewn (or some variant), which means the pages lie flat. For some inexplicable reason, volume 2 was made with a cheaper perfect (glued) binding, which means the pages don't open as flat. This is annoying in general, but much more so in a graphic novel/comic, where there no margins and you have double spreads, meaning every millimeter counts. Story wise, I think they handled pacing better. But clearly the biggest thing to talk about is the artwork. I do think the artwork is better, but I'll echo what jofwu said about confusing. I think the sand parts were the most confusing, because the artist is adding some glowing effect. Kenton should be able to use three streams at this point, but it's really not at all clear how he's manipulating the sand or what a stream is. The artist change in the last chapter is a bit jarring. The artwork is more "simplistic." I do like it because I think it's more clear and conveys action / intention better. For example, I feel like it's easier to distinguish people with the new art style. On the other hand, even though I hated the old art style, I feel like it contained a lot more detail. I suppose that's a toss-up, though, since it also contributed to the "busy" feel and difficulty in discerning people/action in the artwork. Overall, this volume is better than the first one (aside from the terrible binding), but I can't feel as if the series overall was done a disservice in the graphic novel format from the bad/confusing execution.

I would say it's probably not about expecting demand but rather on executing. Brandon's normal publishers are imprints of the world's largest publishers. They have the ability to print and warehouse any number of books. Dynamite probably wouldn't want to put up the money to print a million copies of these books, if they don't know how much they're going to sell. Or maybe they couldn't print that many if they wanted to, because they literally don't have enough money to give to the printing press for fear it would bankrupt the rest of their operations. It looks like Dynamite has had 0 books on the NY Times Best seller list in 2013 (http://www.comicsbeat.com/who-sold-what-new-york-times-graphic-novel-bestsellers-2013/) and maybe 1 book in 2014 (http://www.comicsbeat.com/what-a-year-that-was-bestselling-graphic-novels-from-the-2014-new-york-times-bestseller-lists/). White Sand is currently #2 on the NY Times list for graphic novels. How do you compare that to Tor (Macmillan) or Gollancz (Hachette) or Marvel/DC, who field best sellers on a weekly basis? You can't. But waiting might not be terrible anyway, as there will probably be fixes to some of the errors in the first edition.

The thing to remember is that the publisher of this book, Dynamite, is a relatively small company. They don't have the resources of Brandon's normal publisher(s). It's out of stock everywhere as demand has overwhelmed them, and I assume it will stay that way for a bit until they print more.

No, you didn't misunderstand, that was what I was going for. @Pathfinder lost me a bit (even though I read the prose), but I guess we shouldn't expand too much because it's the wrong forum. I don't think 1 is correct, though, because 100 is pretty far away from unity.

Was a hundred fools. I think 100 might be the "mystical number" on Taldain, as there are 100 minutes to an hour.

So, I have a general complaint about colors but I'm not sure if this qualifies as a typo. Color usage doesn't seem to be super consistent in the comics. For example, some people have blue eyes, and sometimes their eyes are just kinda drawn with browns or generally unclear. Obviously if this is a super long perspective shot, I don't expect people's eyes to be drawn, but take a look at Chapter 1, Page 3-5. Sometimes Praxton's eyes are clear light blue, and sometimes it's brown-ish. Again, maybe I'm just being nit-picky. Similar complaint for the sand master sashes. Sometimes the colors aren't so clear and/or consistent. Especially since brown, tan, and cream are all the same color (kinda), just different hues. In the big meeting of the entire Diem, each rank of sand masters is set out with colored flags indicating their rank. The colors at this meeting are gold, yellow, dark blue, gray? light blue?, brown, tan, cream?. But then in other instances, there's light blue sashes and maybe even a black sash seen. There's also a clear error with the sashes in Chapter 1, page 2-3, where there's two instances of someone with a green sash. Based on what I infer from the comics and what I read from the prose version, there isn't a rank green sash. Maybe there's some new, unexplained character with a rank indicated by a green sash that isn't explained, but it feels like it's an error. Someone else pointed this out in some other thread, but Praxton should be bald. He's drawn with hair in Chapter 1, pages 4-5.

Chapter 5, 4th page, first panel: "No Elisians<SPACE>," -- there's an extra space between "Elisians" and the comma. Also, is someone from Team Sanderson going to take a look at this thread, or someone from Dynamite...?

Yes. I got mine three days ago.

This is a dumb question, but what newsletter is this? The one on Brandon's website? I literally subscribed on Friday and got an old issue (January 2016). Am I missing something?

Well, I suppose everyone in this thread will hate me since I got my copy in 4 hours...

I really, really don't know which guy is Cynder and which one is Jon Acron. On the 6th page of Chapter 4, the comic seems to be interchanging the names in the same panel unless I am confusing the intent of that whole panel. In any case, the first two panels are also at odds with how they are initially introduced. Edit: In looking through the rest of the book, it seems that the initial scene introducing them might be incorrect? There's a lot more references to the Blue Overcoat as being Cynder and the White Overcoat as being Jon. Although, again, C4 P6 has them referring to the same person using both names in the same panel. Ultimately, I guess it doesn't even matter because I never even realized that Background Sidekick Duo had incorrect names in my first read-through.