So as I may have mentioned once or thrice, I inherited a number of items from my previous place of funnybook-sellin’ employment, following that location’s final closing. Like, boxes of old promotional material, this sign, and lots of old invoices. “You might find some use from the data there,” my former boss Ralph said, and I agreed, with intentions of going through all those pages to see what I can glean.
Well, it had been a while, and I finally pulled those boxes out to poke through them. Didn’t have any real plan in mind, aside from flipping open one or two here and there for the occasional twinge of nostalgia (“we ordered *that* many of that comic?”). As far as I can tell, I have access to invoices ranging from September 1986 (exactly two years before I started working for that store), running up to sometime in 1996. I don’t know if it’s a complete run, but it’s a significant amount of information of what Ralph had ordered, and what was available, from Bud Plant, Capital Comics, and Diamond Comics, and maybe one or two others in there.
By happenstance — yes, really — I found the invoice for the week when we received Superman #75, the nigh-infamous “Death of Superman” issue, dated “11-20-92.” (That’s the Friday of the week, though I’m pretty sure the comic went on sale on Thursday the 19th.) My memory over the years was that we ordered “ten times what we normally ordered on Superman comics” for this special issue, and thus, now that I have the exact numbers, I can pin down that assumption to a more specific amount.
Now, I don’t feel comfortable giving exact order numbers, as it feels a little bit to me like giving away trade secrets or something. Every once in a while I’ll have someone at the shop ask me “so, how many copies of [title] did you order?” and I’ll answer either “enough” or (usually, because they usually only ask if I’m out) “not enough.”
As such, I’ll be telling you that, combining both the deluxe black-bagged #75 and the unbagged “newsstand” version, we got in just a little over 7 times our normal Superman comic order. I will say that number is a few hundred copies, which, under all normal circumstances, would have been plenty to meet demand.
But then, as discussed on this site plenty of times (click the category link to see), and as you likely know already, the “Death” broke in the real world news just prior to release. Which is why when we were prepping to open, we were taken by surprise by the enormous line stretching down the street waiting to get in. Even by limiting sales to one per customer (which just delighted some folks, I’ll tell you what), we were out in short order. Had we ordered 20 or 30 times our regular order of Superman, we might have had enough, though given the number of people who wanted multiple copies, maybe even more would have been necessary.
Looking at this invoice, I was reminded of a particularly aggravating problem, in that Diamond shorted us our multiple cases of boxes of Doomsday: The Death of Superman trading cards. Just the total cost of the cards alone was about equal to, like, one of my weekly Marvel invoices now. Geez louise. Anyway, I barely recall there was some kind of issue with those cards at the distribution level, in that we never got replacements on them. (Eventually, the folks at the shop would get a full set of the cards for me for a birthday or Christmas or something, since I was a longtime Superman fan. Yes, I still have that set.)
Also interesting is that this week was also the debut of Doom 2099, and you’d think its foil-enhanced first issue would be overlooked in the rush for that guy in the cape what died. But, even though we ordered about 5 times what we would normally order on Superman (to continue using that comparison point), we would — eventually — sell out of it. At this late date, I can’t recall if sales on its initial release was hindered by the Superman rush, but I do remember running out of it.
Also shipped this week: Robin III #2 (both the collectors edition and the regular version), X-Factor #86, G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #132, and, yes, Horny Biker Sluts #5.
What was amazing was the number of shortages we had, on top of not receiving the Death of Superman cards. We didn’t get our orders on Guardians of the Galaxy #32, Dracula: The Suicide Club #4, Kimagure Orange Road: A Retuirn to That Day VHS, Laundryland #4, Loco Vs. Pulverine #1 (may have been a restock, noted by Diamond as having shipped 10/31 on the invoice), the Marvel Super Heroes 1992 Holiday Special, Meatface: The Amazing Flesh #1 (um, what), Merlin #1, Night of the Living Dead: Aftermath, Nightbreed #33, Personality Presents #15 (with Michelle Pfeiffer), Rock Classics: The Doors #1, Savage Henry #23, Saved by the Bell #4, Scooby-Doo Giant Size #2, Screw Comics #1, Sherlock Holmes: Return of he Devil #2, Southern Knights #36, Stunt Dawgs #1, Tales of Screaming Horror #1, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mutant Sourcebook #1, Trailer Trash #3, UFOs Alien Contact #1 (both the regular and Deluxe Editions), Urusei Yatsura Movie: Only You VHS, XXX-Women: A Woman’s Work… #1, Yogi Bear Big Book #2, and Zoot #1. Oh, and a copy of Kitchen Sink Pipeline #70, a freebie newsletter to retailers.
And yet somehow we still had lots of comics other than Superman #75 to sell that week. Good gravy, what we put up with. Probably around this time I told our Diamond rep, after dealing with another slew of shortages, “if Diamond was a plane, I wouldn’t fly it” (a gag stolen from David Letterman). May not have been nice of me, no, but boy was I frustrated. But looking at the invoice, it looks like, for example, none of our Fantagraphics books showed up (which includes that Meatface mag), so maybe there was a problem with their books getting to Diamond on time, or something. I don’t know. Still, c’mon guys, that’s a lot of missing books. And cards. And videotapes.
Anyway, that’s a peek back at a notable shipping week from over thirty years ago. Now to find the invoice with the white-bagged Adventures of Superman #500 to see how many of those we shouldn’t have ordered.
Incompetent, you say?
Was Capitol any better?
I had to look it up and was shocked to see Horny Biker Sluts #5 has the creator’s announcement of marriage!
” Anyway, I barely recall there was some kind of issue with those cards at the distribution level, in that we never got replacements on them.”
There was definitely some kind of issue, as the cards were regarded as hard to find at the time by those of us into Marvel/DC cards.
Ah, Savage Henry!
I miss the days when Matt Howarth work showed up in comic stores.
I worked for about a year in a comic shop as an assistant manager. I remember having to call (on the telephone!) a Diamond rep to list our shortages.
It was the longest, dumbest exchange ever, which would just be handled online these days, of course. Reading out all those item numbers (SKUs?) was such a pain.
Speaking of Horny Biker Sluts, I’ve been curious about how much business you do in the old Fantagraphics / Eros stuff. At the time, I pooh-poohed it as being salacious trash for them nasty-folks (minus a few very good exceptions), but now I find them kind of fascinating, as historical documents of a pre-internet time.
I’ve been getting into collecting them– the weirder ones, like the Don Simpson stuff and the Tom Sutton “Dementia” books, the off-kilter humor ones, and I’ve been surprised at both the demand and the pricing for some of this stuff.
Do you find this to be true in your store? What is the deal with that?
I remember when I finally went home from the shop that day (it was a loooong one), the first two comics I read were Superman #75 and Meatface The Amazing Flesh #1. I need to dig that back out and read it again.
The hype around Superman #75 was crazy. I wasn’t interested in Superman comics at the time, and I realized that DC would bring him back within a few months, so I wasn’t going to fall for the idea of Superman #75 being a collector’s item. My grandfather, who never bought comics, read about the “death of Superman” in the newspaper and actually went out to buy a copy. He gave it to me, telling me to hang on to it because it would be worth a lot of money someday. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that it was a publicity stunt. I stuck it in one of my boxes and, as far as I’m aware, it’s still there…unless I decided to “cash in” by selling it for $10 or something.
On this list, at that time, I would have been buying X-Factor and Savage Henry (if it even shipped to the store I frequented). I might have skipped that week, deciding it wouldn’t be worth fighting the crowds to pick up two comics.
I was the adult working the register. Drank a case of Pepsi.Two little guys, grade school age, were each buying a copy. One looked me straight in the eye and simply said “Do we really know how people from Krypton die?” The other kid said “And don’t say kryptonite poisoning.”
I shrugged as I knew the gimmick all along, and really wanted them to come back the next day and take $50.00 worth of books from our dollar bin.
Mike, do you know any comic book store owners who use AI to help with ordering? I ask because your post made me think that some of the SQL portion (month, title, writer, letterer, price, etc.) is straight forward enough to train the dataset. But there are then so SO many outside factors (a history of delays, plots interrupted for crossover events, cover gimmicks) that are disruptive.
Guy at the far back of the line to get in on Superman #75 day: “Are you all here for Horny Biker Sluts #5, too?”
I wonder if Mike can identify what every single comic in that list is about. He’ll never get Stunt Dawgs #1. That was based on a syndicated weekday cartoon series targeted at kids. As it happens, I was a kid at the time, and none of us had heard of Stunt Dawgs either. No one watched the thing. Licensing it for a comic was a bad bet.
Just asking – have you ever written a post about the Adventures of Superman #500 debacle?
Tim – I did do this a few years back, but I do plan a follow-up post to this one about ADV500.
“I do plan a follow-up post to this one about ADV500”
Excellent!