Mike Sterling's Progressive RuinThe reason cows are out of season since 1969

No, not that Red Tornado.

§ October 28th, 2019 § Filed under eyeball, retailing § 4 Comments

So that’s customer Mark, dressed as the second-scariest Michael Myers in Hollywood, visting my store and picking up a copy of what would of course be the Halloween star’s favorite comic book. “GOTTA CATCH ‘EM ALL [creepy Halloween suspense music plays].” Now, Mark’s come by the shop on previous Halloweens in this outfit, and since he’s “in character,” he doesn’t say a word. At all. An I know it’s Mark, a friendly, affable guy, and he’s just foolin’ around, but it still very much has the affect of being…very unnerving. Doesn’t helpt that Mark’s a pretty tall guy.

Anyway, go check out his Instagram for more cosplay goodness, as well as a pic of the two of us where you can get a good look at my bloody right eye…not makeup, but very Halloween-y just the same.

Speaking of Halloweenies, I certainly was one, spreading the spooky cheer at my store with this year’s assortment of the Halloween ComicFest comic book giveaways. Again, it’s not quite Free Comic Book Day levels yet, with wall to wall people all day, but it’s a comfortable level of travel ebbing and flowing throughout opening hours. I had several people waiting outside my door when I did open, including many children, which is always good to see. In fact, there was a family with a lot of children waiting outside not for my shop but for the Chinese restaurant next door…so I did what any good neighbor would do, and told them “HEY COME INTO MY SHOP, I’M GIVING AWAY COMIC BOOKS” and lo, they did that very thing and I fulfilled that very promise.

So, I gave away lots, and more still on Sunday, because I didn’t feel like breaking down the table where I had them all laid out and I always order more than I immediately need to have them around for future giveaways and donations and such. And, this year, I had more people preordering the ComicFest freebies in bulk for their own Trick-or-Treat giveaways on the actual night of Halloween, so that was nice.

And on that topic…yes, like my Free Comic Book Days, I easily made my costs back for the event, so, you know, success all around.

One of the tricky issues I had was that there was a lot of work to be done the Friday before, only part of which was prep for the event. Now, over the last week or two, I acquired and/or completed the processing on multiple boxes of old comics…more, in fact, than I could file into the current configuration of back issue boxes. So instead of waiting ’til after the event (probably ’til close to the following weekend, which would be the only time I’d have clear to attempt the project) I decided to get as much of it done as I could this Friday so I’d have everything out and ready for sale.

Needless to say, I did my best to get everything rearranged and comics sorted and resorted and fit into new places…I often refer to this as “playing Tetris with the store,” trying to get everything properly squared away in the areas I have available. And I managed to mostly get everything back together into mostly working order…still in the process of relabeling the boxes so the customers (and me!) know what’s in them, and I did have to leave a few empty spaces for boxes on some shelves as I’m awaiting a new shipment of short boxes to come in. I didn’t want to use up the few I had in stock for sale because, well, I want to sell them. And I used up all my spare used short boxes that I already had on hand.

Or I could have just said “I rearranged lots of comics and boxes and got everything mostly squared away before ComicFest,” which is probably easier on your eyes to read.

And about eyes…right when I got to the shop, I noticed another little swirl of blood in my right eye, which meant I had to make a quick emergency trip to the doctor for treatment (read: INJECTION IN THE EYE) to keep that little swirl from turning into a red tornado. So, on top of rearranging the store for back issues and prepping for the Halloween giveaway the next day, I had to take an hour-something out of the middle of the afternoon to go get that taken care of. As such, your pal Mike had himself a very long Friday. It all worked out in the end, though.

Except for all these back issues. I’d be happy to sell you some! You need a mostly-complete run of the Marvel/Epic Hellraiser, surely.