SLUGGO LEVELS: 94.2%.
I certainly hoped you all achieved sufficient Sluggo-ness over the last day or so. Or even Balzan-ness. I know I have.
And now, miscellaneous bullet-pointed items:
- So once again I was prepping to ship a box of funnybooks to one of my mail order comic saver system subscribers, a fellow who gets his books shipped to him every two to three months. I’d sort through the books, double checking to make sure nothing was skipped, and, as usual, I noticed that in the same amount of time since I last shipped to this customer, some titles have only released one or two issues, while others have released as many as four.
One of the titles that have only managed to get out one issue since about late June is Fantastic Four, by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch. As you likely know, this was the creative team for Marvel’s Ultimates and Ultimates 2 series, both of which were plagued with delays. (And to be fair, the currently running Ultimates 3 by Jeph Loeb and Joe Madureira is having some timeliness problems as well.) The assumption was, that when they took over the FF, that there would be lateness problems with this title as well, though there were assurances in pre-release interviews that they’d be able to maintain a monthly schedule.
After seeing we only had one FF for the summer, I went back to our cycle sheets and pulled out the release dates for each issue since Millar and Hitch’s first:
#554 – arrived 2/13
#555 – arrived 3/12
#556 – arrived 4/9
#557 – arrived 5/21
#558 – arrived 6/25
#559 – arrived 8/13
We’re not talking All Star Batman levels of lateness here…only a couple of issues were significantly off-schedule…but things do appear to be slipping a bit. Which is a shame, because I am quite enjoying this run of FF, and it is selling reasonably well.
- Speaking of selling well, my restock of Secret Six #1 came in this week…and sold out almost immediately. Also having good sales are Final Crisis: Revelations #2 and Dead-Pool #1, which wasn’t really a surprise given how many of my customers are vocal Dead-Pool fans.
- Thursday afternoon at the shop, I was trying to quickly fill out a shipping form for a package pickup, as the delivery man was standing there waiting on me. While I was doing so, the gentleman engaged in a little comics small-talk:
Delivery Man: “So, what comics are the hot items right now?”
Me (delivering the stock, mostly-true-and-doesn’t-require-a-lot-of-explaining-about-what-“crossovers”-are answer): “Oh, you know, Batman, Spider-Man….”
DM: “They still publish those?”
Me: “Sure they do.”
DM: “Are they still fighting the same villains?”
Me (thinks about explaining Anti-Venom and Hush, decides against it): “Yeah, pretty much.”
DM: “So you’re not supposed to read these, right?”
Me: “Of course you are.”
DM: “I heard that comic guys just buy their comics and immediately seal them up in plastic cases.”
Me: “I don’t try to encourage that with my customers. I want them to read their comics.”
DM: “Huh. Hey, that comic where Superman died…is that still worth a lot?”
And by that time, I was done with the shipping form (though my handwriting may have been a bit rushed-looking at the end, there). He’s just making small talk while he’s waiting on me, I know…but it’s amazing how often I get these exact same questions, usually from folks just killing time.
- Since the topic came up a few days ago here, and sorta came up in this post, I just wanted to remind people of my particular views on comics hording and investing, such as this post about one collection of “investments” that ended up in our hands, and this sarcasm-fest.
