In which I inquire as to the scent of a comic company bigwig.

§ March 16th, 2007 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on In which I inquire as to the scent of a comic company bigwig.

  • From a conversation at work: what I would do if I were suddenly put in charge of Wizard:

    1. Every cover: Wolverine killing a different DC hero every month, except for the cover for the annual manga issue, which would feature Goku killing Superman.

    2. Every first issue in the price guide would be highlighted with that “GOING UP” color Wizard uses.

    3. Back cover ads would be for cigarettes, or maybe some brand of alcohol (like that ad that used to be on the back covers of Marvel’s old Epic Illustrated magazine).

    4. Centerfolds. “Silver Sable…as you’ve never seen her before!”

    …and that’s as far as folks at work let me go, when they realized that, given even the slightest taste of power, I would turn completely to the dark side.

  • A brief exchange I had, with a comics pro of my acquaintance:

    PRO: “So I met [DC Comics executive editor] Dan Didio at a convention….”

    ME: “Really? How’d he smell?”

    PRO: “…What?

    Honestly, I have no idea why that came out of my mouth. (The answer I eventually got: Mr. Didio smelled quite nice, thank you.) (And the pro in question and I had a case of the sillies that afternoon…he’s the one who encouraged that Wizard conversation, for example.)

  • Your Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8 #1 report – we’re down to our last two copies, and I imagine those won’t last too much past opening today. Now, as I’d stated here a while back, this book was supposed to have arrived last Wednesday, and when I received a number of requests that day, I took that as a clue to put in an immediate reorder, in advance of the book’s release, doubling our numbers. So, with any luck, and assuming this order doesn’t get canned at the last second (like my 300 reorder from a week ago), I should have a fresh batch of first printings of the comic in my hands by next Wednesday.

    Dark Horse has since announced a sell-out and a second printing, so I’m hoping my reorder got processed before the sell-out; availability of the comics was confirmed by the distributor at the time of the reorder, so we’ll see. A quick look at the eBay shows that there’s no crazy panic buying/pricing on the book (aside from the limited variant covers), so supply may be be readily matching demand, so far.

  • More ordering fun: doing our order adjustments for the forthcoming Fallen Son – Death of Captain America: Wolverine. Well, I’m guessing since we already had one major mass media news event on the topic, we’re probably not getting another one. And by the time it comes out, the people who only entered a comic shop because they were hypnotized by the news into buying a copy of Cap #25 will probably have all the copies of that comic they need, once the overprint starts getting distributed to shops across the country. Now, 1) it’s unlikely that they’ll even be aware that there are future issues to the storyline, or 2) even if they are aware, it’s just as unlikely that they’re going to want to come back to the comic shop week after week to get every installment, so chances aren’t very good that the artificial bump in sales to folks who don’t normally buy comics will continue. Given that this week’s tie-in to the event, Civil War: The Confession, which prominently features a pic of Cap’s bloodied shield on the cover, is currently selling within our expectations, I sort of have the impression that the “real world” demand for dead Cap stuff is limited solely to that Cap #25.

    Of course, once this “Fallen Son” stuff hits, it’ll be more explicitly tied in to the apparent death, which may attract the attention of any latecomers to the “hey, I just heard Captain America died!” game.

    Now, our regular customers’ interest in the event has been raised, so for that reason, we bumped up orders (reasonably, not crazily) on that first “Fallen Son” book. Here’s hoping we got the numbers right.

  • So, would you like to see drawings of Supergirl? Nice drawings, good drawings, drawings that you’re not going to get from DC’s currently running, and mostly appalling, Supergirl series?

    Well, Project Rooftop‘s got ’em. Here’s a sample reimagining, by Les McClaine:


    Whoa, hold on…cute, charming, anatomy approaching human norms…it’s almost the opposite of any Supergirl currently in the DCU*.

    Compare with this forthcoming Justice League cover by Michael Turner, featuring Power Girl. Sweet jumpin’ Judas on a pogo stick, this is an awful picture. Is it actually intended to be sexy? Because, really, it’s just plain goofy. I mean, laugh-out-loud goofy. Even the writer of the comic in question is making jokes about it.

  • As long as we’re looking at DC preview images, this Diamond Previews cover featuring the Sinestro Corps strikes deep into the heart of my inner fanboy. I loves me a Sinestro versus Green Lantern battle.
  • “You know your a comic book geek when…….”

    “You know your a comic book geek when you criticize comic book movies and describe the canon books in which the material came from. Ex. bridge seen in Spiderman was with Gwen stacy not MJ”

    “when you call GL rings OanPowerRings”

    “You know your a comic book geek when………. You know what X-Men tas is.”

    “You know when ur a comic book geek when u try to explain to a friend (that dosent read comics) why The Silver Surfer can kick Superman’s ass.”

    “You know your a comic book geek when……. every time you see a falling star you secretly hope it’s a dying alien who’s going to give you a power ring.”

    That last one just made me sad.

    My favorite:

    “You know you’re a comic book geek when…. You notice the original poster of this thread spelt you’re wrong”

    But then again, this one:

    “You know you a comic book geek when u contemplate which is better between hand beams and eye beams”

    …includes a link to an actual discussion of hand beams versus eye beams:

    “Which are better?

    Ok, if you were, somehow, given the option to have eyebeams or handbeams which would you pick? (both will be at the same power level)

    Let’s say it’s heat beams (for example)

    Eye-beams mean that while in a grapple with somone of equal or greater strength you have another avenue of attack – burn their face.

    Hand-beams mean that you can fire in two directions at once and in a grapple you could burn their hands.

    Glowing eyes look cool … but so do glowing fists.”

    Well said.

    And I was all ready to make fun of this:

    “Hand beams generally create explosions when they hit the ground, making them harder to dodge.”

    …but, um, I think he’s right. That’s how it usually works in comics. God help us all.

* The Supergirl currently appearing in Supergirl & The Legion of Super-Heroes aside, of course.

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