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§ November 22nd, 2005 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on A couple things….
1. I just got the official word from DC Comics on what we gotta do to return the defective Crisis on Infinite Earth action figures: as hoped, we have to cut off and return the heads.
Cut off and return the heads.
There’s a strange sort of pleasure in that…um, not in a weird “someday this weblog post will be read aloud in a courtroom by a prosecuting attorney” way. It’s more…well, because of the nature of the hobby, we have to treat everything carefully at the store. Customers want mint comics, mint packages, mint mints, and so on, so we handle our store’s merchandise gently.
Except when it’s time for distributor returns, when we gleefully tear front covers off of comics, and, yes, cut heads off action figures, to mail back to Diamond for credit.
Last time I had to cut off a head (“I’d like to introduce exhibit 2, Your Honor”), it was for some lousy Batman pewter statues, and we had a devil of a time cutting those stupid things. These plastic figures, though…one quick snap, we got ourselves a headless Psycho Pirate, no sweat.
I’m going to do this when the store is open, and we have a floor full of customers, and I’m not going to explain to them what I’m doing, just to see their expressions.
2. We received a manila envelope in the shop’s mail yesterday, containing one (1) copy of Jack of Hearts #1 from 1984, with severe spine wear and old water stains. The included letter stated that this was a complimentary copy from the sender, who wanted to be sure we had a copy in case anyone was interested in buying it.
Er…thanks?
§ November 22nd, 2005 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on Some (old) news you can use…or "Guess what search terms I used to find these stories"
“Smash! Pow! Bam! Why superheroes go bankrupt”
“One way Marvel tried to cut its losses in the ’90s was by directly distributing its own comics. That move not only ran several distributors out of business, it also shuttered many comic book shops and did real damage to overall sales. The company’s hamfistedness earned it the enmity of many fans, who undertook a boycott of all things Marvel.”
“Pow! Bam! Can Marvel keep soaring?”
“Pow! Take that, vile debt!”
“Whatever happened to ‘bam’ and ‘pow?'”
“It seems like nowadays, comic books have completely overlooked their most crucial readers: children. Sure, there’s still an audience for Wonder Woman; it just happens to be your fat, impotent uncle George. And let’s face it, George won’t be with us much longer. So who will take his place as a new comics reader?”
“Comics are Nothing to Laugh About”
“…A teenage geek who’s never kissed a girl in his life goes into a comic store surrounded by people just like himself, which is run by a short, fat, balding, cigar chomper of an owner named Marv, to pick from the latest assortment of comics featuring Misogynist Man and Steroid Lad, in ‘Pow/Bam’ dialogue thinly disguised as a story.”
I also came across this paper on Comic Book Markup Language (official site), which is a proposal for presenting comic books on the web in a format other than the usual “scan ‘n’ post.” I’m sure someone out there in the comicsweblogoverse has already mentioned this, but it was news to me. Pretty interesting, I thought.
EDIT: The HBO series Carnivale may return as a comic book. (via TV Tattle)
§ November 21st, 2005 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on A depressing letter; I’m lonely, oh so terribly lonely; Fanboy; a happy family; out of context merchandise
This may be the most depressing letter to a comic book ever:
And, yeah, that was the whole letter. Boy, cheer up, fella! (And, um, ixnay on the sleepin’ nude talk…”TMI,” as the kids say.)
Another letter that puzzled me at about the same time was one that was printed in Green Lantern #162 (March 1983):
At the time, the
Green Lantern letters pages were comprised primarily of very short letters (either readers were sending in brief missives, or these were excerpts from longer letters), interspersed with plugs for other DC Comics. I sort of got the feeling that the editor didn’t have very many good letters to choose from, so he had to pad out the space as best he could, including letters that he may not have ordinarily run. That was my impression, anyway.
That letter in particular puzzled me at the time, and continued to do so for years afterward. “‘Silver Twist?’ Man, what was that guy talking about? Why would he write into Green Lantern about this?” Yes, I really did wonder about this on occasion…something would remind me of it, I’d think “what was up with that?” in passing, and get on with my life. I just figured it was something that the letter writer made up, and that was that.
Well, something like twenty years after I first read that letter, I finally found out what that person was talking about…the “Silver Twist” was actually a plot element that appeared in previous Green Lantern comics. I like GL, but haven’t read every issue (like my pal Corey), so it may be understandable why I didn’t know what this was. But I can’t be too hard on the editor, either…not everyone is as obsessive about trivial details to the same extent as comic fans.
I remember one of my very few fan letters, written in my misbegotten youth, to some Superman comic or another referenced a minor character from a ’50s Superman story, that had just been reprinted in one of the digests at the time. The editor wisely took it out when he printed the letter, since, well, what did that have to do with the modern Super-books, anyway, and the reference may have confused readers who didn’t read that digest or didn’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of comics.
Luckily, someone invented weblogs a couple decades later, and I can ramble on about obscure and ancient comic topics all I want. Take that, DC Comics editorial staff of the early 1980s!
So when I was thanking Fred Hembeck and Alan David Doane for their kind words in my post yesterday, a depressing thought hit me. Here are a couple people that I get along with, that I like and whose work I enjoy, and with whom I have exchanged extended e-mail discussions. But I may never actually get to meet them in person. Yeah, this is no new observation in this age of internet communication, but it’s just a little discouraging to realize that no matter how well I may get along with some of these folks online, I’ll probably never hang with them in real life. There are several people on my sidebar there with whom I’d probably get along famously…though I bet if I spent any time with BeaucoupKevin and Ringwood Ken, we’d all probably end up in a holding cell somewhere.
I have met a number of people in my weblogroll…all the members of the Associated Comics and Pop Culture Webloggers of Ventura County, CA And Outlying Environs, of course, even the elusive (and missing?) “Fred” (EDIT: site since appropriated by someone decidedly not “Fred”), I all knew prior to this whole weblogging thing, either as customers or coworkers. There’s pal JP‘s brother Scott, about whom I can say “ah, I knew him when.” I also know Ro and Randy and Dan and Andy in real life, and I’ve met John Gorenfeld several times, mostly because he’s an old, old (like since elementary school) good friend of pal Dorian.
Of fellow webloggers, the only ones I’ve met are “Lefty” Brown and his swell wife Kelly, when they stopped by on their way down to the San Diego Convention. I have spoken to several more on the phone, such as the inimitable Mag ‘n’ H and the mighty Matt Maxwell, all swell folks.
I’ve met a few of the comic pros in that sidebar as well…I’ve met Sergio Aragones several times, I’ve known Nat and Scott for quite a while (Scott was even nice enough to include me in the acknowledgements in this book…you do own it, right?), I told you about how I met Scott Saavedra, and I’ve even encountered evil mastermind Ross Richie. And let’s not forget old pal Fred Noland.
And I even met the supremely cool Wil Wheaton when he did a signing at our shop a couple years back. Look, here’s a picture I took of him at the time:
RULES.
And that’s pretty much everyone on that sidebar I’ve met in person. Hopefully someday I’ll be able to meet more of you good folks, and, maybe, you know, stay over a day or two in the guest bedroom…what’s for dinner tonight? You folks like Yahtzee? Can I see the CD collection?
Speaking of Sergio Aragones (as I did in my namedrop-fest in that previous section), I noticed the other day that I am regularly reordering the Fanboy trade paperback, a collection of his DC Comics series (with Mark Evanier and a host of fellow artists) celebrating the history of comics. Mr. Evanier says is his description of the book that it was “pretty much ignored,” but perhaps we’ve got bit of a sleeper on our hands.
If you haven’t read it yet, give it a try…it’s an entertaining love letter to the idea of being a comics fan, that doesn’t necessarily gloss over the more embarrassing elements of same.
A common sight, at our store and at other stores as well, is the family that comes in and meanders about the store, not caring about any of this comic book stuff, while the one member of the family does his shopping. You know, the kid looking for Spider-Man comics while Mom waits not-so-patiently, or (sadly, more likely), Dad looking for comics while his bored children keep asking him “are you done yet?” (And yes, I try to give those kids appropriate “Free Comic Day Comics” that I keep around for such a purpose.)
So it’s always a pleasure when we get a large family in the store (the happy couple, their parents, their grandparents), all of whom are interested in comics, going through our back issues and having a grand old time. I wish I could see that more often.
I was putting up the new posters we got in last week, when I had a thought about the Wonder Woman “Identity Crisis” poster. That’s an odd image to turn into a poster, I think, out of its original context of the Identity Crisis series. The image sort of made sense there, but as some kind of standalone iconic image of Wonder Woman? Holding a noose made from her glowing magic lasso? Seems a bit peculiar to me.
There’s a shirt based on Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series that also stikes me as being a bit of an odd choice for a design…I don’t have an image, but it’s a panel of Matthew the Raven telling Dream that “it was good being your raven” or words (a lot of words…it’s a big honkin’ word balloon) to that effect. It’s completely out of context, makes no sense on its own, and I can’t imagine why this image made it onto a shirt.
But it sold well, so what do I know?
§ November 20th, 2005 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on "Too tired…must sleep…adfjadsfjkl;ads…."
As expected, I’m remarkably tired after last night’s Midnight Madness sale…I ended up getting to bed about 2:30 this morning, and my aged muscles are still a bit weary from moving a boatload of long boxes to and fro, putting the store back together, and so on. We did manage to move a lot of material, but it still looks like we only put a slight dent in our actual inventory. Plus, I didn’t move as much manga as I was hoping, but I guess I can’t complain too much.
The prime feature of our Midnight Madness sales are the dozens of boxes of “blow-out stock” – overstock back issues priced to move. When we first started doing these sales way back when, the pricing of these issues was a little more complicated. The issues would have colored stickers attached to their bags, and each color would represent a particular price point…orange would be $0.50, blue $1.00, red $2.00, and so on. Well, after a few of those sales, we all got kind of tired of trying to keep track of what sticker was what price, so we decided to just make everything $0.50, and hopefully we’d clear out more of this stock. That of course meant great deals on prestige format books, previously priced for blow-out at $2 or $3.
For last night’s sale, we dropped prices even lower…$0.25 each, 5 for a buck, which meant even better deals could be had. Pal Corey snagged a Brave & The Bold #200 in nice condition, for example. He also found 90% of a full run of V for Vendetta.
I also poked through the boxes, looking for items for other customers searching through the rows (which are completely unsorted, by the way…did I mention they’re not in order?). I ended up finding a couple books that were tossed into the blow-out stock years ago when we were overloaded on them, but now we could use them again…stuff like DC’s Invasion series (suddenly selling again), and, God help us, X-Babies Reborn.
Oh, and I also pulled out several copies of ‘Mazing Man and pushed them onto anybody who’d listen. (I think ‘Mazing Man would make a good digest-sized collection from DC, actually.)
Anyway, I’m sure I’ll have more observations about Midnight Madness at some point, but my thinker still isn’t operating at peak capacity…plus, I have to go back to work for the Sunday shift. Oy.
And while I was slaving away at the sale, this lucky bastard was at Disneyland!
In other news:
Special thanks to “Fancypantsian” Fred Hembeck and “Ardent” Alan David Doane for mentioning me in Tom Spurgeon‘s most recent “Five for Friday” feature. I keep meaning to participate in those “Five for Fridays” but I only remember after the results have already been complied and posted…someday I’ll join in, I promise!
Pal Nat is reviving his music ‘n’ sound weblog, so go visit and encourage the man!
§ November 19th, 2005 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on "It’s Madness…!"
Midnight Tales #1 (Dec. 1972) – art by Wayne Howard
Tonight is the shop’s big Midnight Madness sale, with prices so low we must be suffering from sleep deprivation!
The original Midnight Madness started this way…we decided we wanted to do an after-hours sale of some kind, to unload some excess stock for cheap and get it out of our hair. The plan was, after closing at our normal time, we’d take an hour to prepare the shop for the sale (bringing out the boxes of blow-out comics, getting the toys and graphic novels and what have you that have been sitting out on the shelves in the back room, put up the signs directing you to the great deals), and then open up again for a couple hours for the fun to ensue. Now I thought that seemed like a lot of work for just a couple hours’ worth of “big sale” time, so, me and my big mouth, I suggested “hey, why not stay open all the way ’til midnight? It could be, oh, I don’t know, our ‘Midnight Madness’ sale!”
Sigh. I successfully talked myself into working an excessively long work day. I’m stupid. Especially since if people are still around at midnight happily spending money, I’m willing to stay and keep the store open until they’re done. I’ve shut the doors at 2 or so in the morning for previous Midnight Madness sales.
One time I tried to get around it by having a daytime clearance sale on Sunday, calling it our “Sunday Silliness” sale. Not quite as successful, I’m afraid.
The actual “Madness” itself isn’t really all that much work…for that hour we’re setting up, it’s chaos and confusion, but once it gets going, it pretty much runs itself. But it’s still a long workday for me…so don’t be surprised if my post here tomorrow is “too tired…must sleep…adfjadsfjkl;ads….”
§ November 18th, 2005 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on Mike’s brush with flaming death!
…Well, not really. But you know that Southern California brush fire that you may have heard about in the news today? That’s right up there on the hills behind our store. Though the fire was coming down the side of the hills towards the city during the day, by the evening the fire had been driven back into the canyon, where it’s still burning even now.
Business was slow, as everyone out of town assumed all of Ventura was on fire and didn’t want to make the trip, and everyone in town was either standing on the streets watching the flames, or wisely inside the house and not breathing in the ash and smoke. Or, they were in the traffic jam of cars along the main drag through town right in front of our shop, since streets were being closed off.
So, no, it wasn’t really a brush with death. The Ventura hills seem to explode into flame every few years, so we should probably be used to it by now. Besides, pal Tom was closer to the fire anyway. (Don’t worry, he’s okay. Well, relatively speaking.)
In happier news, Kid Chris popped by the shop to regale us with stories of college life, and his pal Scott bought a copy of Elfquest magazine #16 from us, because of this post of mine. That’s right, my weblog made us some money…a whole $1.80 worth, so take that, Google Ads!
§ November 18th, 2005 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on "Aqualad? You’re kidding, right?"
An extensive history of Aqualad and his many (okay, two) incarnations.
On this page, you can see some original animation cels featuring Aqualad. Here’s another cel.
A Hero Machine-generated image of our favorite underwater sidekick.
An unpublished George Perez drawing.
A review of the DC Direct Aquaman/Aqualad two-pack. “…Reports have surfaced that their ankle joints had a tendency to break when forced in extreme positions.” Ouch.
Another official Aqualad figure is on this page of the Teen Titans Mego figures.
The Aqualad costume for Captain Action’s sidekick, Action Boy! (Full site here, since I’m linking to a specific frame.) You can also see it in its original packaging on this page.
Custom figures, ahoy: Aqualad and his later incarnation as Tempest, a Super Powers custom with backer card, an “animated style” figure, a figure whose expression says “I’M INSANE,” and another Super Powers-style custom.
The Aqualad card for the trading card game.
Kevin Nowlan’s black and white art for the previously-linked card.
AQUALAD MANNEQUIN. Fear it.
A 3D Aqualad for all your 3D Aqualad needs.
For pal Dorian – some not-safe-for-work photo-manips of Aquaman and Aqualad. Oh, dear.
A page of Aqualad fan-fic and/or slash.
I don’t know what “wees” are, but there’s an Aqualad one on this page. It’s small, and cute!
Special Aqualad from the Teen Titans cartoon section!
Background on the animated version of the character.
“This site is for those devotees of animation who believe that animated characters are as real as those in any other kind of movie.” …And here they present some choice stills from the cartoon.
“I have a bit of a grudge against Aqualad because both Raven and Starfire liked him and Raven is supposed to like Beast Boy and Starfire is supposed to like Robin.”
A close look at the animated Aqualad figure.
The supremely-cool Wil Wheaton writes briefly about his Aqualad voice-work.
Animated Aqualad cosplay. Fantastic.
For future Aqualad (or Aquaman) news, please refer to that mighty Aquafan, Laura “Tegan” Gjovaag.
§ November 18th, 2005 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on An unsolicited testimonial.
New employee Nicknameless Aaron tells me today that, last night at home, his dad saw a copy of All-Star Superman sitting at the top of Aaron’s funnybook stack. Aaron’s pop, who reportedly hasn’t read a comic book in years, picked it up, read it, and proclaimed “that was good — when’s the next one coming out?”
“All-Star Superman – Even Aaron’s Dad Liked It.”
§ November 17th, 2005 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on New comics, Thanos, and wieners.
THANOS APPROVES THIS PRODUCT AND/OR SERVICEThe Marvel Select Thanos figure is now out in stores, and baby, it’s fantastic. Or, dare I say,
Than-tastic? Why yes, I do dare say that. It’s a freakin’ huge chunk o’plastic, and he comes with a figure of his true love, Death, complete with removable skull mask. Thany (as his pals call him) also comes with an extra swapable hand wearing the Infinity Gauntlet. The paint job is well done, and the overall quality of the figure gives me hope for the forthcoming
Watcher figure, which is a must buy.
Discussing the Thanos figure with pal Cully, the biggest fan of Thanos creator Jim Starlin that I know, I mentioned that I hope to see more of Marvel’s cosmic characters show up in action figure form. The In-Betweener would be kind of neat, and Cully brought up the Living Tribunal (complete with hovering head, courtesy some kind of complex magnet arrangement?). Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce to you the second worst-selling Marvel action figure series ever. (Here’s the first.)
Of course, not that I’m buying a lot of toys at the moment, since I’m waiting until the toy room at the new house is set up before adding more to the collection. Yes, we’re going to have a room for toys…how delightfully decadent. But the girlfriend continually refers to it as “the Spider-Man room,” which makes me worried that my collection will be confined to a rickety table in one corner while her boatload of Spider-goodies fill up the room. Ah, well.
Now, to the other fantastic thing that our store received on Wednesday…
…All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely.
Clean, uncluttered art…visually interesting supporting characters…beautiful coloring…snappy writing…situations we’ve seen plenty of times before, made fresh again…a powerful and friendly-looking Superman…there’s a lot to love in this comic.
Though I bet it’ll get nitpicked to pieces by those sorts of people who don’t like things that are marginally different from that which has come before.
Don’t listen to them…trust me, for I am old, and wise in these matters. It’s a great darn funnybook, deserving of your attention. It’s Superman boiled down to its basic essence, similar to Morrison’s work on New X-Men. Unlike New X-Men, which was primarily Morrison taking a tour of long-abused X-cliches and showing how they could actually be interesting if handled correctly, the new Superman title simply pares everything down to the basics everyone knows (or should know) about Supes: Lex hates Superman, Superman is a hero, Clark is a goof, Jimmy is Superman’s best friend, Lois is a reporter. No company-wide crossovers or supporting character subplots here…just plain ol’ Silver Age super adventure.
Other new items this week:
Mad Kids #1, the “all-ages” version of Mad Magazine, is now out, and the primary differences between it and its apparently not all ages counterpart is more puzzle pages, an interview section (with a band I’ve never heard of), and more pull-out posters and pages and cut-out crafts. It’s not as watered down as I feared it might be (the cover features Gromit of Wallace and… fame spewing out a river of vomit, for example), so maybe it’ll get the necessary parental disapproval it needs to help it sell.
Captain Universe: X-23 – Primary reaction of our customers to the cosmically-powered version of the female Wolverine (i.e. her glowing blue claws): “aw, c’mon.” Not exactly putting its best foot forward, I’m afraid.
Supergirl #3 – It has the (apparently) pre-Crisis Luthor, in full battle armor, fighting Supergirl. Ordinarily, I’d be all over this book, since I’m a Luthor fan…but since I read the first issue of Supergirl, I’m pretty gunshy about buying any more.
Complete Omaha The Cat Dancer trade paperback – With a cover (not safe for work) that I absolutely cannot display on the rack. Oy.
“Everybody’s a comic book artist”
“‘He has wiener vision,’ Sam said of his hero, who looks like a giant hot dog in a bun with stick arms and legs. ‘Hot dogs shoot out of his eyes and they’re poisoned, so if the criminals eat them, they get killed.'”
§ November 16th, 2005 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on Just a quick note…
…to say I really, really hate it when there’s no cover price on a new comic book, leaving us to scramble for the invoice to look up the cost the first time someone brings a copy to the register. Like, for example, today’s release of Vampirella: Revelations #1.
It’s $2.99, in case you’re wondering.
And, just to remind you of something I noted before, Powers #14 is really $2.95, not $3.95 like it says on the cover. If your local funnybook dealers insists it’s the higher price, tell him to bust out his invoice for the items that came in Nov. 2nd, and to check it himself.
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