Pal Sean gave me Toy Dolls: The Complete Singles for Christmas, and that’s what I’m listening to as I write this.

§ December 24th, 2007 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on Pal Sean gave me Toy Dolls: The Complete Singles for Christmas, and that’s what I’m listening to as I write this.

  • You know, it seems to me that the period around Christmas and the New Year was traditionally a time when Marvel and DC would kinda scale back the new releases a bit, giving us a small end-of-the-year breather and taking into consideration the fact that, maybe, folks might be interested in doing stuff other than keeping up on the latest funnybook releases.

    Well, this coming New Comics Day (Friday, not Wednesday, remember) will feature 24 new DC releases (not counting the Wildstorm imprint) and 28 new Marvel releases (assuming I counted correctly), not to mention an onslaught of other new comics and books being unleashed on us this week. The result…probably the largest distributor invoice we’ve had this year, outside the week we received all the Free Comic Book Day giveaways.

    Part of the problem is late shipping…over the last few weeks I’ve been noticing a few items we ordered for summer sales finally arriving in time for…well, Thanksgiving. This latest invoice has a handful of items with June item codes, which should have been in our hands sometime in September, ideally. And the other problem is the $3.99 price point on those comics that you have to order a lot of to meet demand. A couple hundred copies of Amazing Spider-Man #545 at $3.99 a pop, even with the distributor discount, still adds up to a sizable chunk of change you gotta dish out. They should pay for themselves, but then there’s the stuff that doesn’t perform to expectations that invariably arrives with every shipment, and add in the fact that the delayed shipping schedule will adversely affect sales…well, let’s just say if you get a lot of Christmas money this year, please share some of it with your local retailer, because he or she’s gonna need it.

    Here’s hoping the stuff arriving the week of the New Year doesn’t amount to much.

  • I notice one of the titles coming in this week is Iron Man, sales for which, at least for us, are barely negligible. It used to be a solid mid-range seller, at least until around, more or less, the period surrounding Marvel’s Civil War event.

    Now, it could just be a coincidence…maybe our clientele just decided that the current Iron Man book just wasn’t to their tastes. But a part of me can’t help but wonder if making Iron Man, for all intents and purposes, the bad guy in the Civil War series somehow impacted sales on the Iron Man title. I could be reading too much into it, but it’s something to think about.

    I’m also curious if the producers of the Iron Man movie know what Marvel did to their character. Given the tail-wagging-the-dog nature of the relationship between comic books and their film adaptations, I wonder if the film’s producers, if they’re taking notice of the comic book at all, will insist on some character repair prior to the movie’s release.

  • In my continuing efforts to keep you updated on Mystery Science Theatre news, which has precious little to do with comic books, I realize, but I loved that show and I’m gonna use my weblog to talk about it…er, that sentence got away from me a bit, so let me throw a period in here somewhere and start fresh. There. Okay, MST3K creator Joel Hodgson, along with other original cast members, have finally launched their first Cinematic Titanic DVD release The Oozing Skull, the trailer for which you can see right here, and you can read more about the project (and where to order it) at the Cinematic Titanic weblog.

    Here’s a still I took from the trailer, to give you an idea of what it’s like:


    Like MST3K, the folks doing the riffing are visible onscreen, but unlike MST3K, they’re standing at the bottom corners rather than sitting along the bottom. And judging by the trailer, there appears to be more gag interaction with the film’s image, with the CT cast using props to, say, scrub a character’s face or, at one point, lower chandeliers into the picture. Not sure what the chandelier thing is about, but I can’t wait to see.

  • Due to the Friday release of the new funnybooks, which also includes the newest Diamond Previews catalog, my monthly “End of Civilization” post may be delayed ’til Monday. Sorry about that, but trying to get EoC done in one night is enough of a task during the week. Trying to squeeze it in on a Friday or Saturday night may end my civilization, frankly.

    So, civilization ends next Monday. Tell your friends, warn the neighbors.

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