Mikester

I was kinda stewing a bit about the whole “eBay canning some of my auctions” thing, so while I was at the shop on Wednesday…well, it was kinda slow, what with no new comics yet, so I actually used the eBay “Live Help” function for the first time. Basically, it’s a chat window that connects you directly to some eBay employee (I’m assuming it is a live person, and not eBay’s version of Eliza*), and so I asked this person what was up with my auctions getting canned, while other naughty comics on the eBay got off (har har) scot-free.

Well, he didn’t have any answers for me, so he directed me to the page where I could contact someone else regarding this policy. I sent a message explaining what happened, asking why this policy was enforced so sporadically (for example, why my auction for the UK underground Edward’s Heave was removed, where the entire adult content was some bad words and a cartoon nipple, while there were nearly 200 auction listings for Preacher, the content of any given issue being far worse than anything in Edward’s Heave).

The response I’ve received told me, in essence:

1. The items were removed because they said “Adults Only” on the cover. [And so did several of the other items I listed but were left online, because…]

2. My other auctions were not removed because only the auctions that were reported to eBay were reviewed.

3. They rely on user reports for violating items, and that sellers are responsible for their own compliance.

To sum up: so long as no one complains, you apparently can get away with listing adult material outside the adult section. But, if you annoy a user who then reports you, eBay’s kinda obligated to do something about it, rather than risk showing up in some “PORN FOR SALE ON AUCTION SITE” news story.

When I sent in that e-mail, I did half-jokingly mention to Employee Jeff, “Gee, I sure hope I’m not about to screw things up for everybody” — you know, suddenly because of me all auctions for, say, DC’s Vertigo line are now restricted to the naughty eBay section. The likelihood of that happening is pretty slim, admittedly, since the eBay-owned PayPal payment service is prohibited, for various legal reasons, from being used for “adult” material, and I doubt eBay would want to take the hit in potentially lost PayPal fees from moving so many items to the mature area (where the PayPal option is verboten).

A few people threw the word “censorship” around in reference to my experience here, and I don’t really think it’s censorship per se. EBay’s policy on this material is clearly stated, and I just happened to get caught. It smacks more of eBay, Inc. covering its ass, trying to show a complainer that, oops, we don’t want that dirty stuff out where the young’uns can see it! See, it’s gone! No reason to complain! Or file a class action lawsuit! I think any actual censorious intent would likely not have let my auction for Gay Comics stand, since you know how would-be censoring busybodies like the gays.

I’m not saying that kind of censoring abuse isn’t possible, or hasn’t happened, on eBay. I just don’t think it’s the case here.

One other thing…when you sign up for eBay, one of the things you agree to under “Terms of use and your privacy” is that you’re at least 18 years old. So, theoretically, every potential bidder on eBay is an adult anyway, and if they’re not, that’s eBay’s fault, not the seller’s. See, buck successfully passed back!

For your convenience, here’s more “fun for all ages!” comic book stuff allowed to remain in eBay’s general listing section:

Bondage Fairies

Threshold (Avatar’s porn ‘n’ violence anthology)

R. Crumb stuff

Milo Manara

“Hey, Mike, bitter much?”

“Nah, not me.”

Pal Dorian ain’t busy enough, so he started a new When Fangirls Attack-esque linkblog Comic Gays. Go, encourage the man. At least check out his great logo.

* Yes, I linked to Wikipedia again. You’ll live.

So last week, I listed a number of underground comix on the eBay. Well, relisted, actually, as they’re all undergrounds I’d tried to sell on eBay before but had no luck moving them. Anyway, I figured I’d give ’em another try, at lower opening bids, and see what happened.

I listed 23 underground comix. By the next day, eBay had cancelled six of those auctions, and the notification e-mail I was sent told me they were cancelled because they were Mature Audience items listed in the general auction area.

Now, my problem isn’t with the fact that someone at eBay felt these auctions were inappropriate outside of eBay’s Mature Audiences section. I can understand their concern, even though, as I said, I’ve listed these specific undergrounds (and many others) in the past with no problems. But, if someone at eBay says they don’t want this adult material listed along with Superman and Spider-Man, well, I can’t really blame them. I got away with it for quite a while, so it was just a matter of time before someone said “Hey, now.” However, eBay may want to police the undergrounds category a little more closely if they think it’s that big of an issue.

My real problem is why they cancelled those specific six underground auctions, and left the other seventeen untouched. The auctions they cancelled:

Armageddon #2 & #3 (nudity on the covers…okay, you got me)

Adventures of the Little Green Dinosaur #1 & #2 (some explicit material inside, though you couldn’t tell it from the covers)

Clowns by Dave Geiser (don’t remember if there’s anything overtly “mature” in this comic or not)

Edward’s Heave (British underground – c’mon, who at eBay has even heard of this comic?)

Included in the auctions that were allowed to continue were Tales from the Sphinx #2 (with very explicitly detailed sex scenes), Yellow Dog #21 (generally something filthy going on in any given issue of this series), and others that were just as “mature,” if not more so, than the titles in the auctions eBay canceled.

There’s no rhyme or reason to it…one Geiser book was canceled, another was left up, for example. Presumably another eBay user was browsing the auction listings, spotted some of our auction listings, and just complained about the ones they saw. And, thankfully, didn’t click on the “seller’s other items” link.

Or, “Mike thought cynically,” someone wanted to list the same items, and didn’t want the competition.

At any rate, I was pretty annoyed, particularly since there are plenty of other comic book auctions going on right now that are far worse than anything I listed. For example, a search on eBay reveals listings for the underground comic The Life and Loves of Cleopatra, one of the most sexually explicit undergrounds ever published. And I found several listings for Barry Blair’s naughty book Leather & Lace, Tim Vigil’s porn-gore book Faust, a boatload of Verotik books, and…hell, just type in “nude” in eBay’s search box and see what pops up…er, so to speak. And, c’mon, Crying Freeman? We used to half-jokingly call this “Naked People Stabbing Each Other Monthly.”

And I just found a listing for the Eros Comics’ trade paperback collection of Meet the Lovejoys. I can keep this up all day (“…said the bishop to the actress”).

Yeah, I know…”Big Company in Inconsistent Enforcement of Own Policies Shocker.” Not news in the slightest, I realize. Just a tad aggravating when it happens to you, y’know?

Well, this has happened to me once before…I had a number of Blackthorne Press reprints of the Axa comic strip (where the female lead is frequently topless) that got yanked by eBay for being too naughty to be listed beside family friendly books like Chronicles of Wormwood and Black Kiss.

I just relisted ‘n’ sold them later.

In other news:

• I’ve been wanting to do the gag in yesterday’s post for a long, long time…but had no Care Bears comics to scan from. Not until this collection came in.

  I swear, we don’t purchase collections just so I have stuff to scan for the site. BUT THEY HELP.

• I’ve been using the Project Wonderful ads in my sidebar for a little while now, and they’ve been working out quite nicely. A big thank you to my advertisers, and a big thank you to my readers who have been good enough to click on those ads and make my advertisers feel loved.

  I’ve even put together my own Project Wonderful ad which, as I write this, is currently up at pal Dorian’s site though, at least, the rest of Wednesday (unless I’m outbid…when it goes down I’ll link to a local copy of the ad image — EDIT: I’ve been outbid, so here’s the ad). Now, I really wasn’t doing it for the advertising…Dor and I tend to have a pretty good overlap of readers anyway. Mostly, I just did it to annoy Dorian, by getting my goofy mug on his site. Plus, I like the sheer obnoxiousness of my ad.

  But now I’m considering actually buying ads on other sites specifically to get more eyeballs here. I better figure out how to condense my site down to a 117×30 pixel image….

• Here’s a new site with an interesting premise. At Not Blog X (good name!), a certain G. Kendall plans to answer the question “Were X-Men comics in the 1990s as bad as you think?” He starts with a solid and fair overview of X-Force #1, and continues with that series’ second issue and X-Factor #71. Only three entries so far, but I hope to see more.
• Mag ‘n’ H at Comic Treadmill just put up post in tribute of Spider-Man parade balloons…including a link to an online petition to get the Spidey balloon back in the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade.

  I didn’t even realize Spidey was out of the parade. No one tells me anything.

So over the weekend, we acquired several long boxes’ worth of comic books from someone who himself had acquired them several years ago from a comic book store that was going out of business.

Most of the “biggies” were gone…no Superman, Batman, X-Men, or Spider-Man. In fact, most of the collection was nothing to get too excited about. Lots of black ‘n’ white boom titles, including Hamster Vice and a pile of Unicorn Kings…that sort of thing. Alas, no Shadow of the Groundhog, one of the Worst Comic Books Ever, and still eluding my grasp.

There was one black and white comic I was all ready to scan and feature on the site, but Mister Kitty beat me to it. Really, New York City Outlaws #3 is fantastic, though Comrade Kitty doesn’t mention the great ads, like the back cover ad for heavy metal monster Thor (though he does note Thor’s presence in a story in the comic itself), and an interior ad for the metal band called…er, Snatch. Ask for them by name.

There were plenty of ’80s indie color books as well…lots of E-Man, which is a pretty good comic, actually, but not exactly in demand nowadays. Plus, there were several instances of what looked like, at first glance, good runs of titles like Warlord, but were in fact just seven or eight different issues, with multiple copies of each. Ah, well.

Now, I know this collection is sounding like a big ol’ “why’d you bother” type thing. But, this fella what was selling the collection wanted to get rid of the whole thing at once, and, as it turned out, there was enough stuff in the collection to make it worthwhile. Sure, a big chunk of it is destined for the bargain boxes, but that stuff we didn’t pay very much at all for. However, we paid good money for what we could use, and that was the stacks of ’70s romance books, and the ’70s and ’80s DC war books, and the Charlton Bullseyes and the huge pile of Tales of the Unexpected and those couple issues of Kong and Rima the Jungle Girl. Heck, we even needed some of those E-Mans to fill some holes in our stock. And that little stack of the color Sam & Max book from Comico should do quite nicely at the shop as well.

Some nice finds included some of the more popular Marvel Star comics, like Ewoks and Droids and the elusive Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake. Sure, laugh if you want…point and jeer if you must, but people go crazy for these. Only a couple different issues of each, but multiple copies of ’em, and that’s good enough for me. There were some Smurfs, too, but I think I have enough of those at the moment.

The only real “oh, yeah, this was a shop from the early ’90s” moment I had was pulling out a couple of “ashcans.” Originally, ashcans in the comics biz were cheap copies of comics produced solely to secure copyrights on characters or titles or logos…that sort of thing. Basically, it was an in-house production, not intended for sale or distribution. However, in the ’90s, “ashcans” became yet another “collectible” in a booming market that demanded more rare, hot items, and suddenly we had no end of “ashcan” comics, mass produced and sold through comic shops, or given away as promotional items (sometimes packaged with magazines such as Wizard or Hero). A manufacturer of comic supplies (it may have been Ultra Pro) even began producing protective sleeves sized specifically for the ashcan format.

Usually, when I come across ashcans in collections, they’re the Star Trek Deep Space Nine one, or the Wetworks one, which I think both came from Hero…I just kinda groan and toss them aside. They’re about as common as dirt, or Deathmate. But when I pull one of these out of a box:

Er, anyway. That was my weekend. Also, it was ungodly hot. How’re you doin’?

…So please, enjoy this vampire bat from 1974 and I’ll be back with real content shortly:

Here, have a little old fashioned nightmare fuel, courtesy Joe Simon ‘n’ Jack Kirby:

reprinted in Black Magic #3 (Apr-May 1974)

• Finally, we had some Minimates come in this week that sold…the Marvel Zombies Minimates flew out the door. Usually these minifigs are slow movers, so it came as quite the surprise.

  I expect this twofer coming from the DC Minimates line to do well, too:

  

• A few weeks ago was one of the heaviest ship weeks we’d ever had, when it came to Marvel and DC books. Thirty-something Marvels, and not quite as many but still too many DCs, on top of everything else we got in that week…it was so much stuff, I was surprised that Marvel ‘n’ DC still had anything else aside from the books that week to put out for the rest of the month.

  And, as it turned out, the last couple of weeks have been relatively light, with this week featuring only about a dozen DCs and even fewer new Marvels.

  I’m dreading another monster week any time now.

• Why does BeaucoupKevin hate the comics internet?

  Oh, right…FOR GOOD REASON.

• There’s a legal brouhaha going on over ownership of the Valiant properties, so Diamond passed on distributing the Harbinger hardcover, which had been due for release this week.

  So the publisher went directly to the retailers and said, “hey, buy the book directly from us!” And they took the PayPal, and I had some money in the PayPal account, so, lo, I did order some Harbinger hardcovers because I had a number of customers looking forward to this and who am I to disappoint them?

  Hopefully the problems will be worked out, and this book sells well, and it’ll lead into more reissues of classic Valiant material. Wouldn’t a hardcover of Barry Windsor-Smith’s Archer & Armstrong be a nice item to have around? I also wouldn’t say no to a reprinting of X-O Manowar, which was a favorite of mine.

• Customer Jed (looking through the last Omega Flight: “Hey, here’s a picture of Sasquatch crying.”

  Me: “Oh, it’s Sadsquatch!”

  I probably shouldn’t talk to the customers, sometimes.

• Oh, now this is just in poor taste:

  “Which DC hero would have been best to get the coal miners out?”

  Yes, someone brings up Cave Carson. But, mostly, people just kinda go “oh man,” as they should.

  In response to the complaints that this is too soon, too soon, a couple folks start discussing what superheroes could have done during the Katrina disaster.

  I’m not pulling direct quotes from any of this. Go look yourself.

• Speaking of poor taste, we ordered a copy of the Girls & Corpses magazine for the shop. Now, personally, I’d just read it for the articles, but for those of you so inclined, it does indeed contain plenty of photos of, um, girls with, er, corpses. Not real corpses, mind you — that’d be weird — but dummy, mocked-up zombie movie-type bodies.

  And, believe it or not, there’s a Girls ‘n’ Corpses on Trampolines pictorial. I’m not sure what to think about that. I’m not sure I should be thinking about it.

  There’s a website that’s Not Safe for Work or Anywhere Else, for That Matter. And yes, I realize it’s supposed to be funny. But, man, try explaining this to someone not in on the joke.

• How did we sell out of Green Lantern Corps #15 so quickly? And it’s already going to a second printing, apparently. I’ve really been enjoying this “Sinestro Corps” storyline, so it’s nice to see it’s doing well.
• YOU: Want to see lots of pictures of homemade Batman car conversions.

  BATFATTY: Meets your need.

• Dafna and former employee Kid Chris have finally posted the sixth installment of their Bispectacult podcast…one full hour of funnybook talk with a healthy dollop of swearing.

  Alas, it’s not their interview with me that I recorded a few weeks ago…I believe Kid Chris is still trying to beat it into coherence before unleashing my word salad upon the interweb, but that should be up soon. Maybe.

• It’s not due out for a couple weeks yet, but you can see the cover and first four pages of the Groo 25th Anniversary Special right here.
• Thanks to whomever it was what ordered the Heroes DVD set through my Amazon link. Every little bit helps, friends, and that reminds me that I should probably put one of those Amazon ads here:

  I caught one episode of the show, about two or three installments in…then at about the halfway point, I finally got into the habit of watching it every week. Fun viewing, if not very deep, and there’s an odd sort of amusement for an old funnybook fan like me seeing some of the old superhero tropes paraded on screen, and knowing that while a lot of it is old hat for me, someone who’s read comics for 30+ years, this is certainly all new to the majority of the viewing audience.

  ‘Course, the cast really makes the show…I mean, is there anyone who watches Heroes who doesn’t love Masi Oka as Hiro? And the absolutely perfect casting of George Takei as his father? And while the season finale was, well, not quite as climatic as we’d been hoping for, the story over the full season held together nicely and made for good, episodic adventure. Though the makers of the Watchmen flick may be a bit miffed at the show cribbing that book’s climax for one of its major plot elements.

  So…um, a lot of you are going to be buying this thing anyway. Why not buy it through that handy link up there and show Mike a little love? Just one click…your mouse pointer, it’s so close, so close, just inches away….

• John at This Is Pop Culture wants you to learn about Hawaii.
• It’s been linked all over the place, but I’ll link it here, too, I guess, since I finally read it…an L.A. Times article (headlined “Holy plastic slab!” of course – the Batman TV show is forty years old now, right?) about the Certified Guaranty Co. and its “comic slabbing” service.

  I forget where I saw it, but someone made the point that anyone spending tens of thousands of dollars on a comic is probably not going to read it anyway, so sealing those up in plastic doodads isn’t doing much harm. It’s the new books that, once sealed up, go for stupid money on the eBay that worry me. One of the reasons for the last big comics market crash was the sudden realization of collectors/speculators that they’ll never recover the cash spent on acquiring their alleged “collector’s items.” I wonder if we’re heading in that direction again.

• So long as I’m linking to online newspaper stories…here’s a good editorial on the legacy of Jack Kirby, whose contributions to the comics world are being remembered today, despite Marvel’s best efforts to “disappear” him during the ’80s.
• No link to the auction itself, alas, but the Oxnard Police Department had one of those Silver Surfer statue/movie theatre lobby displays in one of their police auctions…we tried to get it, but were outbid, I’m afraid. Just as well…we’re beginning to get cramped for space as it is. But maybe we could have put him behind the counter, or (I think this was Employee Aaron’s idea) have him up front, holding this weeks’ New Comic Pick of the Week in his hand.
• Bitter Andrew looks at Crazy Magazine‘s hamfisted parody of Dave Berg’s “The Lighter Side of…” from Mad.