In which Mike goes on too long about too many things, and clearly does not stop soon enough.
I rented the first disc of the new Saturday Night Live Season One set from Netflix, and as I was watching it, I noticed, for the very first time in all my years of SNL-watching, the Marvel Comics Planet of the Apes cameo in the opening montage:
Specifically, it appears to be issue #14, dated November 1975, which means the photo was probably shot in the late summer or very early fall.
Okay, it’s nowhere near as cool as spotting Amazing Fantasy #15 in the background of a ’60s crime show, but still, I can’t believe I’ve missed that in all the reruns and such I’ve watched over the decades.
In other news:
- I hadn’t mentioned it, but I finally, finally gave up on buying every issue of Alter Ego, Roy Thomas’ mag of comics history and interviews. Not that I don’t like it…I do, I just don’t seem to have the time to sit down and read it any more. And I know it’s monthly, or every six weeks, or something like that, but I swear to God it feels like it’s weekly, sometimes, and that’s a massive chunk of text to plow through, particularly when you’re otherwise busy having a life or, ahem, writing a daily weblog.
I think I’m better served just buying the occasional Twomorrows mag when it has something I’m genuinely interested in, like I did with last week’s Back Issue, rather than just accumulating a pile of magazines that I may or may not ever get around to reading. You know, like normal human beings do, rather that sad, old comic fans like me who have been trained by the hobby to get every issue, to have a “complete set.”
- 52 SPOILERS: Re: the return of you-know-who in last week’s 52…I told you so. ‘Course, I didn’t think they were going to reveal him as Supernova, as that was the painfully obvious solution and I expected more of a twist than that — I was kinda hoping it would be Wally West, for no good reason I can explain. Anyway, there still could be a twist, if it actually turns to be not the original character, but the ancestor of the character discovered earlier in the series. Or maybe not.
- I’m really wishy-washy about the whole “spoiler” thing. I try to play coy, but in my discussion I invariably give everything away. And Darth Vader is Luke’s father.
- Speaking of 52 spoilers, the editorial page for last issue had a secret hidden message…old hat for Groo fans but not something modern superhero fans are accustomed to. It reminds me slightly of the old coded fan club messages in ’40s comics, detailing events in future issues, reminding kids to drink their milk and stick it to Hitler and all that.
Anyway, the secret’s given away on the first page of this Newsarama forum, and it’s not much of a secret, really, aside from it being explicitly connected to events in 52, somehow.
The secret (and again, SPOILER ALERT, if you don’t want to know) is that DC’s Multiverse — their elaborate network of parallel Earths, done away with in Crisis on Infinite Earths twenty years ago, and revisited in Infinite Crisis just last year — is being reestablished.
That got me to pondering…in the old days, the parallel Earth “our” heroes (the Earth-1 folk) most interacted with was Earth-2, home of the Golden Age heroes, Infinity Inc., Justice Society, and so on. Well, because of the original Crisis, all those Earth-2 folk are now part of the standard DC Universe Earth. And, given the number of times the characters from this series have popped up in DCU books lately, I’m thinking the alternate future of Kingdom Come is going to take the position of the new Earth-2 as being the parallel universe destination of choice for our heroes. Like I said, just a random thought, could be totally off-base, but completely worth it so I could write the phrase “alternate future of Kingdom Come is going to take the position of the new Earth-2″ — you won’t find that in Newsweek, pal.
- The Fantagraphics store is Seattle is having a 25 Years of Love & Rockets” exhibition from February 10th through March 7th. If you’re in the area, stop in and check it out…the Hernandez Bros. are swell guys and fully deserve their accolades. Details at the link.
- Now I had to reorder more copies of Star Wars: Legacy #0, the special introductory comic to the series with the 25-cent cover price. I know comic companies don’t usually go back to print on the cheapie books, so for our distributor still have copies six months or so after the initial release, particularly for a popular comic such as this, means that Dark Horse must have printed tons of the thing. (And made the person who paid $19.31 for it in the auction I talked about probably feel really, really dumb.)
For some reason, as I was putting together the order on Sunday, I started to break down the costs and profits on this comic. So I order 20 copies, which, at our cost, are $0.1125 apiece, which works out to a total of $2.25. If we sell them all, that gives us a profit of $2.75.
I then had the idea of placing them in the back issue bin with other previous issues of Star Wars: Legacy, rather than having them on the Cheapie Comic Spinner Rack with the rest of the promotionally-priced funnybooks the comic companies have released, where perhaps folks interested in the Legacy series might miss them. Of course, if I put them in the back issues, I’ll have to bag them up to protect them from damage, which means an additional $0.02 wholesale cost per bag per comic, bringing our potential profit down to $2.35 on these 20 issues. That’s assuming, of course, I put all 20 in the bins, rather than, as I’m more likely to do, splitting them between the bins and the spinner rack.
Plus, there’s the cost of the removable labels that I’d use to seal the bags, which works out to about 1/3 of a cent each…and I wouldn’t use our specially-printed price labels on the front, since I’d just sell them for cover price anyway. Oh, and the labor: there’s the cost of having employee Aaron bust open the distributor box, pull out the comics, count them, bag ’em and rack ’em, and so on.
I don’t know why I do this to myself. It’s like picking at a scab. And don’t take it the wrong way…I’m not complaining about the price point being too low to bother with it, like some folks did with the $1.99 Fell comic. I know the comic’s a promotional tool, which is what we’re paying for…I’m just amusing myself by juggling some of the numbers around.
- I apologize in advance: this is old news, I know, but for some reason I’ve been enjoying inflicting it on people again lately, and now it’s your turn. The most terrifying thing you will ever read…Harry Knowles’ Blade 2 review. Warning: contains sexually explicit text, will also destroy your will to live and your ability to enjoy anything good and wholesome in the world.
