I’m really not trying to pick on that guy, honest.
Once again it was time for me to assemble a package for that mail-order customer of mine who gets his books about every two months…and once again, this helps me notice the shipping delays in a handful of books from Marvel and DC.
Well, not that I wasn’t already aware…after all, a few weeks ago I went over the publishing schedule of Millar and Hitch’s Fantastic Four and found out that, as everyone on the planet expected, it was experiencing publication delays. And in the two months’ worth of funnybooks I’m about to ship to this customer, there was only one issue of FF, #560, released 9/24. That’s about five weeks after the previous issue, and we’re at about a month and half between 560 and the yet-to-be-released 561 — not that big of a deal, and mostly in line with the delays experienced by previous issues. Still a bit frustrating having to explain/apologize for its lateness to our customers.
Another Millar title, Wolverine, is experiencing even more extreme delays, as the last issue out was #68, released 8/27. Granted, it’s hard to notice that any Wolverine title hasn’t been shipping, since it seems like there are two or three new comics with the word “Wolverine” in the title every week. However, this one does stand out, since it’s currently in the midst of the popular “Old Man Logan” storyline, and our customers have been constantly requesting the new installment. So, good: customers interested in a Wolverine story; bad: over two months since the last issue came out.
As much as we’ve been asked for Wolverine, we’ve had a lot more people asking us about the release of Batman #681, the last part of the R.I.P. storyline. Our customers are really interested is seeing how it works out, and it’s really not all that late just yet. Well, okay, if the Batman series had been, on the whole, on time over the last year or so, the R.I.P. story would be done by now. But relatively speaking, the next issue of Batman is only about a week overdue. But that’s enough to cause the influx of requests for it, it seems. Actually, customers started asking only about three weeks after the last ish…couldn’t wait the full month, I guess.
In other news:
- Former employee Kid Chris has thrown himself back into blogging, the sucker, and has been updating Bispectacult over the last few days. Of note: his Comics on Craigslist post, good for Big Laffs.
- Pal Dorian looks at Previews, finds it lacking. Also finds statues of women scratching themselves. (How’d I miss that for the End of Civilization? How?)
- I plan on going back and addressing your responses to my question about watching Smallville. It’ll probably happen on Sunday, so if you have more things to say, just throw ’em into the comments section before then.
