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So the worst thing about that $7.99 Young Romance one-shot DC put out last week was trying to decide, back in November or December or whenever, how many I wanted to order for the shop. As most of you know, comic shops have to place their comic orders about two months or so ahead of time, and for some publishers (particularly the “big” publishers, like DC, Marvel, Image, etc.) we get to do final tweaking on those orders three weeks or so before they actually ship, just in case there are any last minute reasons to change ’em, like any sort of sudden decline/increase in interest in the title at the shop that wasn’t evident when the original orders were placed.
Now, this Young Romance thing. It costs $7.99, which is a lot to ask of a comic fan, frankly. That pushed my order estimates down. The cover features Superman and Wonder Woman in midst of a super-smooch: given recent interest in the Supes/Wondy romance (and people are interested and talking about it, at least at the shop, which is in contrast, I realize, to the online rending of garments over this development), that pushed numbers up. It’s an anthology: numbers down. Batman/Catwoman story and a Nightwing story: numbers up. Apollo/Midnighter story: sadly, while I’m glad this particular relationship wasn’t forgotten for this book, it was no influence on orders – the Authority ship has sailed, it seems*, and overall the novelty of mixing former Wildstorm characters into what remains of the DC Universe no longer appears to be a sales factor of any sort.
In short, trying to order stuff like this is annoying. On a lot of titles, I have sales histories to help me judge. Even on holiday specials, I have reports, but sales on these can vary very widely, and for no real good reason. And so, I placed my order, basing my best guess on “how many expensive anthology comics can I usually sell” and “will the Superman/Wonder Woman cover sell the book?” and “let me roll some of these D&D dice and see what numbers come up.” And when it came time for the final order adjustments a few weeks later, I saw no reason to fiddle with my ordering decision on this book.
END RESULT: I sold nearly all the copies I ordered, save for two or three, by Sunday. And since the majority of a new comic’s sales are generally in the first week they’re on the rack, I am going to toot my own horn and consider that a success. At least more of a success than a first-day sell-out followed by a string of phone calls inquiring after it, or having every copy I ordered still on the shelf right now.
Please note: I said “generally,” which now gives me pause to wonder “am I going to have to place an immediate reorder” and “how many more copies can I reasonably expect to sell over the next few weeks?” and “boy, people are sure complaining about this comic online…should I order extra copies to meet the demand that will generate?**”
And of course, most importantly, “how many copies will I blow off the shelves once people find out this is one of the Valentine’s Day cards included in this comic?”
“Hello, Diamond Comics! Please send me 5,000 more copies of Young Romance, please! Thank you very much!”
* Though I wonder if a New 52 relaunch of Authority would do well…but I fear it would probably be Justice League: Authority which would sort of desperately miss the point.
** See also Injustice: Gods Among Us #1, which is suddenly receiving a lot of demand two weeks after its release.
…in one of my “End of Civilization” posts, but this here is a gen-you-eene Walking Dead Axe replica offered through Previews:
“Go after the zombies with this axe replica from the hit television series, The Walking Dead!”
“Zombies,” nuthin’. At $6.99 a pop, these are cheap enough to arm every kid in the neighborhood with one, and watch as passerby realize that oh good gravy, all the children are chasing each other around with bloody axes! Let’s get out here, Mabel!
Anyway, it’s a bit nutty, but not nearly as crazy as this, if only because there’s a greater chance of getting nearly seven bucks’ worth of entertainment out of a fake axe.
So Paul wrote in and asked if I had any comment on this week’s delayed arrival of Scarlet #6 from Marvel’s Icon imprint. And I said, “oh, was it late?” and I checked our cycle sheets at the store, and BEHOLD:
#1 – 7/8/10
#2 – 9/1/10
#3 – 11/4/10
#4 – 1/19/10
#5 – 3/28/11
#6 – 2/6/13
Wow, nearly two years between the last two issues. Not quite Ultimate Hulk Vs. Wolverine level, but pretty close. I probably just didn’t notice it because, unlike that Hulk/Wolverine thing, I didn’t have people asking me every day when it was coming out. Or any day, for that matter. Is anything really late if nobody’s waiting for it? …Ooh, okay, that’s a bit harsh. I’m sorry. But not too sorry, because I have to sell these things, and a two-year gap between issues is kind of bullshit, and certainly no way to keep a readership.
And of course there’s the other end of the spectrum, in which we got three issues of The Avengers over the last three weeks, which is also ridiculous. Or two issues of Superior Spider-Man over the last two weeks. Or seven issues of All-New X-Men since mid-November. I’d like to see comics released on a rational, responsible schedule, one where retailers and customers can plan out their spending, and one where the market isn’t flooded so quickly with consecutive issues of a series to the point of discouraging readership, but I suspect I’ll see “Steve Ditko Sings The Hits – Live On-Stage Revue” before that ever happens.
Mmm. Okay, now I’m angry. WHY MUST YOU POKE THE BULL, PAUL?
Let us go on to happier things:
- I am getting comments and multiple emails from folks telling me that the current Nancy comic strips are retelling the origin of Sluggo. Read ’em yourself, starting here. …To think I’d ever see the word “reboot” in a Nancy strip, that wasn’t about, say, Sluggo putting on two pairs of boots.
- Big Rich Handley, creator of the Roots of the Swamp Thing website, recently interviewed former Swampy artist Steve Bissette and former Thingy writer Nancy Collins. Good readin’ all around…go check those out.
- This is interesting…John MacLeod, one of the contributors to this issue of Ultra Klutz I discussed a while back, popped up in the comments to that post with a couple of details about his contribution to the comic. And it turns out you can read his Dishman comics online (along with his commentary)…and be sure to take a look at his more recent project, Space Kid.
“Skinny little Hansi.”
“She grew up. She filled out.”
[There may be SPOILERS ahead for The Dark Knight Returns, both animated and comic-ated.]
Now I suspect it’s going to be hard to believe that one can forget a large, gun-totin’ woman named Bruno, topless save for some kind of adhesive swastikas placed over her breasts, and yet this is apparently what happened to me prior to popping in Part Two of DC’s direct-to-DVD/Blu-Ray animated adaptation of Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. If I had remembered, I’m sure it would have crossed my mind at least once to ponder “I wonder if they’re actually going to go through with that” or “I wonder if they’ll tone it down a bit.” Instead, it came as a complete surprise to me when Bruno showed up on screen. And it certainly is a different experience seeing Bruno in a four-minute fully-animated action sequence on a 50-inch screen as opposed to seeing a handful of panels in a comic book. And by “different” I mean “that’s going to come as a shock when Mom puts this on for Little Billy and then walks back into the room when Bruno’s onscreen fighting Batman.” Yeah, yeah, it’s PG-13 an’ all, but man, that felt like a bit much. So of course I got a screenshot and shared it with you on my site. You’re welcome.
As for the parts of this cartoon that aren’t about topless Neo-Nazis: what I was really looking forward to was Michael Emerson’s turn as The Joker. Emerson was probably the best part of that TV show Lost, playing an evil and slimy little jerk who was still at least somewhat sympathetic and certainly charismatic, and that performance comes though in this role as well. A bit of Emerson’s voice work on the Joker reminded me of, oddly enough, Paul Lynde, which I’m guessing was likely more coincidental than deliberate, and is certainly not a complaint. (And of course, when one thinks of Paul Lynde in relation to Batman, this comes to mind.) His Joker was definitely creepy and unsettling, and probably the high point of this whole endeavor.
And speaking of the whole endeavor…one of the most intrinsic parts of the original Dark Knight Returns comics was the constant internal dialogue running throughout, revealing each character’s hopes, fears, etc., as well as providing the most affecting and emotional points of the story. When Alfred dies as the Wayne Mansion burns, just seeing him drop onscreen doesn’t have anywhere near the impact of reading Alfred’s “Of course” when the same thing happens in the comic. And when they push the dialogue from the comic’s internal thoughts to the cartoon’s external voice…well, let’s just say having Commissioner Gordon outright say “I think of Sarah…the rest is easy” as part of a retirement speech to a roomful of people lacks the gravitas it has when he repeats it to himself in the comic.
And that whole business with Superman nearly being killed by the atomic explosion, and his subsequent revival. In the cartoon, it’s simply weird and grotesque. In the comic, with Superman’s inner pleading with Mother Earth, there’s that undercurrent of sadness and despair and desire to protect that’s left unspoken, nor even implied, in the adaptation. …I suspect some enterprising group of fans will someday make a reedit of these films, filling in the lost narration themselves, that the cartoons sorely lack.
Not to say that these films are entirely without merit…the big set pieces still work just fine: Batman’s battle with the Mutants leader, the last confrontation with the Joker, the climactic fight with Superman. And even the nearly last bit of business, with Carrie and Clark at Bruce’s grave site…that was pulled off nicely. I also appreciated that they didn’t stray too far from the comic’s 1980s origins, keeping Reagan as President, and there’s even a brief shot somewhere near the end of the film, which of course I can’t locate now, showing a storefront for “VHS / BETA” or something like that. Or maybe I imagined it. You make the call.
Overall, the Batman: The Dark Knight Returns animated adaptation was an interesting experiment, if flawed, with some nice voice work. I understand the choices the filmmakers made…well, my jury’s still out on the Bruno thing, but I guess fans would have complained if she wasn’t there…but in my opinion the loss of the internal dialogues from the comic cut most of the heart out of the story.
Well anyway, if these Dark Knight cartoons do well, maybe we’ll get an animated version of the sequel Dark Knight Strikes Again. That I’d like to see.
If you’re wondering about that Hansi comic, here you go.
So Scott McCloud…and this isn’t just name-dropping, this will be important later in the post…was clearing out some storage space, and in the process of making two storage units into one decided to unload a small portion of his comic collection. Not nearly everything of course, mostly just redundancies he also had in collected editions and such. Pal Nat was good enough to haul ’em over to the shop on Scott’s behalf, and we certainly found a few goodies in there we could use.
But most importantly, in that collection was a copy of this:
Ah, Yummy Fur #9, at last we meet. And now, after literally decades of searching for this issue, my Yummy Fur run is now complete. …I get a prize for that, right?
I’ve mentioned once or twice before about my ongoing search for this elusive little bugger, and now…well, I don’t really have any comic collection white whale to hunt down any more.
But that Yummy Fur. That was the thing. That was what I looked for at shops and at conventions and on the eBays and the Amazons and never seemed to come across a copy. And now I have it, and I, once the hungry young comic fan on his ongoing desperate quest to fill holes in his collection, no longer have that drive, that need, and now, old and tired, will just slowly fade away into comic collecting history as tomorrow’s comics fans push me aside.
Oh, wait, I still need Steve Lafler‘s Dog Boy #9 from Fantagraphics. Okay, forget all that “fading away” business. I’M STILL IN THE GAME, BABY.
And now, the reason I mentioned this was Scott McCloud’s collection (and in case you worried…I checked with him, he’s okay with me talking here about the store getting some of his comics) was because also in the collection were a handful of these title dividers that were made up for a certain special project of his:
For those of you not familiar, this was the title of a mini-comic by Scott and Matt Feazell featuring Scott’s Zot! characters, released between the conclusion of the initial 10-issue color run of Zot! and the launch of the black-and-white run. And in fact, it looks a little something…like this:
Alas, there were no actual copies of Adventures of Zot! in Dimension 10 1/2 in the collection, but having these custom-printed title dividers for them is pretty neat*. They’re full-sized, so you’d have to put your AoZiD101/2 mini-comic in a standard bag and backing board for proper back issue bin display. Also, as an additional bit of personal trivia for you to log into your “Important Facts About Mike Sterling” journal, this was the first Zot! comic I’d ever bought…which then sent me on a search for the previous ten issues, resulting in one of my previous comic-collecting white whales (since found), Zot! #5.
(EDIT: Okay, ignore my previous assumptions about the purpose of that divider. Nat corrects me on the fact that the mini isn’t “Adventures in Dimension 10 1/2” but rather the original “10 1/2” from which the later, actual, full-comic-sized Zot in Dimension 10 1/2 comic takes its name, and is most likely the intended recipient of today’s featured title divider. And now I have a headache.)
So thanks, Scott! I promise to give your Yummy Fur #9 a good home! I’ll also give one of those title dividers a good home, too, because I’m totally keeping one of those since, you know, I need to be able to find my copy of Adventures of Zot! in Dimension 10 1/2 easily.
* I wonder if there was ever the temptation to make really humongous title dividers for his oversized Destroy!! comic.
So I had a fellow bring by a couple of comics he wanted to sell…an issue of Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (1960s series) and a copy of Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, both of which had these taped to the front covers:
As it turns out, these comics were stored in such a way that the tape essentially dried out, and with only minimal effort these additions came right off, leaving behind only minor discoloration where the tape had once adhered to the paper. And while I offered the customer many times that long ago asking price of two cents apiece, it still wasn’t a whole lot, since the comics otherwise were in what we like to call “previously well-loved condition,” and the customer opted to hang onto them. He did thank me for taking those tags off the covers, and now, here they are, for you to enjoy.
Also, please don’t tape things directly to your comics. Unless you’re going to bring them to me and I can show them on my site and say “look what this person did to his or her comic…can you believe it?”
• • •
In
my End of Civilization post from a few days ago, I noted the existence of the Batman and Robin action figures done in the style of Aardman Animation and how I was baffled that such a thing would even exist. Now…well, it is sort of amazing that such a thing is in the world, these Bat-Aardman figures, but I honestly hadn’t realized there are
actual animated shorts by Aardman featuring these characters. A quick
Googling reveals that this is hardly news to anyone except me, since I 1) cancelled my cable long ago and thus haven’t seen this DC Nation thing, 2) don’t read comic websites aside from my own, because I’m so amazing and perhaps somewhat self-aggrandizing, and 3) don’t really have a third thing. In short, that these animated shorts passed me by is just One of Those Things, I Guess, and since I do enjoy Aardman’s output, I should track ’em down someday.
But honestly:
…this is a thing that is real. Just look at it. …Look at it.
• • •
Normally, I’d just delete spam comments, but
this is a comment in French extolling the virtues of hentai, so I just left it after editing out the website address because it made me laugh. YOU WIN, SPAMMERS.
• • •
So I discovered (or, given my usual track record for such things, “found out long after everyone else” — see earlier this post) that our funnybook distributor Diamond Comics apparently has a
Twitter account.
Huh. Well. …I mean, I’d happily run that account for them, for, you know, the occasional drop shipment of some coin of the realm, but, well, there might be a conflict of interest there for me.
• • •
In other news, pal and fellow
Bureau Chief Euge, AKA
ADAM WARROCK, will be
performing at our shop in a couple of weeks! This will soon increase the number of Internet pals I’ve met and touched in person by one! PREPARE TO BE TOUCHED, EUGE.
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