MIKE VS. TWITTER.
So the other day, a small gag occurred to me that I felt I should post on Twitter, and that gag was this:
Those of you who know me, or have at least read me for a while, know that’s a very Mike joke for me to make. Anyway, I thought it was cute, a silly gag, not a great one, that maybe my Twitter pals would get a chuckle out of, given most of them are comics-savvy and would understand the joke.
Well, for some reason, this tweet has received more “retweets” and “faves” than anything I’ve ever posted on the Twitterers before, outside of my contributions to Fake AP Stylebook. I don’t know if it counts as “going viral,” but by my supremely low standards it’s at least a very minor virus, perhaps only a slight infection. Regardless, it’s received far more attention than I would have thought..perhaps because of the timing with the release of the Shazam! movie trailer (more on that later in the post).
As per usual, whenever something I’ve written makes it outside the usual circle of “People Who’ve Learned to Tolerate Mike and His ‘Writing,'” I get to hear from people who don’t seem to..quite get the humor, which, okay, in all fairness maybe they’re trying to be funny back at me and I’m too lame to grok their superior hilarious commentary. Like, there seem to be more than a few folks who appear to believe that I’m…actually going to do this to some poor bastard stuck behind a window selling tickets? C’mon, son, I’ve worked retail for a living for decades, I’m not going to do that to my counter-jockeying brothers and sisters.
Then there’s the one fella who seemed to get, like, pissed off that I didn’t seem to realize that the Big Red Cheese isn’t actually called “Captain Marvel” anymore, but “Shazam,” thus invalidating my gag. Look, pal, read this post from about three years ago (near the middle somewhere) where I complain about the name change at length. TL;DR version: if they had to change the name, they should’a called him “Captain Shazam.”
There were some actual funny responses, which I always appreciate. Pals Ian and Myles were tuned into the same strange frequency with their replies:
(excerpt of the accompanying image…see his tweet for the full thing)
And this response made me MAL (“MAL” of course being the popular internet acronym all the kids use for “Make Audible Laughter”):
But Angel pretty much sums it all up with:
Oh, Angel, my friend, my blog here is pretty much my 15-year-long effort at trying to annoy as many people as possible. That tweet’s only the very tippiest-tip of that iceberg.
To those of you sick of seeing that tweet pop up in your feeds…I’m very, very sorry. And I’m sorry that it’s here again on my personal blogging website that you’ve surfed to on the World Wide Web.
Speaking on being annoyed on Twitter, someone drive-by hit one of my tweets on the whole “Wedding of Batman” thing (which I wrote about on my site here and here), where I said I felt for the stores that ordered huge numbers on #50 expecting the event but getting no event, while simultaneously being relieved that I appeared to order the exact number. Said drive-by-er’ reply was, in effect, “looks like you should have ordered more, dummy” with an excerpt of some article from somewhere talking about how that issue of Batman sold anyway, regardless of how things turned out. Of course, he went back into my Twitter timeline, past my own follow-up tweet where I stated “yes, of course it sold, it’s #50 of Batman, dur hey” so he could snark at me.
Well, let me tell you something, my retailing expert friend…I ordered a good number of these Batman #50s. Didn’t go overboard, didn’t have any kind of in-store event planned or anything…just lots of copies to put on the shelves. I had plenty pulled aside for the pull list customers, I had lots of walk-ins, I had plenty of phone calls from folks desperately seeking copies…and after that initial week or two of sales were over, I had exactly one copy left. That one copy, as I type this, is still on the shelf, even after having a particularly healthy and busy week at the shop…probably one of the biggest non-Free Comic Book Day weeks I’ve had this year. Lots of people coming in and out the door, calling the shop, etc., but none of whom needed that last copy of Batman #50 on my rack.
Basically, I ordered Batman #50 almost perfectly. I had almost the exact number of copies I needed to meet immediate demand. Now, that’s not to say someone won’t rush in demanding any and all copies of #50 when I get into the shop on Monday, but for the initial sales window for a new comic (which is primarily its first week of release), I exactly, save for that one remainder, met my local demand. So, no, person on Twitter I muted almost immediately because you seriously cheesed my crackers, I didn’t need to order more, because I ordered just right, thank you very much.
Sorry to go on about this, but the one thing that really makes me angry regarding store stuff is when other people, especially people who don’t know what they’re talking about, try to condescendingly tell me how to do my job. Also, when people seal their comic bags with tape. SO. ANGRY.
Oh, right, I was going to say something about the Shazam! trailer. Don’t have much to say, really…looks like it’ll be fun, despite my issues with Cap not being called “Cap” anymore. Also, it’s very much the “modern” take on the character, where Cap…er, Shazam is simply Billy in a grown-up body, as opposed to the “classic” version where Billy Batson and Captain Marvel were more or less treated as different people, and even referred to each other as such. Well, I suppose the classic version might have been a little too strange for modern audiences…the Big-starring-Tom-Hanks formula would more likely meet modern expectations for this particular premise. But I’ve gotta say…seeing Billy shout “SHAZAM!” and then transform…that was pretty great to witness in live action.
I’ve got a few old Captain Marvel entries from, egads, 2005 that I’ll need to clean up and link back to in a current post, so someone remind me to do that before the movie comes out.
A friend of mine who regularly takes product to conventions feels that Having One Book Left is the one sure sign that you ordered or brought exactly the right number. If you sell out, there might be people who’d have bought your book if you’d had more. If you have more than one … you brought too many.
I quit the Twitter last year (not that I was using it much, but I made our breakup official) and I don’t regret it. I still click through your Twitter link on this here blog-o-tron because I enjoy your musings. Except for the one or two times I was sorry I couldn’t respond to you, I have absolutely no regrets about leaving what I used to refer to “a party where I don’t know anyone.”
I hereby request a post where you compare/contrast the Billy Batson/CM switcheroo with the Rick Jones/CM body swap, and maybe the Mike Moran/Marvelman variation, but above all, include discussion of the cartoon “Thing ring, do your thing!” transformation for young Ben Grimm.
Your mention of “Captain Shazam” reminds me that, way back in 1967, Lightning Comics advertised a comic by that name, but went defunct before publishing an issue. Lightning was an odd company, in that its line consisted entirely of imitations of Captain Marvel. It had “Super Green Beret,” which copied the premise of a boy who magically turns into a super-powered adult; “Fatman the Human Flying Saucer,” which was actually not much like Captain Marvel, but it was the creation of Otto Binder and C.C. Beck (i.e., the Big Red Cheese’s principal writer and original illustrator), and Fatman’s costume differed from Captain Marvel’s only in having an emblem of a UFO instead of a lightning bolt, and in being green instead of red); and the aforementioned “Captain Shazam,” which would also have been the work of Binder and Beck, and so would probably have borne more than a slight resemblance to their best-known work.
That solitary leftover copy of the BATMAN#50 wedding issue is always a bridesmaid and never a bride…
When I read the beginning of your post, I immediately thought that the “virality” resulted from Marvel’s Capt. being at the center of the comicsg*te thing and feared the worst, but it seems that people are just excited about the “Shazam!” trailer?
I still the he should be called Captain Detective Comics.
It turns out that the Shazam and Captain Marvel movies do have something in common: Djimon Hounsou is in both. He plays the Wizard (or, you know, the original Shazam) in the former, and repeats his role from GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY in the latter.
So, you see, if the movies were released at the same time, you could annoy the teller and hold up the line by asking for a ticket to “that Djimon Hounsou movie.”
Don’t forget to clean up those old Captain Marvel entries so you can link back to them in a current post!