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§ May 10th, 2006 § Filed under pogs Comments Off on Another look at Marvel Super Heroes POGs.
Well, a good chunk of them are just pictures of the characters, with their logos:
Then there are a handful of group shots:
Some group shots are “themed,” such as “Brusiers” (with Hulk, Venom, and the Thing), or “Fire ‘N Ice” (Human Torch and Iceman), or this one, featuring a skull motif:
This one brings up some vague memories of the Great POG Scare of the early ’90s, particularly that the “skull” POGs were considered more desirable, for some reason. Or maybe I’m confusing them with the “poison” POGs (not to be confused with these guys)…or maybe the skull POGs and the poison POGs were the same thing. I don’t remember. I don’t really want to remember.
At any rate, the themes get a little strained, like this one:
Because, you see, the Thing is rocky, and Ghost Rider…rolls, I guess, since he has a motorcycle. ROCK AND ROLL, DUDE.
And there are quite a few POGs that just have logos:
The sample pack we opened was primarily just logo POGs.
All those images above were taken from a promo poster we were sent a few days back, by the way. I’m half-tempted to put it up in the store just to see customer reactions: “No, not POGs! Not again! Nooooooooo-“(deep breath) “-ooooooooo!”
I think this attempted POG collectible revival may be about five-to-ten years too early for the typical 20-year “nostalgia gap” that most things like this seem to have. Assuming, of course, there will be nostalgic interest in these at any point in the future…most of my customers who had bought them as young’uns seem embarrassed by it now, and in my case, I’m embarrassed that I even sold them here at the shop.
Given that the superhero trading card market is fairly moribund (it primarily consists of people not buying new cards, but trying to sell their old Marvel sets to us and being surprised that they’re not worth much of anything now), I don’t think the tangentially-related superhero POG market is going to take off. Unless, of course, they sell it as a gaming item (since there is a game of sorts associated with POGs, mainly involving throwing things at other things) to the kids buying the Yu-Gi-Oh collectible card game and the like, but even the CCG market sorta looks like it’s slowing down.
POGs. Geez, of all the things I thought I’d never have to deal with again….
§ May 9th, 2006 § Filed under free comic book day Comments Off on Free Comic Book Day 2006 – The Final Chapter.
Some final comments on this year’s Free Comic Book Day:
I’ve had a few reports show up in my comments sections from over the weekend (1, 2) which make me very glad things went as smoothly as they did our store. Commenter Jamie in particular has my sympathies, judging from his description of how his local event went, with people grabbing comics out of kids’ hands and loud, obnoxious people driving out other paying customers.
Fortunately, we also didn’t have any problem with people assuming everything was free and walking out with a pile of, say, the new Infinite Crisis. We avoided that problem by setting up a couple big tables right by the front door, spreading out all the FCBD books, and having the people manning those tables let people know as soon as they walk in the door “hey, all the free comics are right here.” And, as in past years, we divided the comics into three age groups – kids, teens, and grown-ups – and packed the comics into color-coded bags. Kids got the bag with all the kids comics, teens got the teen bag and the kid bag, and adults got all three. Thus, no panic grabbing…comics were handed out in an orderly fashion, and if people didn’t want all the comics, they could pick and choose off the tables.
I had a question from someone asking if our business improved for that day…business as in “taking in money,” not just “warm bodies milling about the store,” and the answer is, yes, sales were up for that day. I know that wasn’t the case for everybody, particularly those stores afflicted with the magpies who just want to grab the free stuff because it’s free. However, we had enough new faces come in the door that day who took a look around the shop and found items that they hadn’t been exposed to before and just had to buy. For example, we had that boxed set of DC Direct Justice League action figures that had been kicking around the shop for a while…a dad came in with his kids, saw the set, thought that was just the neatest thing he’d ever seen, and purchased it for his children. We had another fellow who used FCBD as an opportunity to finally come in and ask about work by Los Bros. Hernandez and Dan Clowes…and came back the very next day to use one of our discount coupons to buy one of Clowes’ books.
I know there is some concern as to whether or not FCBD actually does anything to generate new comic book readers to any sizeable extent, and the only real answer is “I don’t know.” Like Tim says, there is no industry-wide method of keeping track of new customer influx aside from, say, someone like me noticing a fellow like the guy who came back and bought a Dan Clowes book. And maybe, in the short run, no, the industry as a whole may not get a whole lot of new converts to the cause, but if we got a couple, certainly there must be a few more, somewhere. At the very least, FCBD does the job of increasing the general public’s awareness of comic books. I don’t think I’ve had the comment of “oh, comic books, they still make these?” in quite a while.
Even if it doesn’t bring in a lot of new people, there’s still the chance that, as I’ve noted in the past, regular customers will be exposed to comics they wouldn’t otherwise have tried. Queen & Country and Courtney Crumrin benefited from FCBD in previous years. It’s too soon to say which will be the breakout title this year…but it better be Owly. That was my favorite from this new batch.
Another question I had was just how much it would cost a retailer to participate. Well, the minimum buy-in is $5 worth of each Gold Sponsor book, for a total of $50 (which, assuming an average cost of about 25 cents, gives you 200 comics to give away). That doesn’t sound like a whole lot, which can make people wonder how some stores can claim they can’t afford to participate. I certainly thought that, until I considered something. Say you’re a store, and you bought the minimum number of books. You have 20 copies each of 10 different books that you’re going to give away on FCBD. If you have 200 people show up at your store, you’re either going to have to give everyone just one free comic (which will make most of the customers complain) or you can give 50 people four copies each, or 20 people one of each comic…or however you do it, you’re gonna run out in short order. So, realistically, you’re going to have to order way above the minimum…which may then be cost-prohibitive for smaller stores with smaller budgets. At least, I hope that’s the reasoning behind the folks who say it costs too much, and not “Fifty bucks!? Why, that’s seventy-two and a half 69-cent tacos! Forget it!”
We always order lots of extras, especially on the kid-friendly books, as we continue to use them throughout the year. I’m still giving away copies of Teen Titans Go from…was it last year? I don’t remember. Anyway, I’m still giving them to kids who come in the store, along with the Disney books, and they’re almost always well received. Plus, when our local libraries make their regular comic purchases from us, we also donate a bunch of the FCBD comics to them as well. And my girlfriend gives them away to the kids she teaches at Sunday school…we get plenty of mileage on the FCBD books all year long.
So was it a success? Well, we gave away a lot of comics, made a bunch of people happy, made some money, and hopefully got a new customer or two out of it. In the long run, that’s good for business, even if in the short run, it looks like it made only a small impact on expanding the customer base. It takes small steps, sometimes.
That was a lot to plow through, so here, have a panel of Linus JUST SAYING NO:
Hotlinked by a Myspace user in 3…2….
§ May 8th, 2006 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on I can’t read everything.
(Inspired by pal Dorian, who was inspired by Chris, who was inspired by this Newsarama discussion) (EDIT: But it apparently started here)
So in the Superman: The Ten Cent Adventure one-shot from a couple years back, Daily Planet editor-in-chief Perry White confronts Clark Kent about Kent’s passport, found dusty and forgotten in a storage closet. If Kent has been travelling around the world, reporting on important international events, White rightfully wonders, how is it that his passport is unused? The chief’s pretty steamed about it:
And how does Clark get out of it? “Sorry to run, Perry, but I see Jimmy Olsen over there! We’ll have to discuss this later!” And he dashes off to perform some super-action, leaving Perry to wonder…
…though apparently Perry doesn’t dwell on it, as we never hear about this passport thing ever again.
Now this was an interesting idea, I thought, though it does make Clark/Superman look a little dopey (oh, if only he had some kind of secret Arctic fortress in which he could hide stuff like this). His double identity is put on the spot, and if he owns up to never using his passport (since, unknown to Perry, he simply flew to where he needed to go under his own power), all of his reporting suddenly becomes suspect. From Perry’s perspective, either Clark made all these international stories up, or he otherwise misrepresented his involvement in procuring the story (using secondary sources rather than investigating firsthand, as it’s implied Perry had believed). Either way, his credibility takes a hit (admittedly more in the former case than the latter).
Or Clark could just own up to Perry that he’s Superman, but then that brings up the old question of Clark’s ethics (having got his job at the Planet by reporting a story on himself as Supes, and continuing to report on himself over the years).
But it’s a moot point since, as I said, Clark and Perry never speak of it again, to the best of my memory.
Another plot point that came and went was in Saga of the Swamp Thing #16 (1983), where Swamp Thing and crew exhume the body of Linda Holland, only to find that the body had already been taken. Swampy makes reference to having found “that device…designed to keep people away…from those graves…!”
Huh? What device? I don’t remember any device being found in any issues of Swamp Thing leading up to this. Well, according to the footnote, the story of said device would be told in an upcoming issue of the Superman team-up book DC Comics Presents…which also never happened. The next issue of DCCP to feature Swamp Thing was this one, and it had nothing to do with Linda Holland’s grave or devices guarding it.
This wasn’t nearly as annoying as the Superman’s passport situation…where that was an interesting complication in Superman’s life that was tossed away, making both Clark and Perry look foolish as a result, the Swamp Thing plot point was just an unexplained aside that didn’t really impact the story one way or the other. Plus, as Alan Moore took over and drove the book into an all-new, horrific direction, the many subplots and tangents from the earlier issues suddenly seemed less important. That particular DC Comics Presents story never came to pass, but no one much missed it, either.
Any other subplots/plot points you can think of that just fell to the wayside like that? Stuff that seemed like it should be a big deal, but just dried up, disappeared, or otherwise amounted to nothing?
On a slightly related note, the new volume of The Complete Peanuts 1959-60 featured the following strip, which I remembered reading in one of the paperback reprints as a young Mikester, and recalled this punchline every time one of Snoopy’s numerous brothers turned up in the strip:
The volume also contains this strip, which has nothing to do with forgotten/altered storylines, but does seem to feature a huge ol’ typo on Schulz’ part:
Given the context in which it’s used, and the lack of reasons why Lucy would just suddenly shout “BOING!” — it seems that Schulz left the letter “R” out of the word “boring.” I’m sure it’s been noted before by somebody, and probably old news to Nat, but couldn’t find any references. Still, just thought that was interesting.
I probably have some final thoughts on Free Comic Book Day, but I’ll get to those tomorrow. I need a break from thinking about the free books!
§ May 7th, 2006 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on
I am currently having some intermittent e-mail issues. If you have sent e-mail to me in the last day or so, I may not have received it. Please try sending your messages again in the next day or so…hopefully the problems will have resolved by then. Thank you!
I think I’ve got everything sorted…not how I wanted to spend my Sunday evening, I’ll tell you what.
Basically, my ISP stopped accepting e-mails forwarded from my progressiveruin.com and mikesterling.com addresses to my primary ISP address. A call to the company where I registered my domains and managed the e-mail forwards revealed 1) I wasn’t the only person having this problem with my ISP, and 2) the problem was at the ISP’s end, not the registrar’s. A call to the ISP was of no use (“What operating system are you using? Are you using Mac? I’ll transfer you to the Mac department.” “MY OPERATING SYSTEM ISN’T THE PROBLEM.”) so rather than wait until someone there got a clue and figured out something was wrong, I’ve essentially given up on their e-mail system and gone the Gmail route.
It took a while to get all the options set the way I wanted them, and to get a second e-mail program to handle the varying accounts…and I’m sure this is all terribly interesting to you.
The upshot is…I’m about 88% sure I can get e-mail again. So fire away! And if you sent anything to me over the weekend…fire away again!
§ May 7th, 2006 § Filed under free comic book day Comments Off on Free Comic Book Day…the bloody aftermath.
Regarding the Twomorrows free magazine offer (extended through today)…I don’t know if there was a glitch in their system or what, but a fellow in Texas ordered a copy of Back Issue #10 which, somehow, was attached to my billing address (though the fellow’s shipping address in Texas appears as well). Therefore, my account at Twomorrows currently looks like I ordered a second free magazine (which is verboten). I sent an e-mail to their support department indicating that I ordered only one mag, I swear, and hopefully they’ll see that before they see that there are two free mags on my account and cancel them both.
At least, I hope it’s a glitch in the system and not someone deliberately screwing with me, which would make me very unhappy.
Did anyone else doing the free mag thing experience a similar glitch, or was I the lucky one?
As for Free Comic Book Day:
It’s 10:15. The store is filled with kids and their parents. They’re just swarming all over the place. And it’s at that point a regular customer comes in and asks to go through all of our adult comic back issue boxes. It’s not like he announced it to the whole store or anything…he did ask quietly, but as you might imagine, I didn’t particularly want someone perusing the naughty books in full view of everyone. And no, I didn’t have anyplace else to put him. Luckily, by just having him flip through the comics in the boxes without yanking them up for all to see, we managed to keep it fairly discrete, but still, that wasn’t an issue I was expecting to deal with on FCBD.
Otherwise, it was busy most of the day, with the occasional welcome lull…and pal Dorian stopped by midway through the day with sodas and fries for all of us, which was nice of him to do, the ol’ softie.
No problems of note…no “are these the only free comics?” or “I want 50 copies of Superman/Batman…NOW!” or anything like that. Had a few kids acting up (a couple siblings chasing each other around with laser pointers — yeah, that had to stop — and one little kid really throwing a hissy fit for some reason), and a few folks trying to sit on the floor and mooch a free read off the comics we were actually trying to sell (for God’s sake, take the free comics and read those!).
So, alas, no bizarre stories…just people coming in, getting free comics, and the vast majority of them also bought something during their visit, which is a plus. Also, we included discount coupons with all the free books we gave away…which are only good from the 7th through the 31st this month, so the customers will have to come back to the store to use them. Eeeeeeee-vil.
Plus, FCBD gave us an opportunity to give away of a few of those $0.75 Alias comics that, um, haven’t performed up to expectations.
Oh, no, not another Google video:
I kinda like the faux-silent film effect, complete with intertitles and fake film scratches. I also like how they had to censor some of the dirtier graffiti on a wall at one point in the film. However, I don’t like it when people spell “hee hee hee” as “he he he.” IT JUST ISN’T NATURAL.
§ May 6th, 2006 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on And so it begins.
GOD HELP US ALL
Don’t forget Twomorrows is also offering a free sample of one of their magazines for FCBD. (I picked Back Issue #3.)
Reviews of the free comics may be found at pal Dorian’s site and at Comics Worth Reading (1, 2, 3).
My picks: you need to get Owly (cuter than a cute thing that’s cute…look at last year’s Owly FCBD book for a sample), the Bongo freebie (a bit fanboy-humorish but the Comic Book Guy story is good for a larf), Preposterous Voyages of Ironhide Tom (silly and amusing), and Donald Duck (which contains one of my all-time favorite Don Rosa shorts).
Picks to miss: I think next year we can safely skip whatever it is that Wizard plans on offering.
Anyway, good luck to all of you folks out there, on either side of the counter. I’ll report back and let you know how it went at our store.
Additional linkage:
“Holy free comics, Batman!”
“Shazam! It’s free comics day today”
“Literacy campaign targets comic readers”
“…Educators say [comic books] can provide the same function as other children’s books — acting as a gateway to more advanced reading and thought.”
See? It’s educational, too!
§ May 5th, 2006 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on Here’s the smell of the blood still – all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!
So, just out of curiosity, and out of a need to lessen my own guilt a tad, I decided to return to the eBay and see what the Civil War Michael Turner 1 in 75 sketch cover variants have been selling for. I looked at only closed auctions, and only at auctions for just the sketch variant (there were quite a few that had all three versions of the cover, or just the two variants), and took only the first twenty auctions I came across (I figure that was enough of a sampling). Here is what I found:
Lowest price: $75.00
Highest price: $115.00
Average price of all 20: $96.87
And once these start going through the CGC “professional grading” process and getting relisted, we’ll probably be looking at prices several times that amount. Well, at least until Civil War goes the way of Secret Wars II and Atlantis Attacks and we’ve all moved on to the next big “nothing will ever be the same” event series.
So, I suppose, I could have put that Turner sketch cover on the eBay and got a few more bucks for it, but that smacks of “effort.” And a bird in the hand is worth two on the internet, as the saying doesn’t go but probably should. Plus, I didn’t have to worry about the PayPal fees, and eBay fees, and packing the comic up, and wondering if it arrived, and so on.
And thus, I’m going to be happy with our seventy-five bucks, the customer is going to be happy with his comic (I just found out that he had bought other copies of the same variant elsewhere, so he’s almost certainly going to be reselling them), and we can put that money to some good use…buying more manga books, or keeping us stocked in Lenore, or keeping the bourbon flowing…you know, whatever.
I also took a look at what the regular Turner variants were selling for…I didn’t do an exact average or anything, but they looked like they were selling in the $25 to $30 range. And someone sold a set of both variants for $177. Goodness.
And here’s someone who sold the Civil War promo postcard for $0.75. You know, I still have a bunch of these on the front counter…hmmmmm….
Oh, relax, I’m only kidding.
Maybe.
§ May 4th, 2006 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on Found on the eBay.
Sold for $13, in case you were wondering.
§ May 4th, 2006 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on I’m starting this post with an out-of-context Lewis Black quote, just because I feel like it.
“If you wake up next Tuesday, and you feel like being Batman
…go for it.”
–Lewis Black, The Carnegie Hall Performance
Okay, so Marvel’s Civil War #1, their latest in an apparently unending series of crossover events, came out on Wednesday. And, as has been the trend lately with titles from both Marvel and DC, retailer incentive variant covers were offered with this issue. For every 25 copies of the regular #1, you got a copy with the alternate Michael Turner cover. For every 100 (EDIT: 75, apparently) copies you ordered, you were able to get 1 copy of the Michael Turner black and white sketch cover.
Well, we got copies of these variant cover editions, and really, what the heck are you going to price these at? We turned to the eBay, and researched what people were already selling these for, or at least what bids had been driven up to, and ultimately we went with $24.95 for the 1/25 ones, and $75 for the sketch cover. Yeah, I know, but that was actually less than some of the prices that we were seeing. And I have no idea what they’re up to now, and I don’t really want to know.
Within about a half an hour of putting them out for sale, they were all sold. All of them. At those prices.
We’re going to hell. See you there!
We also received the Free Comic Book Day Bongo and Archie comics that we didn’t receive last week, which is good since, by looking at our invoice online earlier in the week, I couldn’t tell if we actually were getting the comics or just getting a credit for them. Thank goodness they actually arrived…I don’t like receiving FCBD stuff after FCBD. We also received our Stargate SG-1 FCBD action figures which, um, I don’t get why these are being offered for FCBD, but what the heck, I know people who’d like them. And we got our boatload of Wolverine Heroclix freebies, which, though I didn’t say it at the time, someone was also selling as a “hot, rare” item on the eBay at the same time as those Superman/Batman books I found. Oh, yeah, real hot and rare, there.
Other books:
Infinite Crisis #7 – THE CROSSOVER IS OVER. RETURN TO YOUR HOMES. Of all the scenes in this comic, the one that was the most affecting was Robin’s reaction to seeing the body of his teammate. Only a couple panels long, barely mentioned, but touching nonetheless. There are also a couple of lines of dialogue explicitly mentioning certain changes to character histories caused by the events in this series…I’m going to assume we’ll get some follow-up on that, I hope. (I’m being deliberately vague…I’m trying not to spoil anything for pal Dorian, who won’t get to see this comic for a couple of days.)
And, as Employee Nathan has been noting to us at the shop, if Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers series takes place before Infinite Crisis, then by process of elimination, by seeing which of the Soldiers have appeared in IC, we now know which character is going to die at the conclusion of SS. Maybe. Unless we’re wrong, in which case…never mind.
Complete Peanuts 1959-1960 – No chance to read it yet, but I know that the series is entering what some folks consider the classic period of the strip. These books have been nothing less than completely enjoyable, and the Fantagraphics folks should be blessed as the saints they are for seeing that this material is made available.
War of the Worlds: Second Wave #2 – The comic makes its shift to black and white from color, and, if anything, the lack of color adds to the creepiness of the proceedings. We also learn a little more about the marriage problems of Miles, the lead character, in flashbacks, as he and his traveling partner Duke evade a Martian invader and team with some other survivors. And, sorta like Infinite Crisis #7, a background scene sticks in my mind just as much, if not more so, than the lead action: as Miles and Duke drive down a city street, over the span of three panels, we (and Miles) see a shopkeeper walk out of shop, carrying a gun, and, apparently despondent over the new invasion, kills himself. This, more than almost anything else in the book, underscores the seeming hopelessness of the struggle the characters face. A good, enjoyable action/horror comic.
Action Comics #838 – I’m having trouble believing that Clark Kent would use the expression “pissed off.” Is that nitpicking? Actually, I’m still having trouble believing the Comics Code Authority let “pissed off” slide by. (Then again, given what they’ve let go in the past….)
Pal JP: “Hey, is it true that Luthor was the U.S. President in the Superman comics?”
Me: “Yes…yes, he was.”
JP: “That’s stupid.”
In other news:
Comic Book Galaxy is giving comics away…all you gotta do is send an e-mail. I can’t enter, but YOU CAN. It’s free, free, I tell you, so what have you got to lose?
Also giving comic books away is Yet Another Comics Blog, sending out free funny books for every day of the month. Also free, also easy to enter!
My old, old friend pal William e-mailed me with the news last night that the original, unaltered Star Wars movies are being released on DVD this fall for “a limited time.” The two disc sets for each film will include both the original version and the “remastered” version with all the extra and mostly unnecessary CGI noodling. I don’t mind the new versions, but resented that was all that was available. Glad I never got around to buying the first DVD releases.
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