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So Trevor A asked in a comment yesterday if I’d discuss some of DC’s post-New 52 titles and how they’re doing in this brave new retail world. The two he mentions specifically are The Shade and Huntress, and…they’re both doing…okay, I suppose, with Huntress selling just slightly better. They’re definitely at the low end of the sales scale when compared to the New 52 line…not as low as Static Shock or I, Vampire, but maybe around Voodoo levels. Not great, but they seem to be consistent from issue to issue at least, enough so that when I heard that talk about The Shade mini-series possibly getting canned halfway through, I was a bit surprised. It doesn’t seem likely now, as that would be definite egg in DC’s face if they had to cut a mini-series short so soon after their big publishing initiative.
Plus, not that I’m some big publishing marketing genius or anything, but I’d think there’d be a payoff in finishing the mini and collecting it into a trade as a companion to the Starman series it spun off from. …Which of course begs the question why they wouldn’t just go straight to graphic novel format to begin with, but that wouldn’t be a strategy they’d take with a third-stringer like the Shade, I’d imagine.
Well, that went off on a tangent a bit. So, Trevor A, what I’m trying to tell you is that those two series at least are selling okay, if not great. Other post-52 series like T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and My Greatest Adventure are selling about as well, with Penguin: Pain and Prejudice being kind of the surprise hit, necessitating multiple reorders to fill back issue requests.
In other news:
- Super-Team Family presents…Swamp Thing and Man-Thing!
- A new storyline over at The Rack begins with Three Days of the Con, Part One.
- Tony Isabella re-presents: Watchmen 2: Rorschach’s Revenge.
- REMINDER: you need more robot detectives in your life. Thus, Copernicus Jones.
- Oh, right…this isn’t a link to anything, but I wanted to thank longtime reader and commenter philip (with the lowercase “p”) for dropping by the store and daring to meet me in person, thus getting to see me in my natural unshaved and mostly undyed state. I of course thanked him for his visit by prying as much money as I could out of his hands. Thanks, philip, for coming by!
- Pals Dorian and Ken have another batch cooked up of those movie trailer reviews that I like so much.
- Bully, the Little Stuffed Bull That Walks Like A Little Stuffed Bull, brings us all what we didn’t know we wanted, but what we definitely needed: 366 Days of Alfred Pennyworth. …It is far more than we deserve.
- Also, I wanted to thank all of you for still coming back and reading my site. December was…not a great month for me, with health issues and working extra hours and just plain getting a bit burnt out, which of course affected content here. I’m feeling a lot better now, so hopefully everything will be up and running here as normal. Or whatever passes for normal. …Thanks, gang, and I’ll see you tomorrow.
Now on with part two of my “so how is all that new 52 hoohar doin’ five months on” overview, following up on that long-ago post where I asked you, the faithful reader, what you thought of them. Part one was yesterday, in case you forgot, and in case you didn’t, I’m sure I’ll link to part one once or twice more.
Grifter – Now had I been thinking, I probably would have ended yesterday’s post with Grifter since this is one of those titles I don’t really have anything to say about, beyond that it’s selling at all which is nothing short of a shock. Another one of those titles that isn’t generating a lot of buzz or attention but still has a small, stable following.
Hawk and Dove – Gotta give it to Rob Liefeld, he’s still on the book. And it’s maintaining…not great sales, but certainly respectable sales, and our customers do seem to be enjoying it. So, hey, that’s fine with me.
I, Vampire – Unfortunately, probably one of the two poorest selling titles of the new 52 for us. Vampire backlash from the comic fans, maybe? Perhaps seeing it as too…pandering, or something? I don’t know. Even the Constantine appearance in the latest issue didn’t do anything to spark interest.
Justice League – The best seller of the bunch, and, as I said before, it’s actually improved a bit since the debut. Okay, it’s still big, loud, and stupid, but it’s big, loud, stupid and entertaining. The mindlessly fun box office blockbuster of DC’s current line-up.
Justice League Dark – I’m not even quite sure what’s going on in this book…probably one of those titles that benefits from reading successive issues at once rather than with a month between, losing the nuances. Not that there’s a lot of “nuance” here, but c’mon. Still, oddly enjoyable and it’s Peter Milligan writing Shade the Changing Man again, and there’s gotta be value to that.
Justice League International – Haven’t looked at it since I didn’t finish reading the first issue after losing interest halfway through. Sells about a third of what Justice League does, which means it’s got some reasonable sales.
Legion of Super-Heroes, Legion Lost – I honestly think it’s probably time to mothball the Legion for a while and make people miss ‘em. Seriously, despite the occasional sales bump that comes from yet another reboot/relaunch (like, oh, say, the New 52 #1s) sales always drop right back down to where they were before. And I do mean “down.” Maybe it’s just us…maybe our local Legion fans have simply just dwindled in number. But that their comics do occasionally spike in sales tells me that at least part of our customer base is interested in the Legion, they’re just not interested in the Legion comics coming out right now.
Men of War – Another of the lower sellers, probably not surprisingly, though the people who do read it seem to enjoy it quite a bit.
Mister Terrific – Noted before that this book was kind of a disappointment for me…and apparently not just for me, as some of the prerelease excitement for this book among our customer base had us thinking it’d do really well…which it didn’t. Well, okay, that’s not fair…it did okay, and it’s still maintaining some lower mid-range numbers, so it has its fans.
Nightwing – Kinda surprised the hell out of me when I found out how well this book was selling for us. Not Action/Justice League numbers or anything, but certainly well up there. Lot of you kids out there are Nightwing fans, I guess.
OMAC – Such the best comic. A total Jack Kirby riff, and rightfully includes a credit for Kirby in the book now (which was overlooked in the first issue). Lots of noise and punching and crazy characters and even pulled off a two-page splash in the latest issue which didn’t make me immediately think “hey, you’ve only got 20 pages, cut that out” because it was awesome. Does okay for us, a lower mid-range title, but the folks that read it love it. As well they should.
Red Hood and the Outlaws – One of the better sellers at first, though it’s dropped just a bit. Despite all the fanguish about Starfire’s particular…portrayal in the first issue, we were getting the most requests for this title from our female customer base. Also, one of the employees is really into this title. Maybe a little too into it.
Resurrection Man – A lot of our longtime customers were equal-parts happy and surprised to see this title come back. Not a big seller, but selling more than I expected a revived non-big name title from a decade ago would.
Savage Hawkman – People want a Hawkman title, but it doesn’t appear to be this Hawkman title. Started off okay, but has seen some attrition and drops from comic saver files over the last month or two. It’s just not catching on, unfortunately. Still selling well enough, but probably needs a change in direction right quick to hang on to the readers it has.
Static Shock – The other poorest seller of the relaunch for us, which surprises me a bit. Are people seeing the name “Static Shock” and associating it with the cartoon, and thinking that they don’t want to read a “cartoon adaptation?” Is it maybe just too little, too late past the character’s peak popularity? I honestly have no idea.
Stormwatch – Didn’t really expect this to sell, but it’s doing fine. …Pretty much all I have to say about it, really. Some folks are surprised DC went with this instead of another Authority relaunch, but I’m kind of Authoritied-out so I’m glad they didn’t.
Suicide Squad – Started strongly, dropped about a…third, maybe, in sales, but even so still selling above-average numbers for the New 52 titles. Another one of those comics where the online reaction to the comic was belied by actual sales. Had a lot of people asking about it in the first month or two.
Superboy, Supergirl – Both these Superman tie-ins are selling quite well, with Supergirl having the edge. Supergirl is also getting a lot of back issue requests.
Superman – I can appreciate that George Perez is trying to give people their money’s worth with each issue, cramming as much story in there as possible, but it still feels like it’s getting in the way of telling the story. Like I said, it’s improving, and with a creative team change imminent, it’s very possible these problems will go away…or be replaced by whole new problems, but we’ll see. Sales were strong at first, and are slightly less-strong now, though still doing very well. Probably selling at about two-thirds of Action.
Swamp Thing – Another surprise from the New 52, where, like Animal Man, it’s selling a lot more than anyone would have predicted. And in our store’s case, I promise it’s not because of me pushing the book, honest! Kind of wish that the long, slow build-up to the eventual Return of Swamp Thing (no relation) was maybe a little faster-paced (and the lack of Swamp Thing thus far has cost the title a reader or two at the shop), but response has mostly been very positive for this series.
Teen Titans – That initial promo image was pretty roundly mocked, and rightfully so. However, the series is selling fairly on par or slightly more with the last Titans series or two, and I’ve had a pal or two whose tastes I trust tell me that it’s actually a better comic than you might have thought given that initial negative buzz.
Voodoo – A lower seller from the New 52, which shows nekkid gals can’t sell everything. Has its fans, and while not a big seller, it’s a consistent one, and that’ll do.
Wonder Woman – I really had a negative reaction to the first issue, as we were given a dark, moody and violent Wonder Woman comic instead of one that perhaps could sell to that potentially large audience of little girls that maybe, just maybe, might be interested in a character that, as pal Dorian has so accurately described, is a superhero who is also a princess. Sounds like printing money to me, but that’s not the audience DC wants coming into comic shops or buying comics online, so oh well. (And while we get little girls wanting superhero comics in our shop, I suspect we’re more the exception than the rule.) But, Wonder Woman is selling very well, and people I respect are telling me it’s good, so don’t pay any attention to me.
…
Overall, even with my being a bit of a Negative Nelly here and there, the new 52 relaunch has been a net gain for DC, with relaunched titles generally selling at or over what they were selling before, and several of the new titles maintaining consistent, if not always heavy, numbers. Despite a few clunkers here and there, a not unexpected result on some of the non-superhero…or less traditionally-superhero…books, this relaunch is doing well for us, and it’s certainly stirred up interest from our customer base, not just in DC Comics, but in comics across the board, which is definitely welcomed. In a marketplace that’s been relatively moribund for far too long, any excitement about the comics themselves, in the stories and characters as opposed to simply just as investable commodities, is something I’m glad to see. (Not that there weren’t some people with dollar signs in their eyes when all these new #1s were cranked out, but that period came and went fairly quickly.)
And besides, it was all worth it just to put Swamp Thing back on the stands. All worth it.
I…really wasn’t sure what I was planning when I asked you folks what you thought about DC’s New 52 thus far, whether I was going to comment on the responses individually, or do some kind of meta-analysis, or what. And frankly, my need to address that post, at least in my mind, has been looming over me like a really large thing that loomed over me.
I think what I’m going to do here is borrow this list of the New 52 that Siskoid already typed out in his comment, and briefly discuss each book (or family of books) in regards to customer reaction, sales, etc., and let that stand as my final (or at least part one of my final) response to the matter. But honestly, thank all of you who took the time to leave comments…I read every one, and found them informative and interesting.
So, here we go…the first half of my comments on the whole shebang:
Action Comics – Like I said the last time I attempted this, there seems to be a vague level of disappointment from some quarters regarding the pacing of this comic, but plenty of people seem to like it just fine, and it’s certainly one of the top sellers of the New 52 here at the shop. And I think people who haven’t liked the last couple of issues may enjoy #5, due out…today, in fact, and I’m not saying I’ve already read it, but may very well have, and it may respark some interest from those of you out there who have been less than enthralled with the title. (Also, I saw some folks out there in Internet-land who are somehow using what they’ve seen in previews for #5 as more ammo for their ol’ “Grant Morrison hates superheroes/the Silver Age” complaints, which is just crazy-talk from Crazytown, frankly.)
All-Star Western – Started off well, but seems to be back down to the folks who had already been buying the Jonah Hex…plus one or two more, so, you know, there’s been some improvement.
Animal Man – Probably one of the Big Surprises of the New 52, selling well and critically acclaimed — nice when those two qualities actually match up with each other on the same thing. The comic is very good, though (like I feel with many of the other comics) the pacing could stand to pick up a bit. It is quite a compellingly-disturbing story, one of the few true examples of a superhero horror comic. (Steve Gerber and Gene Colan’s The Phantom Zone (scroll down to #1) being another strong example, I think.)
Aquaman – Another surprise hit, and one customers seem to be talking about the most. Mostly in the context of “wow, I can’t believe I’m digging an Aquaman comic this much!” …It has been pretty good, I think.
Batgirl – This one’s been getting pretty mixed reviews from the get-go, though I thought it was pretty entertaining. And it’s certainly selling very well for us.
Batman, Batman and Robin, Batman: The Dark Knight, Detective Comics – All these Batman books have seen a definite uptick in sales since the relaunch, though most of them had been selling pretty well to begin with. Detective probably benefited the most.
Batwing – A low to mid-range seller, still doing better than expected considering it’s a Batman spin-off not featuring one of the main Bat-family.
Batwoman – Solid mid-range seller…the art definitely sells the book. Brings in people who don’t normally buy comics.
Birds of Prey, Blue Beetle, Deathstroke – Selling okay, which is really better than I expected Deathstroke to do, to be honest. But otherwise, not really generating a whole lot of chatter or specific enthusiasm from the customers.
Blackhawks – Probably one of the lower-selling of the New 52. Have had a couple of customers note that the art really didn’t do anything for them.
Captain Atom – Good mid-range seller…haven’t really paid any attention to it, though people telling me (at the store and in the comments to that post) that it’s kind of a riff on Watchmen‘s Doctor Manhattan sort of has me intrigued.
Catwoman – I know people complained about the ridiculousexy in the first issue, but man, people do like Catwoman, regardless. Solid midrange seller.
DC Universe Presents – Good seller, will be interested to see if sales change when this series switches from Deadman to the Challengers of the Unknown. (Just had the thought that the series should just cumulatively add characters to the rotating stories. The first arc would be just Deadman, the second would be Deadman and the Challengers, the third would be Deadman, the Challs, and, oh, I don’t know, the Omega Men, and so on. Would be quite the sight by the time issue #50 rolled around.)
Demon Knights – Considering the setting is in Ye Olden Dayes, and that it stars a lot of the magical DC characters…actually selling a lot better than expected. …There’s probably more characters in here than the book can really comfortably handle, but it makes for an entertaining read nonetheless.
Flash – Strong seller, and I’m being told it’s actually quite good. Alas, I’d pretty much hit my limit on how many Flash stories I can read, and dropped the franchise a year or two back, but people telling me it’s good got me to poke my nose into an issue or two recently. Sadly, it still didn’t do anything for me, but I’m glad people are enjoying it.
Frankenstein Agent of S.H.A.D.E. – One humdinger of a book…maybe a little too out there for most folks, but quite the treat for the reader who dares peek inside its covers. Like OMAC (discussed tomorrow), it’s one of those well-admired titles that has a small but loyal following. …It’s kinda like the DC Universe version of Hellboy, and that’s just fine.
Fury of Firestorm – Mentioned this in my initial post (which I’m not going to link to yet again in this post)…didn’t grab me at first, but it’s slowly growing on me now that I’ve wrapped my mind around the idea that this particular take is different from the one I’ve been used to for the last decade or three. Maintaining okay sales at the shop.
Green Arrow – Small gain in sales since the relaunch. Haven’t really heard any buzz good or bad about this title. It’s a Green Arrow comic that’s selling okay, so I’m not going to complain. Well, Swamp Thing’s not in it, so I’ll complain about that, anyway.
Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, Green Lantern: New Guardians, Red Lanterns – Still probably about one or two GL titles too many, but…well, they all have some entertainment value, and they’re all selling well so far. So long as they don’t add a fifth Lantern title, and honestly I wouldn’t put it past them. Anyway, Green Lantern is the best, and the best-selling, of the bunch, with the ongoing Hal Jordan/Sinestro disfunctional bromance. Man, I hope this stays a cop/buddy book, because I love reading Sinestro stories and the dynamic between him and Hal makes for a fun read. I’ve mentioned before, once or twice, about how Sinestro is one of my favorite supervillains. In fact, I’d be okay with a fifth GL book if Sinestro was kicked out of the main GL book and given his own ongoing series.
Corps and New Guardians aren’t bad, but I think I’m ready for those initial storylines to be over. But Larfleeze finally showed up in the latter series, and Everyone Loves Larfleeze so that series just shot up in quality for me, as far as I’m concerned. And Red Lanterns is interesting sort of despite itself, what with all the blood and grossness and characters being dicks to each other and whatnot, and yet still being readable. Yeah, I know, it’s hard to explain. Still needs to just turn into a Dex-Starr solo book. (And maybe he can team up with that cat from Animal Man.)
…Come back tomorrow for the exciting conclusion of my overview of the New 52! …Ah, c’mon, come back. …Please?
- There’s really nothing quite like standing there and feeling the covers to multiple copies of R. Crumb’s Big Ass Comics #1, trying to determine the relative glossiness of the cover stock (which indicates what printing the book is, according to the Underground Price Guide), and then noticing someone is watching you do this with a “what the hell are you doing?” look in his eye. “Just can’t get enough of these sexy, sexy vulture women,” sez I.
- Thanks to DC sticking to their strict new scheduling for the New 52 books, last week was a “skip week,” meaning no New 52 books on the stands. Seeing as how it’s been a while since we’ve had a real skip week, giving the general publishing strategy of “get it out there as soon as it’s ready” that everyone seemed to be following, I’ve had to explain the concept of “skip weeks” several times over the last few days. Not just to folks coming in for the new Action Comics, but to some of the newer employees as well. …At least there was no “fifth week event” to fill the shelves this time around, and some of my customers were grateful for the break.
- Speaking of things that came out last week, the Gumby Arthur Adams Specials trade paperback apparently had some behind-the-scenes shenanigans going on, as it was released with big ol’ color stickers over the logos, replacing them with a logo that reads “Gumby Spring Specials.” (And, as Greg notes, neither of the comics reprinted inside were “Spring Specials,” so…huh?) One sticker on the front cover, another sticker on the back cover, one on the copyright page inside, and “Arthur Adams” inked out on the spine. …Hopefully, this will be returnable, since it was going to be a hard sell at $12.99 as it was for this thin digest. The stickers are just going to make it more difficult. Too bad, as it is absolutely wonderful cartooning from Adams, with scripts by Bob Burden and Steve Purcell, which totally deserves being kept in print. With any luck, a future edition will be sticker-free.
- And this has nothing to do with funnybook retailing, but I wanted to note that pals Dor and Ken have trailer reviews up. Always a good read.
So I had a phone call from one of regular customers, who asked “which side of Composite Superman is the Superman side?” I wasn’t able to get on the computer and check at the time (and I didn’t ask why he didn’t Google it up), but, well, I had to think about it for just a second. We all know half of Composite Superman looks like Superman, and the other half looks like Batman…but after not having read a Composite Superman story in a while, and not having looked at a Composite Superman action figure lately either, I wasn’t able to answer the gentleman with 100% confidence.
I did give him a reasonably-certain “his right side” and, when I got a chance to hop onto the internettings, I discovered I was correct:
…And the return appearances of the Composite Superman in the ’60s and ’80s, despite being a
different Composite Superman at least one of those times, retained the same arrangement:
However, my goo-goo-Googling-about revealed images of a Compy Supey (as his pals call him) with the sides reversed, and that appears to be from
Superman/Batman Annual #3:
…which of course resulted in that one episode of
Star Trek where Kirk landed on a planet of Composite Supermen, and just could not figure out why some of the Composite Supermen hated each other so much.
Anyway, I’m glad I was able to come through with the more-or-less correct answer for that customer.
Here’s a question another customer asked:
“How come there aren’t any Miracleman trades out?”
My response: “rights issues.” …For this particular query, sometimes that’s a better response than getting into all this hoohar.
So it is once again Black Friday, that one big sales day of the year where the giant retailers sell, oh, I don’t know, 75-inch LED flat screens for a dollar and a trashcan full of Blu-rays for 50 cents (one flat screen and one bucket per customer, please) and little Mom ‘n’ Pop ‘n’ Nerd stores like our own watch tumbleweeds bounce down the empty streets while everyone is at Best*Mart or Walfry’s or wherever, waiting for that time late in December when people have finally devoured everything at the malls and their search patterns spiral out in the forbidden countries, where live stores that only exist in that one spot and not franchised across this great land of ours.
Er, okay, it’s not as bad as all that. We have a big sale all weekend, and our sales usually do pretty well, so I’m not too worried about that. But it does seem the focus is on giving money to the big guys, while the little guys gotta wait their turn, and…you know, I can dig it. In this economy, you’ve got to grab the deals where you can and stretch your dollars as best you’re able, so I completely understand. However, don’t forget your pals in the outlands away from the malls and the big-box stores…we’ve got some deals too, maybe, so after you get your two X-Station 180s for the price of one, drop by the shop and buy a graphic novel…for BIG BIG SAVINGS.
Also, come by and see my head full of totally naturally brown and not dyed at all hair turn grey again. That’ll probably be fun.
• • •
Speaking of my accelerating decline into decrepitude: I’ve been processing a pretty sizable amount of underground comix at the shop over the last few days…a collection that included several issues of Vaughn Bodé’s
Junkwaffel. And every time I see issues of Vaughn Bodé’s
Junkwaffel I think the exact same thing: “hmmm, I need to buy these for my own collection.” Which, of course, I did when I looked at the copies in this particular assortment I was working on.
Well, going through a box in the Vast Mikester Comic Archive, what did I find?
A run of recent printings of
Junkwaffel issues 1 through 4, so I already have them. BONUS: I talked about them
on this very site back in ’04. …Well, like they say, memory’s the second thing to go, right after breakdancing skills.
However, I am reasonably certain I don’t have the magazine-sized fifth issue, which is also in this collection, so perhaps I’ll be getting a copy of Junkwaffel out of this after all.
(CUT TO two weeks later:
“Oh, man, I already have six of these!”
throws Junkwaffel #5 into the extras box)
I thought I’d spare you yet another trading card post, and give you instead a comment or three about the new DC solicitations, some of which I could have saved for the next End of Civilization post, but what the heck:
- A couple of notes right off the bat: first, I’m getting a bit tired of all these variant covers. Yeah, I know, “Standard Comics Fan/Retailer Complaint #18,” and Marvel’s just as much to blame as DC, but still, seeing “variant cover will feature the standard edition cover in a wraparound format” and “1 in 200 black and white variant” and “1 in 25 variant” and blah blah blah over and over again…it gets wearying.
Also, sure are a lot of guest artists in this month’s solicitations. In all fairness, I should note Rob Liefeld is still hangin’ in there on Hawk and Dove (which isn’t selling too badly at the shop, by the way).
- “The awesome consequences of this high-stakes battle” in Justice League #6 will resonate within the series for years to come!” or until everything’s rebooted again. Or just cancelled outright and all the characters are simply handed over to the licensing and movie/television divisions.
- Speaking of new artists, the next story arc on Batwoman will be drawn by Amy Reeder and Richard Friend, which may give some fans of the title the vapors when they don’t see J.H. Williams’ art. But, Reeder’s work looks like it’ll fit in just fine, and I’m looking forward to it. But I can already hear a customer or two telling me “it looks different!” I’ll assist them in bearing the transition, I promise.
- Oh, good, they’re bringing back Batman Beyond (as Batman Beyond Unlimited)…that previous series did fairly well for us, and hopefully the several-month break between series didn’t kill that momentum.
- Green Lantern #6:
“Sinestro and Hal are left at a crossroads. They must pick up the pieces of their lives. The question is, will they do it alone…or together?”
Had no idea Green Lantern turned into a romance book.
- And speaking of variant covers, Swamp Thing has ‘em. Dammit.
- A couple of interesting Batman trades this time around: Batman: Birth of the Demon, collecting the three Talia & Ra’s Al Ghul storylines into a single volume; and the Legends of the Dark Knight: Jim Aparo hardcover, gathering together his early Brave and the Bold work. Aparo was always one of my favorite Bat-artists, always doing solid storytelling, and it’s nice to see a volume devoted to his output.
- Absolute Final Crisis at $100, New Teen Titans Omnibus at $75, even volume 6 of The Flash Archives at $60…seems like it’s really the wrong market for these reprint projects at those price points. Nobody pays full price for these things. The only way we can compete with Amazon on these books is by selling them at a percentage off the list price, not nearly as deep as Amazon’s standard discounts, but hopefully low enough that the convenience of having the book in hand right there and then outweighs having to wait for the book to ship out even with the additional savings. …Ah, retail.
- The solicitation for the Black Orchid Deluxe Edition hardcover notes that it reprints the “4-issue” series…it’s only a three issue mini, but the page count of the hardcover is about 20 pages over that of the mini’s page count, so I suspect there will be some extra bonus hoohar in there.
- Fables #114 begins an eight-part back-up series painted by Shawn McManus…I do love the Shawn McManus art, so I’m certainly looking forward to this. Not that I don’t usually look forward to Fables anyway.
- So, a Green Lantern Vs. Parallax statue for $300, or a $125 Atrocitus statue based on the GL animated series? I suspect both would look equally good as centerpieces on the dinner table.
So, as I’d noted, in last week’s new comics shipment we were shorted one of our bags of Legion of Super-Heroes flight rings, a promo item tying into the Legion Secret Origin mini-series that just launched. Each bag contains 50 rings, and we’ve been using them as giveaways to anyone who buys that particular comic, or buys any Legion comic, or says that day’s magical phrase that pays (“Here, take as much money as you’d like out of my wallet!” or variations thereof).
We’d called in that shortage to our distributor, along with another missing title or two, and we were told we’d get them in an emergency replacement shipment before the weekend. You know…stuff happens, it’s a bit annoying to be missing the items at the time, but so long as the distributor does its best to make it right, everything’s cool.
Now let me set this up. Each bag of 50 Legion rings is invoiced as an individual item, so if you’re getting, say, two bags of rings, you’re invoiced for two items (the bags) and not for one hundred items (each individual ring).
So when the shortage replacement invoice went through at the distributor, it read that we needed one bag of Legion rings (50 count). But what we got, in our replacement shipment, beneath the invoice and the packing material, was this:
Yup. One whole ring. By itself. With nothing else in the box (save the aforementioned invoice and packing material).
Now, I can see how it happened. Someone’s working quickly in the warehouse, scans the invoice, sees the “1″ in the quantity section, sees “Legion flight ring,” somehow misses the “bag of 50″ part, and behold, this package. And I’ve had my fair share of brain farts and have done equally inexplicable things, so it’s not like I’m angry or anything. Mostly, I’m amused, and we got a good laugh out of it at the shop, and now here I am telling you folks about it. And actual replacements are on the way (hopefully!). And we’re not exactly short on rings at the moment anyway, so no harm done.
But still, I keep picturing the person who actually packed this up for us being confused, if not outright irritated, at why s/he was being asked to waste effort and resources to pack up just one dumb ring in a box by itself. (Not to mention the self-forehead slap of epic proportions that surely ensued once realization dawned.)
Possibly adding to the circumstances that created this situation…there are several supply items that we order through our distributor that are invoiced in the exact opposite fashion, like current comic bags. Though these bags come 100 per sealed package we don’t order “1″ if we want one package of bags. We order 100, as in one hundred individual comic bags, and then we are sent that one package of 100 bags. Of course, we usually order them a few thousand at a time, so if we wanted 30 bags of 100 comic bags, we’d put 3,000 in the order line. Now I’m hoping it never comes to pass that I order 3,000 current bags, expecting 30 packages and getting instead 3,000, for a total of 300,000 individual bags. That’s a storage problem I likely wouldn’t enjoy.
A few days ago, I had a gentleman come in with a box of comics that he wanted to sell…there weren’t that many, and they were mostly ’90s Image books. I went through them fairly quickly, as they were all 1) in fairly worn condition, and 2) these were books I’d seen a million times that I knew full well we had in stock and didn’t need any more copies of, even if they had been in mint shape. So I made a pass through the stack, told him sorry, but there wasn’t really anything here we could use right now (giving him the two reasons I just related, in as politic a way as I could), and thanked him for bringing them by.
Now, he’d been in the shop earlier in the day, asking the employee at the register if we bought comics. I couldn’t get over to the counter to help, as I was busy elsewhere in the store, but I heard her give the correct reply that we bought comics we could use, if they were in sellable shape, but we’d have to see them and see if it was stuff we needed. She also asked what comics he had, and he never really replied that I could hear, so it’s not like we could have saved him the trip when he told us that it was all stuff from the ’90s.
But anyway, the dude ended up getting pretty steamed at me, since he apparently wasted a trip to the shop after, he said, “she told me you’d buy everything!” which of course isn’t what he was told. And he didn’t like the fact that I spent “three whole seconds” looking at his comics and sarcastically thanked me for “spending all that time” on his collection.
I did attempt to explain, again, that they were all comics we had plenty of in the backroom, and that we simply couldn’t use them, but of course by that time he decided he’d been wronged and there was no reasoning with him.
For the record, I spent a bit more time than “three seconds” looking at the comics. But I know our stock, and what sells, and what doesn’t, and frankly, I have lots of things to do at the store, so if I’m going through a collection and it’s comic after comic we can’t use, I can’t spend more time looking at each comic beyond that which I need to decide “the store doesn’t need this.” I’m not going to pour over each low-grade Youngblood Strike File for two or three minutes apiece before deciding, alas, the store doesn’t need it. I try to be friendly about it, I try to be apologetic about it if we can’t use anything…I try to not be a jerk, is what it comes down to. If you’re selling something, but I can’t use what you’re selling…well, that’s that, really. And I know my job well enough that it doesn’t take a whole lot of time to process collections like these.
Of course, any very minor level of guilt I felt about this situation dissipated the moment he threw a tantrum and lied to my face about the other employee telling him we’d buy it all. I don’t need people like that in the shop. Plus, from the get-go he was pretty pushy and telling me that these were all valuable and nagging me about being careful about how I handle them (because God forbid these VG Brigades drop down to a VG-, since obviously I’ve never handled comics before), so, you know, not really worth the trouble.
But ultimately this did still have a small effect on me, as Thursday two more collections popped by the shop, and I caught myself lingering over some of the books a little longer than normal, so as not to give the false impression that I was simply brushing these folks off. Then I realized “man, I’ve got to finish the monthly Diamond order, I’ve got mail order to do, I’ve got a lady from the local library coming in to get a several hundred dollar order…I GOTS TO BE ME” so I processed the collections at a more efficient speed. One collection netted a pretty good stack of stuff we could use (some Silver Age Daredevil, a lot of THBs, and some other oddball stuff), and the other collection was a bunch of early ’90s Spider-Man books that we had plenty of. The fellow with the second collection got the explanation as to why we couldn’t use them, and this time it went over well. He understood, thanked me for my time, and I thanked him for his…transaction concluded, with nary a hard feeling in sight.
That other fellow who came in yesterday, the one that I did buy a lot of books from…as I was zipping through his boxes, I felt the need to let him know that I was only going so quickly through some of the books because it was stuff I instantly recognized as not being needed, or in low condition, or…and he stopped me, and said “it’s okay, man…you know your business. I trust you.” And that was good to hear.
So I was thinking about the Wisdom of Lobo blank funnybook we were talking about a couple of days ago. Mostly, I was wondering about its relative scarcity and its market value, and…checking in the price guide, it’s not even listed, as least as far as I can find. (I forgot to check the “promotional” section of the current guide at the shop, but it’s not in the promo section in this 5-year-old price guide I have immediately available to me here at home.)
I remember selling The Wisdom of Lobo on its own way back when, having busted open two or three of the slipcased sets to sell the books and slipcases separately. I don’t think we sold it for more than two or three bucks (and making sure any purchasers knew the pages inside were blank). I still do think it’s pretty weird that I haven’t seen any copies come our way in collections for so many years. …A quick check on Amazon shows that copies of the slipcased sets sell from about $12 to about $120, if that tells us anything, other than some sellers have high apple pie in the sky hopes.
Speaking of funnybook sales, while doing cycle sheets this week, it was pointed out that Kick Ass 2 #4 seemingly had a sales burst after having been on the shelf for a while. Generally, most comic books see the majority of their sales in the first week, with a strong drop-off in the second week, and some dribs and drabs in the last week or two. But our last few copies of Kick Ass 2 #4, which probably would have been pulled off the rack and put in the back issue bins (where, oddly enough, Kick Ass back issues sell out almost immediately, to people I know have been in the store while they were still sitting new on the shelf) were gone, baby, gone. And it took me a second to figure out why, until I recalled there was a bit of online outrage over the contents of that particular issue two or three weeks after its release. And, thus, we get our late in the sales cycle bump. “It’s an ill wind” and all that.
In completely unrelated news, the commenter formerly known as Professor Booty, Señor Editor, has this question for me:
“…I seem to recall you mentioning the game LA Noire here sometime ago (great game!), but did you play ‘Arkham City’ yet?”
I did enjoy L.A. Noire, though it could have used a multiplayer shoot-’em-up free roam thing so my friends and I could shoot each other in the face while speeding vintage cars around 1940s Los Angeles.
Arkham City I haven’t tried yet…in fact, I’ve only played the demo level for Arkham Asylum, though I keep meaning to get around to picking up a used copy or something, at some point. Arkham City does look fascinating as an immersive environment, and to be able to play Batman in it…well, that’s hard to resist. I’ll get around to it sometime, I’m sure. (Making it harder to resist are Señor Editor’s own thoughts on the game, as well as Chris “Señor Batman” Sims’ comprehensive overview.)
But if there was a Swamp Thing video game in this style, I’d be all over it immediately.
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