Mikester

Yes, and introduce the modern Suicide Squad, too.

filed under Categories ambush bug, this week's comics 12 Comments

[SPOILERS AHOY]


What this reminded me of, when all was said and done, was the Legends series DC published back in the mid-1980s, where the ultimate result of the series was to introduce the new Justice League (to some measure of success), or even DC’s Millennium, published a little later that decade, where the endgame was to introduce the New Guardians (to slightly lesser success).

Which, you know, is fine. That’s the goal of every comic book crossover…to get you to buy more comic books. They do it either by trying to turn you on to characters you didn’t normally read but were exposed to in the event, or they spin off new titles from the event that they hope you’ll be intrigued enough to sample. In this case it’s Justice League Incarnate, a team comprised of superheroes from across the multiverse, attempting to prevent Darkseid from breaking into the Omniverse and bothering Mark Gruenwald, presumably. And a handy footnote in Infinite Frontier directs you to said series, Coming Soon to a Newsdealer Near You.

Again, this is all fine. It’s just how comics are. And I like the idea of Justice League Incarnate and think the idea of jumping around the multiverse sounds like fun. But…DC’s spent the better part of three decades trying to roll back Crisis on Infinite Earths after realizing that maybe putting a whole bunch of restrictions on a world of imaginative fantasy was perhaps not a great publishing strategy. I enjoyed at the time the weird frisson of Crisis, where for perhaps the one time in superhero comics history you really did have the feeling that perhaps nothing and nobody was safe. But the price we paid was DC putting out an event series every once in a while that tried to get those worms all back in the tin, or at least get those worms to line up neatly and consistently so they could say “this is how things work now, for sure this time.”

The result is a pastiche of a memory of a time that the creators responsible are likely not even old enough to have experienced firsthand. All the terms and ideas are there, the Earths with numerial designations, all that jazz, but it doesn’t feel quite the same. This is a Me Problem, not perhaps a Those of You Who Are Younger Than Me Problem, as I did experience the old DC Multiverse firsthand in the funnybooks I got off the newsstands and I compare my memories of what was to whatever attempts are going on now to recreate it, and…I’m just gonna have to tear down that nostalgia wall in my brain and get used to what’s happening now, because unless Marv Wolfman steps in and knocks the entirely of DC continuity back to the 1980s, “nothing will ever be the same,” to borrow a phrase.

Anyway, Infinite Frontier #6 also promises the return of an old friend in 2022, so okay, they got me on the hook with that. Jerks.


The return of Ambush Bug to whatever passes as mainline DC continuity, in what I presume is a small attempt at Deadpool-izing him by having a fourth-wall aware hero interacting with what would generally be considered a straightforward superhero adventure book. Of course, my awareness of Deadpool comes mostly from the movies and his appearances in one of the Marvel Lego video games, having only read one actual Deadpool comic in my lifetime, so I could be misunderstanding something here. Also, I though Harley Quinn and DC’s Deadpool, a character not necessarily bound by whatever demands are put upon stories by current continuity.

Anyway, Ambush Bug beat ’em all to the punch, being set aside from the regular DCU to do his own metacommentary thing (despite being introduced in regular continuity as, well, a murderer, and making the occasional appearance there, like this oddball thing). He retains his awareness that he’s a comic book character for Suicide Squad, which is treated by the other characters as being a sign that his bean is off-kilter…except he repeatedly demonstrates (at least for the reader) that he is correctly aware of his comic book existence. We’re in late 1980s Animal Man territory here, my friends…maybe he can team up with Grant Morrison.

Where Buck Rogers is now.

filed under Categories blogging about blogging is a sin, television 6 Comments


Sorry for the extended interruption…one of the downsides of being at the shop all week, if that’s not a downside in its own right, is that many other chores and miscellaneous life stuff have to be done around that particular responsibility, which, depending on the activity, means “at night, after work.” Usually I can balance my free blogging time with whatever other responsibilities I have, but this time we had a lot of stuff that needed to be done in a short time frame, so my nights have been otherwise occupied.

Now I think the current state of emergency is over, though some follow-up is possible. But, in the meantime, I think the site will be back on whatever passes for its regular schedule. Thanks for sticking around, pals.

So what exactly have I been doing relaxation and fun over the last couple of weeks, when I wasn’t doing the work I’d been doing? Why, watching the classic 1979-81 TV sci-fi adventure Buck Rogers in the 25th Century starring Gil Gerard, Erin Gray, and Mel Blanc, of course.

I happened to be flipping through the selections on the free streaming app Tubi and spotted both that show and the original Battlestar Galactica amongst its programming. I watched a little of BG, but I feel like I’ve seen plenty of BG in reruns and such over the decades. However, BR existed in my head mostly as vague memories from childhood, save for the opening narration and theme music which I’ve always quite liked:


(NOTE: that’s the second season opener, with a different narrator. Music’s still good, though.)

It’s perfectly affable fun, which I’d been tweeting about lately. Buck as a “man-out-of-time” is mostly restricted to his using modern informal English and idioms that 25th century people don’t grok. But there are lots of fun guest-stars (Frank Gorshin! Markie Post! Peter Graves! Buster Crabbe! Cesar Romero! HENRY FREAKIN’ SILVA!) and completely misleading lurid titles (“Planet of the Slave Girls,” starring Jack Palance) and all the gals are squeezed into unforgiving spandex (and at least one gal in an outfit so revealing I caught an extra checking her out briefly)…it’s all so much of its time, but still a lot of fun to watch. Lots of shots set in modern factories and at least one parking garage, it looked like, but you know, that’s all fine.

And look, I haven’t even watched the episodes with Gary Coleman yet. How can those not be great?

I know many special effects, sound effects, and even props were shared between this show and Battlestar Galactica (hello, same control stick in Galactica‘s Vipers showing up in the Buck Rogers ships) which, again, whatever. But I’ll tell you, the control stick thing bothered me back then, and it still bothers me now. Unless they were leading up to the eventual Buck Rogers/Battlestar Galactica crossover, in which case all is forgiven.

So I’m only partway into the first season, and I know Hawk is awaiting me in Season 2 (I actually remember the Starlog cover he was on far more clearly than anything in the show itself). Thus, no spoilers, please.

In which I use a couple hundred words to tell you I’m not posting.

filed under Categories low content mode, variant covers 2 Comments

Blogging is still (mostly) on hold for just a bit longer, while my evening blogging time is occupied by other responsibilities. I should be up and running again later this week, so thank you for your patience!

In the meantime, in talking with former boss Ralph, while specifically discussing my variant cover-age series, he mentioned a couple of other comics that I didn’t realize had variant covers, so I’ll be looking into those for a future post or two.

Also, I asked Ralph about his orders on Deadworld, as in my post discussing that title I presumed we probably ordered more of the “gory” cover versus the “tame” cover. It’s Ralph’s recollection that while he ordered fairly heavily on the earlier issues, farther down the line he was only ordering a very few for the rack, and he’s pretty sure he was getting equal numbers of each version. Now overall, I still guess the printrun was maybe a little larger on the gross cover versus the not-so-gross cover, but at my previous place of employment, at least in the latter days of that title, that may not have been the case.

Okay, that’s it for now, I should be back in action by Friday…or maybe even Wednesday, if things work out. Thanks for reading, pals, and I’ll be yapping at you again soon.

Covert Variant Teams.

filed under Categories variant covers 8 Comments

So I picked up a collection the other day, where the fella selling prefaced his offering with “they’re all from the early ’90s.” I replied “well, don’t get your hopes up, I probably won’t need much,” and then I proceeded to purchase everything he had as I indeed did “need much.” Nothing super-spectacular, just lots of X-Men and Spider-Man stuff, other Marvels of the period I could use…lots of books that aren’t jumping out of those “key collecting” apps everyone’s got their noses stuck to, but remain consistent sellers.

Many of the comics in this collection were “newsstand” editions, with the standard UPC codes. As noted before, there seems to be increased collector interest in newsstand editions, as they’re seen as “rare variants” and the like, in a market newly desperate for readily available “collectibles.”

And thus, yes, I’m bumping up prices on some of the newsstand books I acquired…hey, baby needs formula, don’t look at me like that. But of particular note in this collection was a comic I’d never actually seen before in its newsstand form, 1994’s Spawn-Batman:

Aside from the UPC code on the back, the primary difference is that instead of the stiff covers of the direct market version, it has floppy paper covers, as seen in this Instagram video I made. (And if you think I’m being too rough on it in that clip…it ain’t high grade, it can take a little manhandling.)

Pricing the book was a bit of a bear…I don’t believe it’s in the current price guide (at least, it’s not in the two-year-old guide I have at home), and online prices are all over the map. Some eBay sellers had it in the $5 to $10 range, which seemed too cheap, and on mail order house had a midrange copy for hundreds of dollars, which seemed miles too high. I ultimately skewed lower-end, assuming a mint copy to be ~$20 and working it out from there. Sometimes…you just gotta make stuff up.

Also in the collection was a newsstand edition of an Image book I did know about…in fact, I’d seen it racked in a downtown newsstand back when it was new: WildC.A.T.s #2:


The all-white background on regular paper made it stand out, given that the direct sales edition I was used to was the stiff-covered, foil-enhanced version:


There were two copies of this one in the collection, in beautiful NM shape, both of which ended up selling to the same fella for $15 a pop. Again, a price I researched and ultimately had to work out on my own.

There were also lots of just plain ol’ Spawn in the UPC-burdened newsstand flavor:


…not the #1 pictured here, alas, but scattered issues running from about 2 to 27. I seem to recall seeing a few Spawns on newsstand racks at the time, too.

Now I don’t know how long this newsstand push of Image’s lasted. On the Grand Comic Database, the latest newsstand Spawn they had was #134 from 2004. That’s far later than I expected, though after about #52 GCD only shows a handful of newsstand Spawns here and there. I presume those editions do exist, as it seems like a lot of trouble to only sporadically distribute your issues through certain venues.

Another Image title, Savage Dragon, had newsstand editions listed up through 26 in 1996. No idea if there are more after that…didn’t spot any in an eBay search, though I did spot lots of other Image books I didn’t suspect would have had newsstand distribution: Savage Dragon Vs. Savage Megaton Man anybody? Plus, I imagine recent issues of Savage Dragon would be quite the trick to rack in a convenience store, given the uptick in “special hugging” the book’s seen of late.

These are…interesting novelties, I think, and, especially in Spawn‘s case, published for much longer than I realized. I figured for sure the newsstand distribution was an early artifact of Image’s launch, but nope, there’s that 2004 newsstand issue of Spawn. And yes, I bumped up the prices on these Spawns I picked up in the collection, too..a little extra percentage over the guide. Yeah, I know, what can I tell you…I’m part of the problem.

Low content mode for a wee bit.

filed under Categories low content mode

Sorry pals, I am going to have little to no blogging time over the next week or so. Not going away, just got some Real Life Stuff to do. I’ll try to be back for another Variant Cover-Age post next Monday, but that may be it for the week.

Thanks for sticking around, pals, and I’ll see you next time.

Give to me your variants, take from me my lace.

filed under Categories variant covers 7 Comments

So y’all remember my last variant cover-age post? You know, the one way back when? Well, in response to that, Sam T Goostree noted

“Deadworld used to have tame and gory covers if I recall.”

Sam T Goostree, that “T” must stand for “Truth” because you just dropped some on us. Deadworld was sort of The Walking Dead of its day, an extended humans vs. zombies narrative in funnybook form that began at Arrow Comics in 1986 during the black and white boom, continued on at Caliber Comics, and is still being reprinted today in new paperback volumes.

It was during the Arrow run that the split covers began to be offered. From what I can see on the Grand Comic Database, #5 in 1987 was the first, with the “tame” cover appearing as so:


…and the graphic cover, if you want to see it, linked here. (WARNING: image features blood, guts, and veins in teeth.)

This continued through the end of the Caliber run in 1993. Caliber relaunched Deadworld with a new #1 that same year, and more series, including some IDW minis, would continue to pop up through the 2000s. However, while there were variants here and there, it doesn’t appear the “graphic” and “tame” distinctions carried on. Most of the later covers appear to lean more “tame” than “graphic,” at least as far as I saw.

Anyway, if you want to see more of the “grahic vs. tame” imagery that appeared on these comics, the Grand Comic Database has cover galleries for the Arrow and the Caliber portions of that series.

I’m trying to dredge up any recollections of the series and its sales, given that the initial run mostly overlapped with my beginnings in comics retail. My presumption is that the “graphic” cover sold better, or at least was ordered in higher quantities, than the “tame” cover, and I don’t recall taking any special precautions to make sure the “graphic” cover wasn’t displayed in a way to offend those of a delicate demeanor. Honestly, I don’t think we had to, as the racks we had at the time would overlap the covers and thus obscure most of the horror. My only specific memory was a coworker pointing out this cover:


…and being somewhat disdainful of it for some reason. Not sure why she didn’t like it…I thought it was a funny image, though to this day I have no idea how it ties into what I presume is the serious and violent story it’s telling. I’ve not read a single page of this comic…not a moral or critical judgement, I just can’t read everything…but that cover sure came close to getting me to pick it up solely to figure out “what’s going on here, exactly?” Which, of course, is the goal of any cover.

The option of letting the reader decide if s/he wanted a full on gory image or a relatively innocuous one on the cover that s/he took home was an interesting gimmick (and one that likely encouraged some double-dipping by at least a handful of completists who bought both), which reminded me of something else.

Aircel’s Leather and Lace by the late Barry Blair was an “adult” comic book, which meant sex scenes interspersed among what was presumably something resembling a story. Howard Chaykin’s Black Kiss, another dirty filthy dirty comic, had a great deal of success the year before Leather and Lace‘s debut in 1989, and that each issue came out sealed in a polybag was an attention grabber. As such, Leather and Lace was also factory sealed in polybags, a little larger and looser than the comparatively tight-fitting ones on Black Kiss, to help get even more attention on the rack (on purpose or not).

The deal with this series was that, to accommodate Blair’s “younger fans” (as the reasoning went, if I’m recalling correctly), this Adults Only comic would also come in an General Audiences version:


…with all the naughty bits excised out. I believe there were some replacement story pages or such…I mean, there would have had to be, right? At any rate, we’re not only getting variant covers on each issue, but the dreaded variant interiors as well. It brings to mind a Robert Smigel skit for TV Funhouse, the name of which I’d rather not repeat here for search engine reasons, in which a pornographic film is reedited for an all-ages audience, and it becomes just two people briefly speaking in a room before the credits roll.

Presumably the younger fans didn’t show up in droves for the version of Leather and Lace made especially for them, as the General Audiences editions were dropped after eight issues. And to be frank…the covers on the “general” versions weren’t much less adult than the “adult” versions, sometimes, and neither were the interiors. Even with the sex scenes excised, there was still a…salaciousness about it that made us not want to sell that version to non-adults. Not that we had to worry, because I don’t think anyone who wasn’t an adult expressed any interest in it.

Okay, the comparison between Deadworld and Leather and Lace is slight (and possibly never made before), but each series giving you an option of either an extreme visual or a supposedly more staid one was the tiniest thread that connected the two in my mind. Certainly not that I was writing to each company asking for a crossover of the two. Nope, certainly not, never did it.

In case you didn’t notice…

filed under Categories low content mode 2 Comments

…I went into Low Content Mode (or rather, Almost No Content Except Monday Mode) this week. Sorry about that, had some long days that translated into no energy left to blog at night. I will be back Monday, though, barring health disasters or any other kind of disaster, with another Variant Cover-Age post.

Thanks for sticking around, and I’ll see you then.

FCBD: Inside, Outside.

filed under Categories free comic book day 9 Comments


So yes, today was supposed to be the variant cover-age post, but between last week’s eyeball-related issue, and today’s Free Comic Book Day post, the variants posts have taken a brief break. I will have another one next week, so thank you for your patience.

Anyway, Free Comic Book Day. “How’d you do?” I’m sure you all are asking. And the answer is “very well, thank you!”

I had a changed set-up for the event versus previous years. I know that, after skipping having a specific day in 2020, the thought that an August 14th date would put up well past the COVID pandemic and everyone would be vaccinated and everything would be back to normal, but um, whoops. Needless to say, having a store filled wall-to-wall with customers, crammed in around tables and shelving, would be, if not a possible health risk, at the very least bad optics.

Thus did the comic tables go outside, with one table in front of my store and, thanks to the neighbor’s kind permission, two tables (one long, one shorter) in front of their shop (and the mailbox in the middle):

Now the plus side of this was not having to rearrange the interior of the store, which would mean unloading all the comic boxes from the wooden tables, pushing them into position, and then reloading the boxes so that I’d have room to run the FCBD display down the center of the store. (You can see what that set-up looks like in these pics from 2019.)

The downside is that I couldn’t have everything all set and ready to go the night before, since I couldn’t exactly put up the tables with the comics out front and just leave them overnight. As such, that meant getting all the boxes of the comics moved near the front door before I closed that Friday, and showing up athe shop bright ‘n’ early Saturday to start loading up the tables. After doing so, we just put some tablecloths over the comics and waited ’til opening time to unveil the goodies.

The big fear I had was that by dividing up the day’s main attractions, the free comics and the storewide sales, I wouldn’t see the actual cash business that FCBD usually brings…that folks would show up for the free comics, grab a few (or all), and then take off, never stepping through the front door. But I needn’t have worried. While some folks did pick up their books and leave (which of course is fine!) nearly everyone who came to the tables went inside to buy something. Or they went inside first before picking up the freebies. End result: my largest FCBD sales day so far, by a shockingly wide margin. That makes 20 years of Free Comic Book Days I’ve been involved with that haven’t lost money.

Crowds were heaviest in the first couple hours of the event, but the interior of the store never got so crowded that we had to cut access to the shop ’til folks filtered out and made room. It seemed like it was a pretty consistent flow of customers, with equal numbers coming in as going out. And I’ll tell you, I didn’t leave that register for a moment for those opening hours…just sale after sale after sale. That’s why I never was able to get out there and take a picture of the action. Ah well.

By the way, it wasn’t just me…the usual Free Comic Book Day Boys were on the job, pictured here (my dad, me, and pal Dorian):


…and they mostly kept an eye on things at the front of the store, with Dorian stationed at the tables and my dad at the door.

No real shocks or surprises this years…no weirdos attracted by crowds showing up and being stupid, no one angry or upset…just lots of people getting free comics, taking advantage of deals, and having a good time. No stress to be had, thankfully (though I did breathe a lot easier the moment the money take for the day passed the cost of the “free” comics).

I was expecting some pushback on one decision I made, but thankfully nobody yelled at me about this. The two most in-demand comics for the year were the Stray Dogs release from Image, and Boom! Studios’ Welcome to the House of Slaughter. Well, I’ve written before about the speculator market and its weirdly mercurial nature of late, and as noted a few posts back, House of Slaughter appeared to be the Investment of Choice this time ’round. Well, here’s what I had to say to that:


I don’t generally stamp the books, if only because I get too many and I don’t have the time, but I decided to make an exception. Have fun slabbin’ and flippin’ those. Yeah, I know, real Dick Move, Private Eye, but I wanted people to pick these up to read, not send to CGC. Hey, apparently nobody was mad about it, so it all worked out for the best, I think.

One of the more unusual things I had for reduced price inside the shop was issues of Batman: Three Jokers, of which I still had…quite a few. I mean, I still sold a few at cover price off the shelf, but at the time I decided to order quite a few others and take a chance in order to get all the variants and such. As it turns out, with the sales I’ve made on the regular issues plus the pricier variants mean that my overstock on these was all paid for. As such, out came the Three Jokers all spread out on a small table and marked “$1 Each.” Let’s just say I have a lot less backstock on that comic to worry about now.

Oh, I forgot to mention how was we opened the store and pulled the cloths off the free comics, someone shouted “are there any limits?” I of course said “NOOOPE, take one of each if you want!” As a reminder, at least in my experience, if you give people the option to take everything on FCBD…most people, left to their own devices, only take a few. Some do take everything (perfectly fine by me!) but certain not everyone. So there.

Okay, enough for today. If you have any questions about FCBD, drop ’em in the comments and let me know. Now, I have to concentrate on recovering so I can do it all again next year! And next year…yeah, I think I’ll have the free comics outside again. I liked how that worked. I especially liked not having to move my wooden tables around.

It’s Free Comic Book Day!

filed under Categories free comic book day 1 Comment

I’m doing things a little differently this year by having the freebies outside at my shop, so I’m curious how everything will go. But I hope you all out there have a fun and safe Free Comic Book Day wherever you’re at! Get out there and get your mitts on some funnybooks!

Look, don’t bust me on the math, I’m writing this late and I’m tired.

filed under Categories retailing 14 Comments

So Image Comics sent out a press release ballyhooing the immense order numbers for the imminent release of King Spawn #1:

“The recent launch of Todd McFarlane’s new monthly comic book, King Spawn #1, has shattered sales records. With just under a half-million pre-orders by comic stores retailers, this marks the single largest new superhero monthly title launch in the comic book industry in the past 25 years based on the standard sales formula of the comic book industry (non-returnable, non-retailer exclusive sales).”

Hi! I’m a comics retail critter what lived through the excesses of the 1990s. I’ve got a few words to say about this event.

Todd McFarlane, creator of Spawn, is quoted in the release thusly:

“‘The numbers that came in were much higher than what I had projected. With sales that now have a historical impact in our industry. It proves that the character Spawn and the world he lives in still resonates to fans almost thirty years after I first introduced him.'”

If I may offer a counter conjecture…I believe the high sales (nailed down to 497,000 elsewhere in the release) can be primarily attributed to the 1-in-250 edition of the book signed by McFarlane. In other words (for those new to this) a store has to order 250 copies of the normal covers in order to have the option to purchase the autographed copy.

Looking at recent-ish Spawn sales on Comichron, it appears sales on the title are generally in the 35,000 range, though #293 at the beginning of 2019 was about 25,000. Now, #300 topped over 260,000, driven by multiple covers and, at least in my experience, duplicate purchases of those covers. This issues also seemed to be one of those at least lightly targeted by the current and mercurial speculator market, given the number of advance orders I received from customers for specific, and multiple, covers. Plus, it was a three hundredth issue, heavily hyped, which can boost not just retailer orders, but actual customer purchases.

The following issue, #301, was also hyped as a special issue, which goosed the sales a bit as well (about 186,000). Oversized issues, multiple covers, supposedly surpassing Cerebus‘s number of issues (though technically Cerebus only had 299 individual issues in its run, with “#112/#113” being a single publication…let the nit-picking pedantry begin!). EDIT: BobH points out Cerebus had another double-issue, so that’s 298 individual publications in the main run.

Orders remain higher than normal for 302, at over 50,000, but was back down to the normal 35,000 or so range afterwards. So, under normal circumstances, that is about our normal level for orders on Spawn. I suspect most retailers are ordering just about what they can sell on each regular issue, with not much variation from month to month (outside the outliers noted above). Each issue of late has had three to four covers, and there is a non-zero percentage of fans who buy more than one cover (something I’ve been going on about in detail in my variant cover-age series of posts, starting here).

From all this we can guesstimate the number of actual readers (or at least collectors) who consistently pick up Spawn. And it ain’t a half million people.

Spawn’s Universe #1, released a couple of months ago and the first of this new line of Spawn spin-offs, also had order numbers much higher than your typical Spawn issue. The press release states that “the first issue of King Spawn beat that number [of Spawn’s Universe #1 orders] by two and a half times,” which puts Spawn Universe at just shy of 200,000.

A look at sold eBay listings shows Spawn Universe #1, which has a cover price of $5.99, regularly selling for less than that…several in the four to five dollar range, the occasional copy for $1.99, and yes, a few for about $7 or so, with the occasional outlier in either direction. That tells me this is a comic unburdened by scarcity. Retailers ordered high (given the number of variant covers, and no idea which one would be the “hot” one of choice, it’s no surprise) and likely had copies left over. Hence, you get what is effectively clearance prices online, trying to move excess stock…not premium pricing in a seller’s market, where demand drives up pricing on limited supply.

This post is basically a long, winding road to say “there’s gonna be a shitload of King Spawn #1s in the marketplace.” That’s not to say it won’t sell an enormous number to customers. There are multiple covers, many sales will involve the purchase of more than one cover, and more people will be attracted to this new first Spawn issue than normally read Spawn.

But like I said above, the main impetus for these sales is almost certainly the 1-in-250 edition signed by McFarlane. Going by the provided order numbers, that’s just under 2,000 copies to which ol’ Todd has to apply his John Hancock. And I’m sure the cost of 250 copies (or the balance of 250 copies above what a store was already ordering) is probably worth it to get their hands on that signed comic, which will be slabbed and put up for sale for thousands of dollars.

Did I take the bait, and get one o’them signed funnybooks? I wasn’t planning to, but I had a customer who had to have it, and we knocked out a deal where, without going into too much detail, the numbers and money involved worked out for everybody. Does this mean I’m going to have way more King Spawn #1s than I planned on being able to sell? Yup…look, I’m a small comic shop, surrounded on all sides by other comic shops, some of whom I’m sure also bit the bullet and got themselves a signed copy. There’s going to be no shortage of King Spawn locally. Do I have a plan to unload them anyway? Sure I do…I mean, I suppose I could have made the guy ordering the autographed copy take a bunch, but…nah, he didn’t really want them, and I can use ’em, I think.

I’m sure I’m not the only store that did this, though I’m sure there are plenty of stores in bigger cities or with more robust mail order divisions who sneer at a mere 250 copies, and can move them easily. But overall, given what we’ve seen in regards to current market tolerance for special issues of Spawn…we’re probably looking at a couple hundred thousand more copies at least than can be easily absorbed.

Do I want it to sell well? Of course I do. Maybe a half million people will suddenly decide they need to see this new Spawn comic. Or maybe ~71,000 customers will buy each of the seven standard variants (and ~10,000 people will buy the 1-in-50 variants). Or maybe not. But certainly it’s going to sell outrageous amounts to customers.

And even when sales dip back down to regular numbers, that’s still four (yes, four…there’s another Spawn spin-off coming) comics instead of one, possibly a net gain. You know, minus the people who say “look, I could follow one Spawn comic, but not four, I’m dropping everything.” Think that doesn’t happen? I’ve been in this business 33 years…I’ve seen it happen. Plenty of times. Over and over again.

Anyway, that press release of Image’s doesn’t look like the crowning achievement they seem to think it is. It looks like the 1990s, where Marvel trumpeted their X-Men #1 orders, and their X-Force #1 orders, without mentioning how many ended up being warehoused, buried in storage lockers and occasionally being dragged out into daylight and into shops like mine to unload. I am sure no one’s hoping for that fate, but…well, let’s be realistic. They claim success, but retailers can’t help but see the cloud in that silver lining.