"No more questions, please…no more questions."
- The big news from the last week is of course Diamond, the industry’s primary distributor, raising minimum order levels for publishers. You can’t meet Diamond’s cutoff, Diamond ain’t gonna carry you. That link has a smattering of initial reactions to the decision, which seems to be bad news for the small press publishers. My first thought is that we’re going to see even more folks following the “multiple cover” cover for all their publications to get those orders inflated over the minimum threshold.
Anyway, it’s going to be an interesting time in the industry for the foreseeable future…”interesting” as in the “may you live in interesting times” sense.
- More signs of the (interesting) times: cutbacks at Warner Brothers knock Mad Magazine down to a quarterly publication. It’ll have a slight page count increase, a price increase to $5.99, and let’s hope things improve in short order because I don’t know that I want to experience a world without Mad Magazine.
I like how one of the people in the comments section say that Mad should just turn into a full-on comic book, rather than stay in the magazine format. Boy, talk about kicking someone while he’s down…it’s that magazine format that’s getting on shelves of places that aren’t comic book stores!
- When I answered the question of “which canceled comic would you bring back?” with Jupiter by Jason Sandberg, I should have noted that Mr. Sandberg is still producing art…just not of the comic bookian sort. Visit his site at jasonsandberg.com and see what he’s gettin’ up to.
- Kevin Church has invited his readers to cook up one sentence pitches for currently existing comic book characters/series, and has had several amusing entries so far. I thought I had a pretty good one, but was immediately shown up by the entry that appeared after mine…so you’ll just have to go look and see.
- That Amazing Spider-Man with President Obama is getting a fourth printing. Oh good gravy. I am still experiencing demand for this comic at the shop, though where before most people didn’t care what printing they got, I’m now getting an increase in slightly-panicked requests for first printings. I’m getting e-mails, I’m getting out-of-state phone calls…people are getting desperate for first printings on this.
- Not Blog X wraps up its epic length look at the X-Men “Onslaught” event, with some discussion of the series’ impact on the franchise. Those of you who’ve expressed interest in my discussion of the boom ‘n’ bust period of the comics industry will find this of interest.
- Added another name to the burgeoning ranks of the Associated Comics and Pop Culture Webloggers of Ventura County, CA and Outlying Environs: pal Dana (kid sister of former employee Nathan) at I’d Love to Stay Here and Be Normal. Drop in and say hello.
In other ACAPCWOVCCAOE news, pal Sean updated his site just recently, too. Now if we can get a couple of the other folks on there to update a little more frequently!
Also: pal Dorian presents…KRYPTO, P.I.
- Former Malibu Comics chief Dave Olbrich has been running a swell blog over at Funny Book Fanatic, with lots of industry history and other fun stuff. Well, for today’s “Miscellaneous Monday” post, Mr. Olbrich was nice enough to plug my site as “Fanatic Blog of the Week,” and proceeds to say several blush-inducing things about my goofy little website here. Thanks, Dave!
- Customer Rob wanted to see a picture of me reading a copy of Walking Dead, to, you know, update my image by reading something “current” and “hip,” and here is the result:
If I look sick and tired in that picture, it’s because I’m sick and tired in that picture. I still think I managed to mug effectively, however.
