In which I reach a serious level of perversity in regards to Watchmen film merchandise.
One of the unintended consequences of running my Things Not to Say… mini-comic a couple of days ago is that I am now getting people feeding me the “I’m very disappointed” line both in my comments sections and at the shop (and I’m totally looking at you, Brandon from the game store next door).
And, you know, that’s fine. So long as you all can deal with the guilt when I finally snap and wreak havoc throughout the county and strike terror into the hearts of its denizens, starting with poor, innocent Employee Aaron.
Anyhoo, I’m glad you all seemed to enjoy (or at least tolerate) some of my old mini-comics work. You can see a fuzzy scan of the cover of the print edition of Mike Sterling’s Progressive Ruin in my first anniversary post, which also has a reproduction of a letter of comment I wrote as a 12 year old, but feel free to skip that. But there’s a little more detail regarding our comics-publishing concern there, if you’re interested. And if you want to see another strip I did from those days, I posted one here three years ago…be sure to click the “page two” link for…the rest of the story.
In other (well, mostly store-related) news:
- Watchmen appears to be available, or at least orderable, from our distributor again. But now Batman: The Dark Knight Returns is out of stock. ARGH!
- Spent some time over the last day or so swapping out some of the promo posters from the wall and in the window…it’s always best to get those posters out of the window before they all turn the same shade of blue. I also went through our section of posters intended for retail sale and did a little maintenance, and noticed a few things:
1. Whoo boy, nobody wants that “Brand New Day” Spider-Man/Wolverine poster.
2. …But that “Iron Man in space” poster by Joe Quesada did very well. Thanks, popular and surprisingly-good movie!
3. COMIC BOOK CHARACTERS WE DON’T NEED ANY MORE POSTERS OF: The Fantastic Four. Okay, maybe more solo ones of the Thing. And I realize there are a lot more posters out there of, say, Spider-Man, but Spidey posters generally sell (the poster in point 1 excepted). FF posters, not so much.
4. Oh good gravy, we still have that damned New Warriors poster from the early ’90s? And I actually put it in the poster rack for display? “HELLO COME LOOK AT MY ALBATROSS HANGING IN THE POSTER RACK RATHER THAN AROUND MY NECK.”
5. I think we may be past the “sell-by” date on the couple of Matrix posters we have left.
6. Now I’m wondering what sort of Watchmen posters we’ll get as part of the movie merchandising push. These ones, for sure, but maybe we’ll get a nice shot of Rorschach, hands on his hips, standing heroically, chest and chin thrust out, and a big blocky “RORSCHACH” logo across the poster’s bottom edge. Or maybe he can be throwing a punch at the viewer. Basically, I want the same type of posters that we got with 1997’s Batman and Robin.
- Speaking of Watchmen merchandise, it occurred to me that we’re going to get the inevitable trading card set based on the film, and that it’ll likely feature those peculiar “own a piece of the prop/costume” cards that feature a small piece of said prop/costume cut out and embedded into the card. Dr. Manhattan’s costume cards would have to be entirely from the flashbacks (“Congratulations! You are the proud owner of a piece of Dr. Manhattan’s ‘plum-smugglers’ from the Warner Bros. film ‘Watchmen'”).*
I thought it’d be neat if they could come up with a way to make special “Rorschach” chase cards, with a layer of black liquid floating between two thin semi-translucent pieces of white plastic…but of course, it probably wouldn’t take much for one of those to break, damaging other cards in the pack/box. Maybe some kind of heat-sensitive card…a close of up Rorschach’s mask, that looks blank until you apply some heat to it and the black patterns begin to show up.
This is what I think about when I really should be thinking about something else. Anything else.
- Also, judging by reaction to the idea Kid Chris and I had about a Mario Kart-style Watchmen racing game…there ain’t nobody who doesn’t want that game. “Ain’t anybody?” Well, you know what I mean…the people have spoken, and they want Giant-Headed Silk Spectre and Dr. Manhattan ‘n’ so on in their little race cars. Who could blame them?
