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Going after a few more of your questions today. Didn’t really mean to power through so many in short order, as I meant to space ’em out a bit, but it is what it is. You know, folks can still add more questions to that linked post above!
Paul spooks me with
“How would you reboot the Harvey Comics Universe to make it appeal to the youth of today?”
That’s…a good question. My immediate reaction would have been, if we were still in the world of the CW attractive-20-something-year-olds-playing-teenagers TV shows, saying “make ’em all high schoolers with weird powers or obsessions or wealth” and go all Riverdale with it.
Or (and this isn’t inconsistent with my previous statement) take the supernatural characters (Casper, Hot Stuff, Wendy, Spooky, etc.) and make ’em paranormal investigators. The other kids (little Lotta Little Audrey, Little Dot) as part of their support team…Little Lotta would be the muscle when necessary, of course. Richie Rich is the money guy behind the team, funding their work and passing out assignments.
Not sure how, like, Baby Huey would fit in. But if I’m remaking the Harvey characters into an ersatz BPRD, then Baby Huey could be our Hellboy analog. “DUH, I HATE BOGGARTS AND NAZIS.”
And I’m really not sure how Stumbo the Giant works here. Maybe a recurring antagonist that the team has to take down?
Anyway, I’m kinda vague on details with some of the characters, I know, but if someone’s willing to give me a paycheck, I’ll flesh out the pitch.
• • •
William Gatevackes opens up with
“Who would be on your ‘Mount Rushmore’ of comic book creators?”
Assuming we’re limited to four giant heads on a mountainside, my kneejerk reaction if “Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster.” I know, I know, that’s a whole lotta white guys, I’m sorry. Maybe replace Ditko (who almost certainly wouldn’t have wanted a giant representation of his face carved into a mountain) with Osamu Tezuka. But then we’re stuck with all guys, still. So, what the hell, add a fifth head, and make it Ramona Fradon.
I mean, it’s hard to represent everyone who should be up there, especially if you’re limiting the number of visages. I’m not denying that so many people are worthy. However, I’m pretty insistent that Jack, Jerry and Joe have to be on there. And Bob Kane’s face can be on the trashcans for the tourists.
• • •
googum googumed.
“Hey, was ACTION COMICS WEEKLY direct sales only? I didn’t think it was newsstand, but just checking; figured you’d know!”
I am unsure. My source for checking this is the Grand Comics Database, where the Action Comics Weekly entry shows under the “Cover Scans” section no separate entries for “newsstand” and “direct” covers. (Compare to Fury of Firestorm, which does have separate scans for these variations.)
Here, on the cover of the first weekly issue, #601:
…you can see the little box that’s usually used for a UPC code, but instead it lists the names of the featured characters. Other issues retain the box but in a non-UPC shape. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen one with the UPC code required for newsstand sales, and Googling about doesn’t seem to turn up any.
If I had to put my thirty nickels down, I’d say Action Comics Weekly was not distributed to newsstands because, like, your local convenience store or supermarket wouldn’t want to deal with a weekly book, or, since they weren’t used to dealing with weekly comics, take the previous issue off for stripped cover returns and replace it with a new issue, giving that old one only a weeklong sales window. I mean, I don’t know if that would’ve happened. And Marvel’s biweekly series Marvel Comics Presents had newsstand distribution for most of its run, so a quicker publication pace wasn’t a problem for them, I don’t think.
If anyone’s got more information on this than I do, I’m all ears. (Ew, gross.)
• • •
Derek Moreland
expands his territory with
“How are the ENERGON UNIVERSE (Transformers, G.I. Joe minis, Void Rivals) selling for you? Corollary question: is Transformers doing better now than the MtMtE/RiD days at IDW?”
They’re actually doing relatively well…the “name” series (Transformers and G.I. Joe doing the best, with Void Rivals trailing behind). My numbers on TF/GIJ were startlingly small when they were at IDW, but all it took was slapping an Image logo on them (and some smart marketing/creative team decisions) and suddenly interest is up again. Let’s hope it keeps up, as I can always use more good-selling books.
• • •
And that’s plenty for today. Thanks for reading, pals, and I’ll be back on Wednesday, with any luck.
First, a couple of things:
One, I finally got a Threads account open under my original personal Instagram account name, mikesterjr. For various reasons I had opened one up under a different name, but ignore that one if you know about it…”mikesterjr” is where you’ll find me there. (Alas, “mikester” and “mikesterling” were taken by folks surely unworthy of my good name.) Anyway, not that I need another social media thing (Bluesky is mmostly enough for me right now), but in this scary post-Xwitter world, I’m just trying to hedge my bets.
Two, blogging-and-birthday-brother Andrew is doing his Halloween Countdown over on Armagideon Time. One of my all-time favorite writers on these here internets.
Three, let’s try to get to another of your questions:
JohnJ hits me with
“How in the world do you decide how many variant covers to order of some books, especially with DC’s extra dollar for variant cardstock covers?
The multiple covers bit started when I still was ordering comics in the 90s and it drove me nuts. It’s got to be ten times worse today with damn near every book having multiple covers.
How about the blank covers for sketches? Do you have customers that ask for those?”
Yeah, I occasionally think about how good we had it in the ’90s in regards to variants. At the time, it was annoying because, unless it was a ratio variant where we had to reach certain ordering plateaus to get that 1 in 25/50/100 copy, guessing what covers customers were going to want was quite the trick.
And it’s even more of a trick now, given that nearly every Marvel and DC comic has multiple covers, and many Image books have variants, and several Dark Horse comics have variants, and oy Dynamite Comics….
For the most part, the customers mostly want the main (or “A”) covers, although some folks don’t care what cover they get. I order enough “A”s to cover pulls and rack sales, and a smaller number of each variant for impulse buys and for those occasions when people prefer that variant to the main cover.
In the case of DC, where the variants can cost a buck (or more, if it’s a fancier variant with extra embossing or whatever), I’m a little more stingy about ordering some of those, sometimes just getting one or two copies, or maybe skipping a variant entirely if past sales data for a title indicates a big fat “nobody cares” on those. But if it’s a variant by Jim Lee or Artgerm, I’ll get a few extras because those always sell well.
For Marvel and other companies, the variants all have the same cover price (aside from the ratio variants, though I’ll sometimes just put the 1 in 10 covers out at regular price) so I feel a little more comfortable ordering extras on those. Like I said, “A” covers are generally preferred, so I’ll order heavier on those, though I notice on indie titles, some people don’t much care which cover they get. It’s the Marvels where customers are a little more insistent on getting the main cover if possible.
At this point, I’ve been ordering these long enough to get a general feel for what covers sell in what quantities, though sometimes I’ll get surprised by demand (like, it took some reordering to get enough of the recent Doctor Doom variants on some recent Marvels), but my typical strategy of “lots of ‘A’s, a coupe or three of the variants” works out. And I can usually place reorders if necessary.
I do have some customers who get every variant (or close to) of their favorite titles, so I make sure to accommodate them. And sometime a comic will pop up in the order form with more individual variants for me to order than copies I sell in the store, so I order enough “A”s and then pick and choose the likely variants that might sell, and hope for the best.
As for blank covers…I don’t always order those, but it depends on the title. I went ahead and got a copy of the blank Absolute Batman #1, for example (which as of this writing hasn’t sold yet, though I blew through all the other variants for this title in short order). Once in a blue moon I have someone show up asking for every sketch cover I have in the shop, so I like to have a few of those available.
I feel like, even as much of rambling answer I gave there, more discussion may be necessary. I mean, aside from the year or so I was doing these themed variant cover posts. Anyway, if any clarification is needed, just let me know.
• • •
Also, wish my dad a happy birthday today. He reads the site, so he’ll see it!
Attacking more of…wait, that’s too aggressive for a friendly site like mine. “Tip-toeing gently” through more of your questions today….
Joe Cabrera hails me with the following
“In general, do you enjoy today’s comics as much as those of yesteryear? If not, why? Is it nostalgia coloring your opinion, stories getting worse, unappealing plot directions, etc.?”
There…may be a difficulty now, particularly now that I own my own comic shop, in separating “comic books as entertainment” and “comic books as commodity that I need to sell to make a living.” Which is not to say I don’t still love comics, but I think too much of my mind is preoccupied with order numbers and rack sales and back issue pricing and all that jazz, and not to mention blog content, that maybe it gets in the way just a little of appreciating the comics from a purely fannish perspective, free of worldly capitalistic concerns.
The other issue here is simply time, in two senses. I don’t have the time to read comics like I used to. And comics I read long ago have had more time to percolate in my brain that comics that I’ve read last week. Take Swamp Thing Annual #2 from 1985, the one where Swamp Thing goes to Hell. I probably read that thing a couple of dozen times at minimum over the decades. I read it again not long ago when I suggested a sequence from it for discussion on a War Rocket Ajax episode. Compare with…what’s the last Swamp Thing series to come out? That Green Hell “Black Label” one? I can’t even say for sure I’ve read the last issue of that. And if I had, am I ever going to make time to reread it? I don’t know.
The way I’m reading them now, with less time to devote to them as purely entertainment (and combined with my various vision things that cause me to read a little more slowly), most comics are now one shot experiences for me, not books to revisit on a repeated basis. Which makes me a little sad, as I’ve read many comics in recent years I’d love to go back to, but I’m never quite sure if I ever can.
Am I answering the question? I still love comics. I think many comics coming out now are great. But I think for many of the reasons I mentioned above, I was just able to enjoy them more as a younger man, when I had more time to devote to them in a non-comics retail fashion.
All that said…this blog is part of the way I can still interact with comics both new and old, helping me to remember why I ended up in this business in the first place.
• • •
will richards
queries
“In your opinion, which are the most criminally un-reprinted runs of both Marvel and DC comics?”
From DC Comics…ATARI FORCE ATARI FORCE ATARI FORCE ATARI FORCE
Fun sci-fi adventure expertly illustrated by José Luis García-López at the peak of his form, with the back half drawn by the also excellent Eduardo Barreto. Gerry Conway wrote most issues, and it’s a fast paced and creative comic that unfortunately was saddled with a title that likely kept folks away. Oh, and the lettering by Bob Lappan is a revelation as well.
It seemed like these might have been on a way to a reprint collection eventually, as a few years back Dynamite was doing some Atari-related comics. A collection of the original Atari Force digest-sized comics, the ones that were pack-ins with select Atari games, was announced but cancelled, and I guess that was that. I’d like these reprinted, too, at normal comic size which would be easier on the ol’ peepers.
Now, from Marvel…that’s quite the trick, since Marvel has reprinted tons of material, filling up those giant omnibuses and “Epic Collections” and so on. My initial thought was “The Last Galactus Story,” the unfinished John Byrne tale from the latter issues of Epic Illustrated, but that did get reprinted in an omnibus (still uncompleted).
I think what I’m going to pick, out of my own particular interest, is Blip, Marvel’s comic-sized video game magazine (with some comics, but mostly articles):
And what the heck, why not Marvel’s pop culture/young reader mag Pizzazz?
I would love having either of these, even if no one else would.
• • •
Dave Carter votes
for
“Who is your favorite comic book Doctor? (either MD or PhD…)”
Well, only one answer to that, natch:
• • •
No better place to leave off than that! Thanks, pals, and I’ll see you on Friday!
So I asked you for questions, and you delivered! I’m not going to be answering these with every single future post ’til I’m done, but I’ll dip into these as needs must. And those needs must today, so let’s get crackin’!
First off, it’s Customer Sean with this
“I wonder if Stan Lee was a fan of All-Star Comics during the 1940s–as a newspaper article from ‘The Daily Bugle’ appears in All-Star Comics no. 30. Perhaps Earth-2’s iteration of J. Jonah Jameson was a cub reporter at The Daily Bugle at that time–and maybe he had it in for The Tarantula…”
At this point, Sean drops in a link to a page from that All-Star Comics from 1946, which features this panel:
Now, real world answer, “Daily Bugle” is a generic enough newspaper name, like “Daily Globe” or “Daily Express,” so it doesn’t surprise me this name shows up in a Golden Age DC book. And I seem to recall it showing up as a newspaper name elsewhere in non-Marvel, non-Spider-Man comics. And I wonder if “Daily Planet” showed up in Golden Age Atlas Comics.
But if we were to follow Sean’s train of thought, putting ol’ J.J. at the apparently-in-the-DC-Universe Bugle in the ’40s…well, that timing would work out putting Jameson as the head Bugle honcho during the 1970s Spider-Man/Superman crossover, shown here with DC’s Morgan Edge, the Big Man on Top for Galaxy Communications:
Therefore, that All-Star Comics #30 can be said to take place on whatever multidimensional Earth where the Marvel and DC characters coexist. If only we had a regular monthly comic for that very Earth.
• • •
Paul Engelberg sails in
with
“How have Ahoy Comics done in your shop?”
They’ve done…okay. I like them, they’re high quality books with top notch talent, but they don’t sell very high numbers for me. Which is okay! Not everything has to be a best-seller.
My favorite of the bunch, and I believe the longest-running series of mini-series from Ahoy, is The Wrong Earth:
…with one of the greatest premises of all time: a cheery superhero from an innocent, goofy milieu (like the 1960s Adam West Batman) switches worlds with his modern, dark, gritty counterpart (like every post-Dark Knight Returns Batman), and hijinks ensue. It builds on this premise and becomes increasingly complex and fascinating and well worth a read.
I also enjoy Second Coming:
…in which Jesus returns to Earth and partners up with a superhero, and…hijinks ensue! Interesting and wild ideas about both religion and superheroes abound. TOO HOT FOR DC COMICS!
• • •
Mike Loughlin moves on in
with
“Which current comics have your customers interested and excited?”
Well, the newest Big Thing that everyone’s asking me about is an entry in DC’s newest Marvel’s Ultimate-Comics-killer imprint, Absolute Batman:
I know folks online have had some fun at its expense, and it does look…a little odd. But in the real world, I’ve got lots of people asking for it. How long that interest will last, I of course can’t say, but I expect Absolute Batman to outsell the other launch titles featuring Superman and Wonder Woman by about 2 to 1, at minimum.
The other comic that’s got folks excited is, speaking of MMarvel’s Ultimate line, Ultimate Spider-Man:
…which, surprise surprise, outsells the other current Ultimate comics by about, oh, 2 to 1.
• • •
Okay, that’s enough questions for now…come back next time when I’ll be…answering more questions? Or doing something else? I don’t know…I’ll find out when you do!
Unfortunately, your pal Mike is a little under the weather, so I’m going to do something I haven’t done in a couple of years: I’m asking YOU for your questions!
That’s right, plug in your questions (or even topic suggestions) into the comments section on this here post and I will get to them within a hopefully reasonable amount of time. Just a couple o’rules:
1. ONE QUESTION PER PERSON, PLEASE. I only have so much life left to live, and need to attend to as many of you as possible.
2. KEEP ‘EM COMICS INDUSTRY RELATED. I mean, if you ask me a rules question about beholders in your D&D campaign, or my best stock tips, I can give it a shot, but keep in mind a) my D&D knowledge peters out sometime around the late 1980s, and b) I don’t have money for things like “stocks” or “bonds” or even “medicine” so take my answers with a grain of salt.
So there you go…throw them my way and I’ll get to them as I’m able. Thanks pals, and hopefully I’ll be up and running again as normal by Wednesday.
Twitter pal jd asks the following not-easy-to-answer question:
“…Why do some comic shops succeed and some fail? What are the major factors that go into longevity?”
Egads. Where do I start? Where do I end? Where do I go in-between?
The barest minimum answer I can give to “why some succeed and some fail” is “the businesses that make enough money to pay expenses and provide a living for the owner/employees succeed, and the ones that don’t fail” which, of course, applies to pretty much any retail business you can think of. But what is it specific to comics that feeds the rise and/or falls of those stores?
In slightly less general terms, I think a long-standing store should have
1. Knowledgeable, friendly employees
2. A wide and relatively deep range of stock
3. Some measure of cleanliness
…which again isn’t exactly comic-specific, but I think these are the positive qualities for a comic store to be around more than a year or two.
Those are just the things within the control of the store itself. That doesn’t take into account things like your potential customer base, the quality and proximity of competition, the overall health of the comics business, etc.
This is immensely simplified. Factors such as “expanding too much just as the market downturns” can take out a shop. “Being in a bad location,” or “being a good store but being outcompeted,” or “having the building you’re in get bought by a new owner who promptly prices you out by raising the rent too high,” “the partners who own the store got into a fistfight and now that store’s shut down,” “owner dropped dead” — could be anything, really.
I know during the ’90s boom a lot of shops opened up and I’m sure many of the proprietors smelled some easy funnybook money and dealt heavily in “hot” books. Once the fad died and the market crashed, all those “hot” comic customers dried up and without any longterm committed clientele, many of those shops vanished.
And this isn’t even touching really on distributors suddenly going under, taking retailer money and product with them, leaving stores in the lurch. Which is what has me wondering if we’ll see a return of that particular problem in this new no-longer-beholden-to-Diamond-Comics direct market world.
Ultimately, all I can do is control my store and do what I can to keep it vital. I’m not the biggest store around, or the fanciest, or the most monied, but it’s operating at a level I’m comfortable with, one that pays the bills and affords me a living and the occasional eye injection, and is (usually) stress-free, despite my distributors’ best efforts. But I try to be helpful and friendly, try to stock what I can (and am willing to reorder what I don’t have), and have fair pricing on my back issues.
Now if someone were to open a big ol’ comics emporium right across the street from me, I might take a hit, but I’d like to think I’d engendered enough loyalty to keep at least some of my customer base. I mean, I’ve been doing comics retail for three and a half decades now…it’s too late to go find a real job.
Oh oh oh, I forgot one…a store should have some kind of internet presence. Without going into too much detail, there was a shop I knew about that, when I went to look ’em up online, the only thing I found was a mention of their shop on someone else’s Instagram. Anyway, that shop wasn’t around too long.
• • •
As long as I’m taking Twitter queries,
here’s one from a couple of weeks back from Joseph Z:
“What is the most reprinted comics story of all time? Story, not issue. My guess would be Spidey’s first appearance from [Amazing Fantasy] #15.”
That’s certainly a contender, and I’m presuming we’re not talking print runs but rather “most individual reprints of the same story in different comics or trade paperbacks.” I feel like the first Batman from Detective Comics #27 may be a small contender, though the look of the story hasn’t aged well and likely wouldn’t appeal to most modern audiences.
Now a while back I listed off the various House of Secrets #92s I had. I admittedly had too many and have more on the way. Thus, that was 8 reprints of the original Swamp Thing story…with more acquired since this, and more about to arrive. So…a dozen or so now, 15 maybe?
I’m hard pressed to think of an individual story that comes close (and also it’s super past my bedtime right now)..if you’ve got an idea, throw it into the comments and we can do a little digging. It’s probably going to end up being something at Disney or Dell, isn’t it.
§ January 7th, 2022 § Filed under pal plugging, question time Comments Off on The internet is now a little more stuffed.
First, the big news:
…Yup, just like the little stuffed fella says right up there, Bully the Little Stuffed Bull’s blog “Comics Oughta Be Fun” is back in action after being shuttered for a bit. The primary focus is currently “Today in Comics History,” but boy, Bully has an endless variety of goodies to give you under that theme. So pop by, say “welcome back Bully” and tell him his pal Mike sent you!
And some site news here: my variant cover-age is going to be on hiatus for a couple of weeks as I start looking back at your comic industry predictions for 2021 (and a reminder: I’m still taking your predictions for 2022!). I received a lot of predictions last time, so it may take me a bit to get through them all, but I’m looking forward to it!
Before that happens, let’s see if I can’t polish off a few more of your questions:
Rob S. steals the show with
“Does your store have a convention presence? (In normal times, that is.) If so, what goes into prepping & transporting inventory for a con?”
Not as such, since I’m pretty much a one-man operation here, though I suppose I could wrangle one of the Legion of Substitute Mikes into running the shop while I manned the table at a show. But…I’m not really much into working cons, frankly. I don’t mind attending them, on the rare occasion when I do, but I don’t want to have to stand there all day watching people around me having fun while I have to work. Sometimes it’s easier to just stay at the store and let anyone attending a local convention come to me, as they invariably do.
Since I’ve opened my shop, at the very few local conventions we’ve had (which have been…not top tier, from what I’ve been told by attendees of same) I’ve had folks passing out flyers for my shop, so, you know, there’s at least that. And in my days at the previous place of employment, the shows we worked required picking out a selection of back issues to bring with us (the pricey case comics, the more popular “hot” stuff, some oddball stuff just to show some variety), tossing them into our respective vehicles, and hauling them over. And then…stand at the table working while watching other people have fun.
• • •
Smicha1 smacks me with
“Well this is a two-part question not two questions, hope that’s okay. And they are both fairly easy to answer I hope.”
What? How dare you.
“What percent of your sales would you say comes from new-on-the-shelf comics? And not counting current comics or trades (back issues still count) what product brings in the most money? I don’t mean an individual product but more like ‘t-shirts’ or ‘Funko toys.'”
Well, I don’t know what the exact percentage off the top of my head, but I will say the majority of sales come from the new comics. That’s the big draw, especially in a store like mine that’s pretty much just comics, with no Pokemon or D&D or stuff like that. Is it half? Maybe it’s half, followed by trades and back issues.
And if I’m understanding the second part of the question, back issues would be the biggest non-new-comics-or-trades product line. But excluding comics altogether…like I said, I’m mostly just comics, so I don’t have many other product lines to sell. I suppose “toys” would be the one, which would include Funko Pops in my mind. Perhaps between Pops and other toys, Pops have the edge. Which surprises me they’re still coming out and are still in demand, but hey, that’s fine.
• • •
philfromgermany asks some germane questions with
“Hey Mike, how are you?”
Fair to middlin’.
“Is that alt-right comic nonsense still going on?”
Oof, yeah, probably. I don’t know, I don’t try to pay any attention, which is usually easy since a number of their comics turned out to be vaporware, right? Anyway, not a thing I have to deal with on a regular basis, thankfully, and it’s not like I have customers beating the door down for this stuff.
• • •
Carlos has designs on me with
“I was curious how well Savage Dragon does at your shop/in the area? I have a sub & enjoy it, but don’t see it on shelves of other shops I visit (in TX). It seems that back issues are hard to find and getting pricy because people are now trying to complete the run. Thanks!”
Savage Dragon, going on for over a couple decades and still by Erik Larsen, God bless ‘im. It hadn’t sold for me at the new shop in a while, aside from pull lists, but I’m beginning to get a little more interest lately. Not a lot of copies, mind you, but at least there’s some interest where before there was none.
And yes, the back issue market on this series is pretty off the wall. I suspect sales at most stores are like at mine, with very small rack sales and the majority of copies going to pull lists. With such small print runs, if an issue is missed then it’s to the eBays to look, where the sellers are not kind in their pricing. I know my pal Cully missed a copy at his local shop a while back, and was calling all over (including my store) trying to find it so that he didn’t have to pay the buck wild price being asked for it online. (He eventually bit the bullet and paid a sliightly less than buck wild price for it.)
But I’m all for the Savage Dragon series. One creator doing the same book forever…just imagine if Rob Liefeld had stuck with Youngblood the same way, for the same length of time, and how amazing that would have been.
• • •
MisterJayEm dashes out this question:
“What do you recommend to uncles(52) looking to buy comics for their precocious nieces(7) and nephews(4)?
“It’s hard to peruse those books without looking like a possible creepo, so I prefer to have a plan before I approach the kiddie section of the funny book store.”
If you’re just talkin’ plain ol’ floppy stapled comics, I always recommend the Scooby Doo books for kids. Those are top notch, fun, and likely recognized by children as they never quite seem to go away, despite it being it as old as both of us.
For a four-year-old, Scooby Doo may be a bit wordy, so some of those comics by Art Baltazar (like Tiny Titans) may be cuter and a litle more accessible. Or there’s Owly, which is wordless, but still good and fun comic booking.
• • •
Michael Grabowski slaloms down the following
“I snagged the last copy of the new Usagi Yojimbo comic this week at an LCS. It got me to wonder: does a retailer such as yourself like selling out completely of a title like that during the first week or would you prefer to order enough to have, say, 2 or 3 left over for more occasional customers to discover?”
Ideally, I’d like to have exactly one copy left of everything I order at the end of the sales cycle to go into back issues. Of course, it doesn’t work that way, usually, but I try to cut it as close as I can.
But the answer to your question is basically “it depends.” Some comics die once they’re not longer visible on the comics rack and in the back issue bins. Those I want to sell out of completely on the shelf, whether it’s the first week or over the month. I mean, I suppose I wouldn’t want them to disappear entirely on the first week so that folks who don’t make it in every Wednesday get a chance at them, but there are a few titles where I’m good with them clearing out fast to make room for other new books. Again, it’s a case by case thing. Sometimes I want them to stick around a bit, sometimes I want them to clear out and get out of my hair, sometimes I want a copy or two for back issues, sometimes I don’t want any in the back issue bins because no one will ever buy them there.
Does that make the monthly comic order complicated? You bet it does.
• • •
And BRR freezes us out of the latest batch of questions with
“Would you consider doing an update to your classic 2005 post on best mailing practices? I would be interested in a permalink at your store’s site, perhaps with a sponsored link to your preferred bag sealing scotch tape alternative. Unless this is a trade secret to be kept from competitors and comics distributors.”
Good gravy, was it that long ago? Long enough that flat rate shipping in the envelope was only four bucks? But yes, maybe some updating is in order, as I do tend to ship comics a little differently now (using some of those solidly built comic mailers that Diamond offers, plus more emphasis on heavier protective cardboard, and more box shipping with bubblewrap). None of it is a “trade secret” or anything, but some common sense and a desire to have comics shipping to me the way I ship comics to others.
That post, by the way, was inspired by my own ordering of a run of The Minx off eBay that was shipped to me in the most ridiculous way possible. And the fella was going to charge me some bonkers amount for shipping that I told him “hey, that’s bonkers.” I wish I’d taken a picture of the box they were sent in…or rather, “boxes” as it was some giant monstrosity cobbled together from multiple containers. For eight comics. Well, I guess they did show up intact, so who am I to complain?
• • •
Okay, that’s it for the most recent question-fest…it’s on to 2021 predictions on Monday! Thanks for reading, everyone!
Trying to run through the rest of the latest batch of questions before the end of the year! But before I do that, don’t forget to leave your 2022 comic industry predictions!
Thom H. h.as this to say
“What’s the one book no one’s reading that everyone should be reading? Any hidden gems in the current marketplace?”
This is always a hard question to answer, because I don’t want to bum some poor creator out by saying “oh yeah, no one’s reading your book.” So let me alter the parameters slightly and give you this answer. I think a book more people should be reading but aren’t because they think it’s “just” a kid’s comic is The Batman Scooby Doo Mysteries, which is just about to wrap up. It actually sells reasonably well for me, and kids enjoy it, but I keep thinking one of the best kept secrets in comics is that DC has published multiple Scooby Doo comics over the years, and they’ve all been really good. Funny, clever, perfectly okay for young’uns (well, maybe not Scooby Apocalypse, also good but for the grown-ups) but enjoyable by older fans too. Even by someone like me, who is exactly as old as the Scooby Doo cartoons themselves.
• • •
James G drops this question
“Since you’ve been writing about variants for a bit now, something I’ve always wanted to know is: how does the way variant covers are distributed and sold to retailers affect your business? How have the ‘minimum orders to get a certain cover’ requirements changed the work you have to do for the store? How has it changed the bottom line?
“So that may be three questions, but I think it’s one question with refinement. :-)”
ALL RIGHT, MR. CHEATER-PANTS, I’ll let it slide this time.
I went fairly deep into the business end of ordering these variants a couple of years ago. Also, I was planning on another deep dive into the whole situation once I started wrapping up my variant cover-age and circled back to this first post and started addressing your feedback there.
To sum up: it affects my business in that I have to think long and hard about the numbers I’m going to place on these books. Is it worth it to get a few extra copies of something into order to reach the ratio variant plateau? What if then I don’t sell that comic for a premium in order to make up that extra cost and then some? Or those free-to-order variants…usually “lots of cover A and then just a few each of covers B and up” works okay, but for seemingly random reasons sometimes one of the variants becomes the in-demand item. It’s just a constant balance of ordering what you think you can sell, versus taking an occasional risk for extra profit.
When it comes to just pure numbers vis-à-vis profit and the bottom line, it’s not much different from taking a risk on a new first issue, or an otherwise “special” comic. You think about what you’re likely to sell, you place your orders, and either you sell enough to make back your money plus some extra, or you don’t make the money back. That happens regardless of variants or not. The tricky part mostly comes in trying to guess which variant will be the most popular, and trying not to get stuck with too many extra copies of any cover.
Also, refer back to previous installments of the variant cover-age to see specific ordering thought processes in regards to specific variants.
• • •
DavidG gives me the goods with
“Do you think that Diamond can survive losing the big 2, especially as you seem to think their service is pretty bad as well?”
I don’t think their service is perfect, no, but I do have to admit the vast majority of items I order show up with no problem. But every shipment seems to have some annoying and usually avoidable shortages and damages. For instance, this week was the third week in a row of not receiving any of my Dynamite “cosplay” covers. Maybe that doesn’t seem so bad, but those are the covers of their books in the highest demand.
As to surviving…I haven’t looked into it, or even heard, if Diamond has done any restructuring or scaling down of their company to reduce costs. I do still get quite a few books from them, even if my invoice costs aren’t nearly as large as they used to be.
On top of that…they haven’t necessarily lost Marvel as such. Retailers can still get Marvels from Diamond, just at a lesser discount than what they’d been used to. I imagine there are plenty of retailers who didn’t want to jump through the hoops to sign with Marvel’s new distributor Penguin Random House.
But a few smaller publishers have been slowly moving to other distributors. Again, for the most part you can still get them from Diamond, but I moved orders on those companies over elsewhere soon as I could. I feel like if Image ever decides to bail, that would probably be the catalyst for everyone else jumping ship, leaving Diamond as your exclusive Be@rbrick supplier.
• • •
Chris B be askin’
“Are you ever going to update your ‘The Chosen of God’ list? Most of those listed haven’t posted anything in years.”
In the blogging heyday, I used to go up and down the list of bloggers, checking in on their sites to make sure what I was planning on posting about wasn’t duplicating someone else’s content. Nowadays, of course, I just repeat stuff I already said over and over again and call it good.
And yeah, a lot of those bloggers ain’t bloggin’ any more, having wised up and found something better to do with their lives, leaving me to fend for myself. But you never know when someone might come back…or when one of the links will suddenly go to a squatter’s page or a site filled with text in an unfamiliar language. Or both!
Yes, I do someday have to perform a little maintenance on that sidebar (and the links page). Honestly, though, I hate the idea of deleting names and links…just perusing the list now brought back some memories of The Good Ol’ Days and I’d hate to lose those. Maybe some kind of In Memorium page, sorting the list of blogs into “Defunct but Still Online” versus “Now Selling V1aG4A.” Or possibly even “Actually Still Blogging,” but what are the chances of that?
Back to the ol’ question mine for today’s post! But don’t forget to give me your predictions for 2022’s comic industry!
Dave Carter is an unstoppable question machine with
“Who is your favorite Legionnaire? (i.e. member of the Legion of Super-Heroes; not e.g. your favorite enlistee in the French Foreign Legion…) Explain your answer.”
Dangit Dave, I had Jean Genet all ready to go before you threw your little caveat in there. FINE.
Anyway, it’s a question that’s come up once or twice here on Pugressive Rune, and this post from, egads, four and a half years ago, answers and explains:
“I’d like to see a Brainiac 5-centered Legion relaunch. Brainy as the cool, rational, scientific center surrounded by the utter madness of ‘Bouncing Boy’ and ‘Matter-Eater Lad’ and so forth, just trying to do his job despite all the crazy nonsense in which he finds himself mired.”
Um, not quoted is my writer suggestion, which, shall we say, hasn’t aged well. But I think Brainiac 5 is just the right mix of seemingly normal but weird enough to be interesting. He has a long history behind the character tied to Superman and L.E.G.I.O.N., even given the various continuity shenanigans. His scientifically advanced inventions (and lest we forget, time travel) have a lot of story potential. I’ve just always liked him, what can I say. And I think one of the times I brought up that he’s my favorite Legionaire, I was hit with the response “he’s everyone‘s favorite Legionnaire!” So let’s get that Brainiac 5 solo series out, already.
• • •
ExistentialMan exists only to ask this question
“Here’s a quick, classic one: Flight or Invisibility?”
Flight, natch. Invisibility feels like would wear out its novelty after a while. Unless of course you use it for nefarious means, like, for example, sneaking into movie showings for free AND NO OTHER REASON, and who needs the temptation?
I mean, flight would be awesome. No more traffic jams! (Just fines for violating aviation rules!)
• • •
William Burns fires up the ol’ keyboard to ask
“Do you think Marvel will ever bring back those True Believers $1 reprints (or a similar cheap reprint format)? Those were fun.”
It’s be nice, but I don’t see ’em in any forthcoming orders. It could be that paper shortages/increased costs have made them not financially viable for the moment…I mean, less so than they already were. They were certainly popular with my customers, so hopefully they’ll return. I know there’s still the occasionally “facsimile” edition (like this week’s Conan the Barbarian #1) issued at full current cover pricing, but even those seem less frequent.
• • •
Chris Gumprich has Martin Landau ghost the following question for him
“I’m not up on the current comic zeitgeist anymore so this might seem a ‘duh’ question. In your experience, do buyers still follow characters above all or has the momentum shifted to creators? Is it more ‘I will buy everything Ed Brubaker writes’ or ‘I’m going to keep buying SWAMP THING even though I haven’t liked it in years?'”
To the best of my observation, it’s mostly readers following characters. Though, sometimes when there’s a creative team change with an accompanying premise change for a character, like with the recent transition from Immortal Hulk to the new Hulk series, some folks dropped off. Though that may be more about people jumping on to the highly regarded Immortal Hulk series, and leaving once that story was over.
But by and large, I haven’t had many customers zeroing in specifically on creative teams over the actual character(s). There are still a few, of course, looking for “all Ed brubaker” (to use your apt example). They’re far outnumbered from the people who want, like, all Green Lantern appearances. Or even weirdos who want all Swamp Thing appearances, what’s up with those crackpots.
• • •
Bob Stec goes this way with
“Are you watching Squid Game on Netflix?”
I’ve heard of it, of course, but I don’t think I’ve seen a single frame from it (unless I saw one on, say, Twitter, and didn’t realize what I was looking at). As far as I know, it’s about squid playing football. I’d totally watch that.
Time more more answering of your questioning!
Paul fills my comments with this inquiry
“Will you be having a giant store window display of Bill Griffith’s BUSHMILLER BIOGRAPHY?”
Actually, I’m going to order enough to form a giant throne, upon which I may sit and issue my comic proclamations.
But seriously, I am looking forward to it, and will absolutely carry it in the shop, and feature it prominently.
I do have some in-store Nancy displays…a framed blow-up of this cover above my register:
…and I have a similar large print of a Nancy Dell Giant cover in the front window…but darned if I can remember which one now! What a weird thing to forget. I’ll try to update once I return to the store and actually pay attention.
• • •
Vic Sage sages
“One Question per person. Take that Greg Rucka!”
instantrimshot.com
• • •
Thelonious_Nick steals in with
“You expressed admiration for the Fantastic Four #35, the 60th anniversary issue. I read it last night and found it to be probably the best superhero comic I’ve read this year. What do you think are the best comic anniversary issues ever? Is FF#35 one of them? How about Fantastic Four #236? Detective #500? What others would go on the list? Do any of the #1000s make the grade?”
When I was but a mere mortal non-comics retailer, back in the early ’80s, I would regularly grab the extra-sized anniversary issues of just about any comic book. Not just the ones I normally read, but from titles that were new to me. Always thought they were good samplers, and issue #175 is what got me reading Uncanny X-Men for a time.
I was thinking about that just this week as Avengers #50 came out, wondering if this issue would have sparked the same weird “need” in me as those other anniversary issues from four decades ago. A quick flip through the book didn’t grab me (no offense, just haven’t read Avengers in forever) but I thought a few of the covers were nice.
A long time ago on this very site, I did a series of posts about my favorite anniversary issues. One of them was in fact Detective Comics #500 from 1981, which is still a favorite of mine. I often opine on the Twitters that this comic should get the hardcover treatment from DC. What a great mix of stories and characters.
That’s #2 on my list. The absolute #1 anniversary issue for now and ever more is Justice League of America #200 from 1982:
Multiple chapters, iconic characters drawn by iconic artists (Flash vs. Elongated Man by Carmine Infantino! Batman vs. Green Arrow and Black Canary by Brian Bolland! Green Lantern vs. the Atom by Gil Kane!) all with wraparound chapters (and great cover) by George Perez! Each chapter with a big ol’ splash page feauturing the heroes squaring off! It really is one of the most spectacular capital-C Comic capital-B Books of all time. And yes, another that could use a standalone hardcover reprinting.
As far as more recent anniversary issues…yeah, I enjoyed Fantastic Four #35, which had some cute touches like those period covers as chapter breaks. As far as DC’s issue #1000s for Detective and Action…I actually haven’t gotten around to reading the Detective yet, but Action was…fine, I suppose. I liked the Mxyzptlk story drawn by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez. Looking over the contents I feel like I should remember liking the comic overall more than I did, so maybe I’ll give it a revisit. The different covers were mostly nice…this is the one I kept for myself.
But…boy, I do still love those old anniversary issues. Aside from what I’ve already discussed, the Fantastic Four #236 you mention is a good’un, and I always like the Superman’s life story we got in Action #500. There’s the game-changing Incredible Hulk #300, the artistically dynamic Superman #400 (with the gimmick of featuring artists who hadn’t drawn Superman before…or at least not much before), and the history-spanning Legion of Super-Heroes #300 (with some special cameos).
Anyway, anniversary issues are great. The new ones don’t grab me quite as much as the older ones did, but they still sell well so they’re certain getting someone’s attention, which is nice. May they find the wonder and enjoyment I had as a young Mikester, biking around to the shops and springing those extra few cents to get those extra-sized comics.
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