The thinnest of silver linings.

§ January 27th, 2011 § Filed under employee aaron, retailing § 13 Comments

And so it came to pass that we did sell out of our new Fantastic Four issue, not to passers-by driven into our establishment by a fancy press release and the promise of earth-shattering change, but mostly to regular customers, most of whom were already readers of the book and just wanted the latest installment, uninterested they were in the publicity shenanigans that surrounded it.

And poor ol’ Employee Aaron, who did his darnedest to avoid spoilers, staying away from the internet, averting his eyes from the news, only to to take a phone call at the shop Wednesday morning whereupon he heard this:

“Hey, do you have that Fantastic Four comic where [name of FF member who allegedly kicked the bucket] dies?”

Oh, Aaron, you and your youthful dreams of a spoiler-free zone! Not in the hard-hitting, take-no-prisoners world of comics retail, my friend!

We did receive another phone call or two inquiring about the issue’s availability, but otherwise…no huge deluge of demand. Just another busy New Comics Day, selling plenty of funnybooks. Also, a photo was taken of me wearing deely boppers, and who knows when and where that’ll turn up, Andres.

In yesterday’s comments, reader Alex asked

“Is there ever an effort at the store to capture more of the potential audience during stuff like this, by say, pulling up a box of dollar bin FF issues, or ordering a few extra reprints of steady selling, intro friendly trades?”

No, if only because past experience has shown that, in general, non-comic-readers who just come in on that one day for the item they saw about on the news will not buy anything else. In this particular case, we didn’t see any new faces this time around anyway, so it would have been a moot point.

A caveat: past experience has also shown that on the very rare occasion a media-driven customer actually returns to the shop after that Hot Item: Day One sales date, sometimes that means they’re slightly more open to the idea of comics as Entertainment Option rather than Means of Putting My Children Through College, Someday. It doesn’t happen very often, but often enough that it’s worth the effort to put on the top hats, polish up the monocles, and be on our best behavior, in the hopes that any of these new faces will remember that nice shop with all the funnybooks and maybe, just maybe, return to us when the need arises.

So, ultimately, at the very least hyped media events and Free Comic Book Days and tie-in movies remind people out there in the real world that comic books and comic shops still exist, and sometimes that’s enough.

13 Responses to “The thinnest of silver linings.”

  • Roger Green says:

    I know from a Facebook post complaining about it. Wasn’t even trying…

  • Todd Gray says:

    In my best Nelson Muntz impression, I point at poor old Employee Aaron and say, “HA ha!”

  • Nimbus says:

    Nowadays, I would’ve thought the point of this sort of publicity wasn’t to get new faces into comicbook stores (though it’s nice if that happens) but to get existing comicbook readers interested in a book that they might not be currently reading.

    The “death” – or whatever other stunt – is merely the hook and hopefully the rest of the story/art in the other 21 pages of that issue will be sufficiently interesting to reel them in and get them to buy the book next month (and the month after that… and so on). It serves the same sort of purpose as an exciting/intriguing cover. Or a well-constructed ad.

    BTW, I assume from your first paragraph that FF #387 didn’t really sell any more than it does regularly. So, I assume, you regularly sell out of new issues of FF a day or two after they hit the shelves? (When I used to frequent a comicbook store, I would often go at the weekend and not even every week. Someone like me would therefore be unlikely to pick up a copy of FF… because they’d be none left!)

  • Ian @ TRO says:

    I just woke up from a dream where I was cold calling people to ask if they’d read the latest batman issue. Weirdest thing.

  • Mike Walker says:

    Now I understand that the polybag was only there to, uh, “enhance the collectability” of this issue (JEEZ), but am I the only person that finds it ironic that Marvel released this comic in a sealed bag, ostensibly to keep the “major death event” from being spoiled WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY putting out a press release spoiling the “major death event” that happens in the issue?

    BTW, while I was picking up my comics, a guy walked into the store and asked the clerk “SO WHO DIES?”

  • Andres says:

    Picture > Blackmail > XBox

    I was wondering yesterday how long it would take DC to pull a publicity stunt by releasing a ‘hot’ book on Tuesday instead of Wednesday but then I saw that Marvel cancelled another early release due to “distribution concerns” e.g. only ComicsPRO retailers get to do it, other publishers got cheesed at them.
    http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2011/01/comics-a-m-day-early-debut-axed-for-formic-wars-more-on-wizard-world/

  • philip says:

    I found out when a friend-who-doesn’t-even-read-comics emailed me and exclaimed, “Aw, man! They killed [name of FF member who allegedly kicked the bucket]!” I still haven’t picked up my copy. But I will (if my local shop has any left). Mostly because Hickman got me reading FF again and I haven’t read it since Byrne was doing it.

  • CW says:

    With you-know-who gone from the FF for the foreseeable future, does this mean Marvel will replace ‘im with H.E.R.B.I.E.? ;)

  • Ed says:

    So, how long would you put the spoiler statute-of-limitations for this?

    In the case of your poor employee, it seems to me that he should have speed-read the issue before starting work, or else refused to go near the phone or speak to customers. It just seems unrealistic to expect a spoiler free bubble to be maintained when your workplace is a comic shop.

  • Mikester says:

    Ed:

    So, how long would you put the spoiler statute-of-limitations for this?

    I think a year would be sufficient. Maybe two, just to be safe.

    In the case of your poor employee, it seems to me that he should have speed-read the issue before starting work, or else refused to go near the phone or speak to customers. It just seems unrealistic to expect a spoiler free bubble to be maintained when your workplace is a comic shop.

    Oh, we all know. These things happen. Alas, our New Comics Day mornings are pretty busy, so no time to lollygag and read funnybooks, sad to say!

  • Pantsless Pete says:

    I actually have a theory as to why this won’t be a big deal.

    Outside fo hardcore comics culture, no one really cares about the Fantastic Four. They don’t have any cultural weight to them. Things associated with them do. Dr Doom gets some love. But I’m not sure anyone really cares about the four themselves.

  • Doc Arkham says:

    “BTW, while I was picking up my comics, a guy walked into the store and asked the clerk “SO WHO DIES?””

    We’ve been answering, “For $3.99 plus tax, we can give you that answer.”

    Frankly, the best part of this whole mishigas has been the secret variant Marvel included. When the people who we haven’t seen since the Death of Cap and Spider-Man/Obama pick up their copies, we be sure to let them know they won’t know if they have the golden ticket unless they open the polybag.

    *cue record needle scratch/gear slippage/car crash*

    I even had one guy ask me if he should open up his Superman #75s in case there was something more valuable in those.

  • JaredB says:

    Kudos to Aaron for the effort, sorry to hear it got spoiled for him. I almost heard it myself when they started talking about it on NPR’s Morning Edition, but fortunately they gave a well crafted intro and specifically called out the fact that their story would contain spoilers, leaving listeners like me just enough time to scramble over to the radio and turn it off before they actually said it.

    As for the whole publicity stunt aspect of it, based on what I’ve read from you before, I wouldn’t have expected it to drive too much interest; sounds like that’s how it played out this time. Considering that point, it might have been interesting and much more enjoyable to see that scene play out naturally without the built up hype leading up to it, because I thought the scene itself was pretty well done (albeit very easily reversible). But who am I kidding – there’s probably no way they could have kept it under wraps anyway, so they probably figure they might as well try to milk any small percentage increases they can out of it, or at least raise general awareness as you suggest at the end of your post.

    In any event, I’ve really been enjoying Hickman’s work on the series, and I was a bit afraid that (what I imagined to be) the marketing hype machine might end up derailing what he’s been doing, but thankfully it seemed to turn out pretty well. I’m just hoping that now we can put the “big event” behind us and keep reading a good story.