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This is all assuming there’ll eventually be a back issue market for anything coming out right now.

§ June 13th, 2012 § Filed under collecting, retailing § 12 Comments

So this week is the first time one of those digital download codes turned up in a Marvel comic I follow (Incredible Hulk, in case you were wondering), which got me to wondering about something.

The Marvels that have a digital download code printed inside protect the code from being stolen in-store by hooligans and ne’er-do-wells by covering it with a black label, which looks a little something…like this:


Of course, it’s not as if someone couldn’t just peel it off and jot down the code anyway, but as I haven’t yet experienced a floor littered with these little black labels, I think that hasn’t become a real problem yet.

One thing I’ve been thinking about, from the “dude what sells the old comics in a collectors’ market” point of view, is this: remember Marvel Value Stamps? Those little stamp drawings that appeared on editorial pages/letter pages/etc. in ’70s Marvels that you would clip and save for…well, something or another, I guess. Anyway, for folks like me who, as I said, deal in back issue sales, those things are the bane of my existence, as you really need to go through and check that the particular comics that had said Value Stamps in them weren’t clipped out. Because, if that stamp is clipped, suddenly that Wolverine appearance in Incredible Hulk #181, normally worth exactly one billion dollars, is now only worth about five or ten cents, max. (NOTE: pricing approximate.) So, yes, a missing stamp does negatively affect the value of the comic.

So now there’s this thing, the little black sticker covering the code. I suppose technically if the sticker is missing, the comic would be incomplete (or at least, altered from its original condition as released) and therefore probably shouldn’t be sold as a mint or near mint copy. Which means, if I start dealing in used copies of these (and I really haven’t, as of yet), I’m going to have to start checking to make sure that sticker is still intact. (I should note that I haven’t experimented with the sticker in my Hulk comic yet, so I don’t know if the sticker can be reattached…I’m guessing “no.”)

Before you say anything…yes, this is a dumb thing to be thinking about. But I guarantee you, this situation is going to come up and I’m going to have to deal with it at some point. …Not that I’m looking forward to that buyer/seller interaction:

“Well, this copy of Avengers Vs. X-Men II: The X-Avengening #3 would normally be worth about ten bucks….”

“Yeah?”

“…Except the digital code sticker has been removed. Sorry, this is only about a four dollar book now.”

“…What. Seriously?”

“Yeah, really. …This isn’t my proudest moment.”

Or maybe I can go the “professional grading” route, where some of those companies squirm out of pinning a book down to a specific condition by giving it a “qualified” grade based on its apparent appearance, instead of the grade that actually should be applied based on the damage you don’t immediately see. (You know, “Qualified Near Mint, loose centerfold” — that’s probably a “VG” to you and me.) …Of course, if I ever actually write “Qualified Near Mint, missing digital code sticker” on a book I’m trying to sell at the shop, I do welcome any of you to come put me out of my misery.

(By the way, I’m totally pulling that sticker off my Incredible Hulk comic…I want to see what all this digital comic hoohar is about.)

Slightly after Before Watchmen.

§ June 11th, 2012 § Filed under retailing, watchmen § 10 Comments

So, when we were last talking about Before Watchmen, I posted a poll asking what some of you folks were planning to regarding the series…avoid it, try it out, steal it, whatever. Thus far, three-fifths of the respondents indicated that they would not buy it.

Now, that poll may not be entirely balanced…an online fandom interested enough in the matter to 1) read comic blogs and 2) vote in an online poll may be a little more aware of the situation and thus more inclined to skew negatively. But even those in-store customers of mine who don’t pay any attention to comics news outside of whatever happens to be in Comic Shop News that week (I assure you, such customers exist) are voting the way comic readers usually vote: with their wallets.

Now that I’ve had a few days of sales to see how things go, I can report that Before Watchmen: Minutemen #1 has sold…okay. Not flying off the shelves in a Superman #75-esque frenzy of consumer demand, but moving along at a steady pace. From previous experience, I’m relatively certain once Minutemen #2 comes out, or even when the next series or two start up, we’ll get further requests for the initial releases. However, like I’d said before, we’ll see how it goes in the long run, if we’ll get consumer resistance once the series and issues start piling on.

I’ve only had a handful of customers at the shop bring up Alan Moore’s disdain for this project, and it was about 50/50 whether those particular folks picked up the book or not. And there are other reasons outside of creators’ rights issues why some customers may not be picking up the book: didn’t like the movie, didn’t care for the original comic, it’s been just plain too long since the original to care about prequels, still burnt out on Watchmen after the media saturation surrounding the film, or simply aren’t interested in a Watchmen comic not by Moore and Gibbons. But, like I said, it’s not like it’s not selling…it seems to be selling fine. It’s not a monster smash like Avengers Vs. X-Men, but I would have been surprised if it were.

I’m almost tempted to put up another poll, “Of those of you who said you wouldn’t buy Before Watchmen, how many of you bought it anyway” because c’mon, I know somebody did. And this is interesting: I usually get my share of Google referrals to my site from people looking to mooch uploaded scans of current comics, generally a few a day. But in the last week or so, I have been bombarded with searches from people looking for scans of Before Watchmen. Apparently, the demand is there to read it, just not pay for it.

Like the presumably-pseudonymous Interstate Shogun said in the comments, I’m also surprised it took DC this long to do more Watchmen comics. A few years back I swore up and down that if DC was going to do it, they’d do it when the movie came out just so they’d have more product to sell during the peak of interest in the property (aside from the misguided After Watchmen promotion, which tried to get Watchmen fans to sample similar books, such as…um, Identity Crisis and Batman: Hush). I wonder how Before Watchmen would have sold had it come out then? (I was a bit disappointed that there wasn’t a brand new one-shot comic adaptation of the film, distilling the movie, itself a paring/dumbing down of the original material, down to 64 pages or so.)

Now, about Before Watchmen: Minutemen #1 itself…it wasn’t bad. Darwyn Cooke’s art is, as always, beautiful. The story is…well, if you wanted more action from the Golden Age characters in Watchmen, here you go. It all looks relatively surface-level, expanding on material already covered in necessary depth in the original book. Not terribly deep in the metacommentary department, as most of the points made about the genre are, again, repeated from the original, aside from the very opening pages of the comic, a seeming reaction to trying to tell this story under these particular circumstances. Alan Moore as the “guy [who] throws a wrench in the gears,” taking “away your understanding of the world you live in” — the superhero comics genre — and the folks who “search for the things that brought [them] happiness in the past” — the way superhero comics were before everyone thought imitating Watchmen was the way to go. And of course there’s Mason’s (Cooke’s) own reaction to trying to duplicate Moore and Gibbon’s style from the original.

…And this has been “Mike Overanalyzes A Dumb Ol’ Comic Book at Stupid O’Clock in the Morning.” Thanks for putting up with these rambling thoughts on the topic, folks, and I’ll see you again in a day or two.

And then there was that time I found out someone wrote a book about my girlfriend.

§ June 8th, 2012 § Filed under paperbacks § 10 Comments

Well, actually, about my girlfriend and her teammates, too, as the book is about her high school volleyball team taking the California State Championship in 1986. (Here’s a contemporary report about the event from the Los Angeles Times that singles (“twinsles?”) out my girlfriend and her twin sister for their efforts.)

My girlfriend found out about this book during a visit to our former high school, and I promptly went into a search for the darned thing, which took me a bit…it’s a self-published tome, and was in seemingly short supply less than two years after its release. I managed to find one seller in Philadelphia who had a copy, and just yesterday it arrived in the mail.

I knew I was in for a good time when I read the first part of the opening line:

“A yellow 1975 Toyota sedan stealth along Oxnard street….”

Yup, that’s “stealth” as a verb, and not a usage with which I am familiar. Also, later on the page the authors make it clear that by “Oxnard street” (capitalization as in the original) they actually meant “Oxnard Boulevard.” BONUS: on the same page a car has a “stirring wheel,” which I guess you use in case you need to do a little cooking on the way to your destination.

So, yeah, this is some book. All the place names remain more or less the same (names of cities, the schools involved, etc.) with the exception of the aforementioned Oxnard Boulevard, while the people all get pseudonyms. The name of our high school’s volleyball coach is so barely changed I wonder why they bothered, and my girlfriend Nora and her sister Maria become “Rosalu” and “Rosalie,” respectively, I think. And before you ask, no, I’m not going to start calling Nora “Rosalu” because she’ll put me in the hospital.

Now I haven’t done more than sort of flip through the book, read a passage or two, and identify a pseudonymous volleyball player here and there (“Oh, ‘Delia’ — that’s Della!”), but Nora’s already endured the whole thing. She informs me there are more typos and instances of questionable continuity to be enjoyed therein, and her response to reading passages about her and her sister’s fictional counterparts was a fairly even mix of bemusement and irritation.

The story of our high school taking the championship that year is a good one, I think, and I can understand the appeal of wanting to tell it. Like the L.A. Times article says, the girls on the team were relatively undersized compared to their much-taller competitors, and their team’s victory was very much Underdogs Achieving Success Against Overwhelming Odds, i.e. Sports Narrative Cliché #1. It doesn’t seem as if this book is the definitive telling of that story, however.

Ah, well. Now, I was actually there for that final game back in ’86, when our high school took that championship. And I attended most of the games leading up to it. And I was friends (or at least acquaintances) with a number of people on the team. And I felt the excitement when our school took the victory. So, maybe, I already have my own definitive telling of this story. And Nora, of course, has her own. How could this book ever compete?

Two Ray Bradbury books.

§ June 7th, 2012 § Filed under obituary § 4 Comments

I have no idea where I got this book, a 1976 hardcover of Long After Midnight:


It’s been sitting on my bookshelves for well over thirty years. Did I pick it up at a yard sale? Did my Nana (never “Grandma,” only “Nana”), who always gave me books, give this to me as well? I honestly have no memory of its origin. But I do know I read through it plenty as a kid, and I realize now it’s been a long time since I’ve last perused it. I think it’s time again.

Now, this next book, Dinosaur Tales from 1983:


…might as well have been titled Mike, Grab This Book off The Shelf And Buy It Immediately, because dude, it’s stories about dinosaurs by Ray Bradbury (yes, including the most famous one of all), with illustrations by Bill Stout, Moebius, Steranko, and Gahan Wilson, among others. This is such a great package of wonderful words and pictures. And dinosaurs.

So long, Ray, and thanks for all those wonderful words, in these books and so many others.

Also, that horrible imp will get you while you’re sleeping if you don’t turn in your comics.

§ June 6th, 2012 § Filed under found art § 6 Comments

So Rob, of Rob’s Movie Vault, found this bookplate in a old book donated to his library, and sent along a scan of it to me to share with all of you:


As Rob says, “How’s about that? Swap ten disgusting, depraved (*blecch*) comic books at your library and you can get one GOOD book, kids!”

I realize this is from the ’50s, back when we were all worried about the evils of comic books, Communism, and other things beginning with “com,” but I’m hoping the next time I swing by New Bedford, the offer is still standing. I have a bunch of old, crummy Swamp Thing and Love and Rockets and American Splendor comics I want to unload so I can get a real book that’s worthwhile and live-affirming to read.


…I’m not shore…er, sure which book just yet, but I’ll think of something.

Just a little before Before Watchmen.

§ June 4th, 2012 § Filed under reader participation, retailing, watchmen § 44 Comments

So I was talking with pal Dorian the other day about the impending release this Wednesday of Before Watchmen: Minutemen #1, and how I thought it, and the Before Watchmen project as a whole, were going to sell.

I think it’s going to sell great, at least at first. As I noted before, there may be a bunch of online outrage about it, but Internet reaction =/= instore sales. Plus, some of those people complaining about Before Watchmen are still going to buy it anyway, because of course they will. (Yes, yes, I know, not you…you don’t need to tell me so in the comments.)

I have been receiving several requests for the Before Watchmen books, as well as a number of comic-saver folks adding it to their pull lists, so, like I said, it should have a strong start, at first. Once we’re a month or two in, and people begin to realize “oh, man, this is like a half-dozen or so new mini-series I have to follow, isn’t it,” then we’ll start to see the sales attrition as the picking-and-choosing begins. (Or maybe the, I don’t know, Ozymandias series will be the Greatest Thing Ever and a sales juggernaut.) Of course, having the “Crimson Corsair” back-ups run through all the minis is a clever way of encouraging readers to get the whole enchilada rather than have missing chapters of that particular serial…assuming of course “Crimson Corsair” is enough of a draw.

I don’t expect a flop. There is enough curiosity out there in this project, even if it’s just “what the hell is DC doing?” disbelief, to drive initial sales. And believe it or not, there are still people who go to the comic shops who spend little or no time online perusing the comic news sites or message boards and will have no idea there’s any brouhaha at all about this Before Watchmen situation. They’ll just see the logo on the stands, think “huh, I remember reading Watchmen, that wasn’t half-bad” and throw the comic in their piles.

Anyway, having mocked the value of online reaction, I am now seeking…your online reaction, via that most most scientific method of pinning down the public’s opinion, the blog poll. I have quite a few options there, but I’m sure it’s not 100% comprehensive…if you have a write-in choice, just drop it in the comments.

“EXCUSE ME, IS THIS COMIC BOOK AUTOGRAPHED BY GIL KANE?”

§ June 2nd, 2012 § Filed under gil kane, green lantern § 7 Comments

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