Plum

According to Nintendo, Mario is no longer a plumber. As spotted by Kotaku, the character’s profile on Nintendo’s official Japanese-language website states that Mario used to be a plumber: All around sporty, whether it’s tennis or baseball, soccer or car racing, he [Mario] does everything cool. As a matter of fact, he also seems to have worked as a plumber a long time ago… The Nintendo website also features profiles on other prominent characters in the Super Mario Bros. game series, including Luigi, Princess Peach, Toad, Bowser, Yoshi, Daisy, Wario, Waluigi, Rosetta, Bowser Jr., Boo, Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong. RELATED: Could Danny DeVito Have Saved the ‘Super Mario Bros.’ Movie? When Mario was introduced in the 1981 Donkey Kong arcade game, the character was known only as Jumpman. Video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto said that the character was originally a carpenter, since the game took place on a construction site. 

Despite continued strong sales from DC Comics’ two event series, Dark Nights: Metal and Doomsday Clock and its still dominant Batman franchise, plus Marvel’s event and Spider-Man titles, December 2017 closed out the year as a down month for the Direct Market. DC accounted for six of the top ten best selling comics for the month, including the top two spots, with Marvel publishing the other four. RELATED: Mayo Report: DC’s Events Led to Higher Sales than Marvel in November While DC took over the top spot in dollars, accounting for 34.54% of the Direct Market’s overall sales, Marvel remained the number one publisher when it comes to units sold, with a 38.81% market share compared to DC’s 37.65%. Marvel accounted for 33.80% of the month’s dollar sales. Overall, the Direct Market’s individual issue sales declined 16.13% in dollars and 14.05% in units versus November 2017. Graphic Novels were down as well, 21.95% and 10.88%. All told, the market