…and is totally not shooting up or anything:
In entirely unrelated news, Kevin Church and Benjamin Birdie’s webcomic The Rack is about to get its first print collection, and you can read about it right here.
Okay, the “Subtext? What subtext?” thing is pal Dorian’s shtick, but I had to ask him if I could borrow it for this ad:
…
Or, okay, maybe they’re just holding their ice cream cones, but still, there’s a story behind this presented scenario, I’m sure.
So, anyway, the new Star Trek movie.
Fun and exciting, with a spot-on cast…many excellent performances, but Karl Urban as McCoy nails it. The plot is a very basic combo of the vengeance seeking villain mixed with typical Trek time-travel shenanigans…I mean, even by Trek standards this plot is simplistic, but the time travel element this go-round provides the very foundation of this film’s reboot of the franchise, which is clever.
Yes, the science is a bit wonky, but frankly, if you’re looking to Star Trek for science, I’ve got some bad news for you. (And Phil Plait happily nitpicks away at the science, if it’s really bothering you.)
Overall, an excellent and enjoyable action film…the plot may be a bit on the light side, but it sufficiently serves as a framework for the real heart of TREK: the characters.
I have only a few SPOILER-ish notes and comments about the film, which follow right after this pic, and end after the next.
I suppose, ultimately, there’s not that much of a difference between the two Treks, here, aside from some cosmetic changes, some changes in the personal histories of the characters, and…well, okay, the planet Vulcan being blown up might alter some scenes here and there. But that some difference has been established is enough for some hay to be made, I’m guessing.
But, I swear to God, if any of you people start writing Young Spock/Old Spock slash fiction, I will hunt you down.
For more Trek reading:
John is one of the biggest Trek fans I know (and when we were hanging out together at a recent social function, I swear about 75% of our conversations were about Trek), so I’m very much looking forward to his essays.
And that’s all I got, since I’ve been avoiding articles/spoilers/what have you since the film opened. Luckily, I only had to do the fingers-in-ears/”LA LA LA LA LA NOT LISTENING LA LA LA” thing once at the shop.
So, in conclusion…Star Trek: a very entertaining movie, and quite possibly a franchise-saving one. Glad to see people are taking to it as well as they are.
So I was processing a recently-acquired collection, which included a copy of Our Fighting Forces #134 (Nov/Dec 1971):
I’m sure something like “move your butts, Easy Co.!” was shouted by Sgt. Rock on a cover at some point, but I’ve done absolutely zero, zilch, nada research on this, so I’m depending on your memories. Has the word “butt” (in the context of referring to, if I may use the medical term, the “ass”) been used on a mainstream comic cover prior to this issue? This vital question must be answered!
Well, okay, maybe not. But this is the kind of thing that floats through my mind as I’m robotically processing, bagging, and tagging old funnybooks. The brain goes weird places sometimes.
I’m not sure how the conversation eventually got to this point, but these were the words spoken in our shop a few short weeks ago:
EMPLOYEE AARON: “Hey, Mike, if Carol Channing were a member of one of the Lantern Corps, what color would she be?”
ME: “Why, she’d be a Raaaaaaasssspberry Lantern, of course!”
EMPLOYEE AARON: “…I’m going to need a raise.”
TWITTER SHENANIGANS: So a couple of days ago I started a series of “Stan Lee Porn” posts on the Twitter (starting with this post, though Tom Peyer actually came up with the Twitter-searchable #stanleeporn hashtag). And yesterday, because I was feeling especially sarcastic, I started #savecomics, with many impractical and smart-alecky ideas for this industry I’ve found myself working in. A couple of people took it a little more seriously than it was intended, I think, but it was some goofy fun at any rate.
So there you go. If you didn’t like me taking part in pal Dorian’s Uncomfortable Plot Summaries, you’re certainly not going to like any of the above. But it was all in fun…and hey, sometimes I need to vent, and I can’t always beat the employees.
Anyway, in conclusion, I refer you to this.
TWITTER: Destroying modern discourse one 140-character smart-ass message at a time.
Okay, let me finally say a few things about your comments re: Free Comic Book Day.
I should note right off that I’m not going to get on any store’s case about limiting the number of books each person gets. With the economy as it is, and the comics industry in particular taking a pretty good hit, I can’t really hold that against anyone. Yes, we did do our usual “everyone gets every comic” deal (with only “age-appropriateness” restrictions – details here) like we have for every previous FCBD, but also like in previous years, an in-store sale on the same day more than made up for the cost. But I realize not every store can do this, and so as long as 1) they gave away comics for free (i.e. not “only with purchase,” which is totally against the spirit of FCBD) and 2) made an event of it (instead of just dumping the freebies in the box by the door with a tiny sign that says “FREE”), I’m not going to give anyone any grief.
Now to specific comments:
“Some stores will give costumers the available comics free,
but then charge TWO CENTS per comic in SALES TAX!WHAT’S UP WITH THAT?”
I honestly have no idea. Maybe there’s some local tax ordinance requiring it or something? That barely seems worth the effort unless they’re legally required to do so…or think they’re required to do so, which could also be the issue here.
“I’ve always thought the point was to bring in NEW customers, so I stay away. I’m already buying the few comics I want.”
Well, it’s a little o’this, a little o’that. Yes, we want new customers to try out comics…I’ve said before that the goal in some cases is simply to make people aware that 1) comics are still being published, 2) there might be some comics they’d actually like, and 3) hey, if you ever need any comics, well, here we are! But FCBD is also useful for getting the already-converted to try out new and different titles. Sales on comics like Queen & Country and Courtney Crumrin, for example, bumped upward quite a bit to our regular customers following the FCBD exposure.
“My local store was neither terribly exciting nor terribly disappointing. It was pretty crowded, but if the guy in line in front of me was any indication (he took way more than his allotment of freebies but only actually spent $2) I’m not sure how much good it did beyond attracting free loaders.”
Well, I try not to think of it as “freeloading,” as such. We went into this with the thought that “we’re going to give away all these comics for free.” If people came in, got free comics, and left, that was pretty much that. Free Comic Book Day means “free comics,” and no one who came into the store was obligated to do anything more than pick up the free stuff. So, you know, we knew what we were getting into, and that’s okay. That we had a sale that encouraged people to look around the store at least briefly, and got several people to spend lots of money…that was simply a bonus.
“How do most stores handle handing them out? At my store you could grab 2 FCBD freebies and 2 more from a box of surplus comics they had laying around. It sounded alright to me until I heard of stores just letting people take one of everything.”
It sounded like a lot of stores only let customers take a limited number of the FCBD books, like 2 or 3 out of the 40 different titles available. In our case, where we gave away one of each (again, per age requirements) to everyone, we handled things a little differently.
We had tables set up at the front of the store, with the pre-bagged age-sorted assortments of the free books behind it. We also had extras of all the books laid out on the tables, so if people didn’t want the whole enchilada handed to them, they could just pick out the ones they wanted. We limited folks to one of each comic per customer, but we were pretty good about letting even that limit slide if they needed an extra copy or two of something for anyone back home, or for a friend who couldn’t make it in. We’re lucky, in that most of our customers are pretty cool about it, and don’t get greedy and try to make off with a pile of Owly or anything.
This particular FCBD was much busier than in previous years, so it became apparent part way through the day that the continued pre-bagged distribution of the freebies was going to run us dry right quick, so we debagged the comics, laid them out on the tables with the other extras, and just let people pick and choose in order to stretch the stock out a bit. Still, at the end of the day we had less than one Diamond shipping box of leftovers, from the dozens of FCBD boxes we’d originally received.
“What sort of free comic would you produce if you were making one for FCBD? What would you like to see produced that maybe isn’t being done?”
Specifically, this year I would have liked to have seen a Star Trek comic from IDW, given the current excitement over the impending release of the new film. Ah, well.
But in general? …I think more self-contained stories, rather than books that lead into continuing sagas. Granted, most of the FCBD books are pretty good about this. However, you’re not going to “trick” or coerce a new reader into coming in and buying all the follow-up trade paperbacks because you gave him or her 2/3rds of the first issue of Ultimate Spider-Man (which Marvel actually did for the first FCBD, if I remember correctly). If the comic is good, that’d be enough to get the reader back in, and a self-contained story I think would leave the reader a little more satisfied than something without an ending.
“Would you happen to have an Owly copy left?”
Alas, we did run out. Owly is a popular title every FCBD. This reminds me to note, however, that we did just reorder more copies of Blackest Night #0 yesterday, since we’re getting a lot of after-the-fact requests for that comic.
We also have a lot of people looking for the Aliens/Predator comic, but there are no more to be had from the distributor, unfortunately.
“Ultimately, I’ve had mixed feelings about the FCBD books in the past. They are either not kid friendly (which all FCBD books should be, IMO), or they are some oddball book that no LCS orders enough of.”
This year the books were intended to be, if not outright kid friendly, at least not filled with swearing and naked people, to avoid any legal hassles should one of the wrong books get into the wrong hands. There’s nothing wrong I think with having some FCBD books aimed at older readers, so long as there’s some discretion on the part of the retailers in distribution. Again, there wasn’t anything too objectionable this time around, but, for example, it didn’t seem likely to us that any 6 year olds were going to be terribly interested in William Shatner Presents, so we didn’t put any of those in the kids bags.
And we always try to order heavy on the oddball books, as invariably those are the ones that grab the most interest!
“My shop was limiting guests to two of the Free books, but the clerk also shoved about eight other free non-FCBD books in my hand while I was standing there, but then chastised me for taking an FCBD book because ‘You already have a ton of books in your hand.’ Wha-?”
I think that clerk violated my “don’t be a dick” rule for FCBD. If the limit was two FCBD books, then you should have been allowed them, regardless of how many other non-FCBD freebies were forced upon you.
“…Should not the books be free to the shop?”
It’d be nice, certainly, but if they were entirely free, I can see some stores totally abusing that and ordering thousands upon thousands of everything and letting the publishers eat the whole cost. By putting a nominal charge on the books, it still allows large orders for low costs, but requires retailers to order realistically within a budget, and not just place crazy go-wild orders for all the freebies with no cost risk to themselves.
“Saturday was my first FCBD. The store I went to let me have 4 free comics with a $5 purchase from the 50-cent bin. The guy in front on me in line bought $80 of new comics and back issues. They let him have five free comics.”
If they’re tying FCBD distribution to purchase levels, that store is doing it wrong. It’s free period, not “free with purchase.”
“I ended up spending $92 on Free Comic Book Day. Now that’s a promotion.”
Amen to that, my friend. Like I said, purchases aren’t required to get your free comics, but brother, nowadays they sure as hell were appreciated.
Overall, it sounds like most people were pretty happy with Free Comic Book Day, and that they found some books to enjoy. I know our event was even more successful than last year, with more comics given away and more money spent at our sale. It’s a long tiring day, requiring lots of set-up and planning, but it’s always worth it.
In other news:
A brief exchange with Kevin Church on the Twitter (starting with this post) reminded me of the awesomeness that is DC Comics Presents #4 (Dec. 1978). It’s Superman and the Metal Men, written by Len Wein and drawn by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez:
Also via Kevin, I learned that a sample of Mister Garcia-Lopez’s Metal Men strip for the forthcoming Wednesday Comics weekly book is up on DC Comics’ weblog, and you can see the penciled page (prior to Kevin Nowlan’s inks) right here.
So I was interviewed recently for the long-running Kirk-centric Star Trek podcast Look at His Butt by the show’s lovely and charming hosts Lene and the possibly-pseudonymous Jungle Kitty. No, don’t worry, no butts are discussed, least of all mine, but we do talk Trek for about 20 minutes, discussing my thoughts on the new movie, merchandise past and present, the Trek funnybooks, and so forth. (I totally blanked on who was publishing what Trek reprints in trade paperback form, so please excuse my errors.)
Anyway, I’m no good at extemporaneous speaking for things like this, but if think you can handle my word salad-esque babbling, you may find the podcast here. Please feel free to give it a download and a listen. And thanks again to the ladies for inviting me on…this really is one of my favorite podcasts, and it was both fun and a bit strange to have these familiar voices suddenly talking to me!
