retailing

Especially Punisher Armory.

filed under Categories collecting, retailing 14 Comments

Loureedrichards stretches in to street hassle me with

“The post on war comics and the reaction to it was interesting. Several people mentioned not being interested in war comics when they were younger, but they now have a greater affinity for them. I felt much the same way and now find I am as interested in war, horror, romance, and funny animal comics as I am in superhero comics. That may partly be due to the histories of those genres and many of the creators not being covered quite as extensively.

“Is there much demand for any of those genres outside of the EC titles (obviously) and something like early romance comics by Simon and Kirby? Is there a large Fox and Crow or Jerry Lewis fandom that I’m not hip to? If so, could you hip me to them so I’m not stuck out here in squaresville daddy-o?”

Look, I’m tuned in to your scene, Kookie, and it’s the absolute end! Honestly, when it comes to the war comics, or really any genre outside of superheroes, it may just be that they were overlooked when you were at the stands picking out your regular faves. The war books may have looked more “mature” or “serious” to you at a young age, and thus didn’t appeal. Which isn’t to say there weren’t some seven-year-olds out there desperately waiting each new issue of G.I. Combat, because obviously there had to be some, or the series wouldn’t have lasted as long as it did.

It may be a self-fulfilling prophecy from the publishers, too…”our war books don’t sell as well as the superhero books, so we’ll focus our efforts on the superhero books, and hey our war book sales have dropped further still, how’d that happen, better not waste effort pushing those.”

Another aspect is availability. Comic shops carrying back issues (by which I mean the good ones, possibly even mine) can expose you to a wider variety of books outside your initial experience. As you get a little older, a little more interested in reading something other than the same ol’ same ol’, and as you maybe hopefully have a little more disposable income (a tricky assumption at this current moment), you might peruse the stacks and come away with material you’d skipped before.

And when you’re older, you might just have more of an appreciation (sincere or ironic) for the craft of the books. Maybe that war book or horror comic looked “weird” to you as a kid, but looks fascinating to you now. I’ll tell you, not long after I started working at my previous place of employment, I’d be processing stacks of old war books, and I learned quickly that some, especially Sgt. Rock, had perfected the Intriguing Cover™. Each one set up a situation that was so mind-bogglingly compelling that you had to look inside and see what was going on. It was the ol’ “things that always work on covers” list (usually attributed to Carmine Infantino, but apparently actually from former DC honcho Irwin Donenfeld) but turned up to eleven. Or fifteen.


I mean, what the hell, dude.

Like I said above, this isn’t everyone‘s story. Some people read a lot of comics that weren’t superheroes as a kid, and just never made the move over. Or some, like me, were reading a lot of Disney and other kids comics in the ’70s, got roped into Star Wars comics in ’77, was reading a lot of Mad Magazine during this period, and occasionally read superhero comics as well. So, I was getting a good mix of stuff, but it helped that there was a good mix of stuff on the stands for me to get. As superheroes pushed other genres off the rack, the choices became increasingly limited.

Oh, and I suppose one more thing that helps people rediscover old comics they missed out on before: the internet. I hear that’s a big thing nowadays.

But anyway, yes, there is currently an enormous market for non-superhero comics of an older vintage. If I suddenly got a crate full of Golden Age romance comics, they’d be gone within a week. And that’s just from walk-ins. I’ve got people I can call who would rush right in and buy ’em by the armload. It’s no problem. And those war books I got recently…they’re selling nearly as soon as I price them, even in the condition they’re in.

“Do comic collections ever come in with superhero AND romance comics?”

Sure, all the time, if the collections are of a certain age. Granted, it’s usually 1% romance comics, 99% superheroes/other, but it’s rare when, despite my wishful thinking in the previous paragraph, that I get in a collection that’s nothing but romance. Unless you count Archie. Or Punisher, that’s kind of a romance comic if you really think about it.

“Unrelated, but are there any comics you would not sell due to ethical concerns about the content or the creators? Nothing springs to mind right off, but you have much vaster knowledge.”

The last time this was really an issue was the whole Orson Scott Card thing, which I wrote about here (warning: linkrot). And there are creators who have been involved in scandal and bad behavior which disinclines me from supporting future endeavors.

But the one line I am not crossing is carrying any Harry Potter items. It’s not likely there’ll ever be a Harry Potter comic (JKR probably thinks that’s beneath her), so it’s obviously easy to boycott that. I do, however, get inundated with offers for HP junk from my various toy/merchandise wholesalers, and man, No Huey, No News, No Thanks. I like my trans friends too much to stab ’em in the back like that.

“Just saw a video of someone being ripped off by a counterfeit Hulk #181. Obviously with your experience you could spot a fake a mile away, but I’m curious if anyone has ever tried to pull a fast one on you?”

Not that I’ve noticed. Boy, I hope none of that giant pile of Man of Steel (1986) #2 I have in the back are fakes. But, boy, with home tech advancing to the point where you can assemble a reasonable facsimile of a Hulk #181 to foist off on people? That’s a new worry unlocked.

One example I can think of was at the old shop, where we once acquired a ’60s Spider-Man toy still in the box, but that box was newly printed and we somehow missed that. I don’t believe this was nefariousness on the part of the seller, she was likely oblivious to its nature. (And I’m not trying to be mean, here…this particular person was likely not capable of either making this box or spotting it was fake. And we didn’t spot it either, so there you go.)

And I know one of our old customers got taken by some fake Jack Kirby “original” art, poor guy.

We did buy a counterfeit Cerebus #1 at the old shop once, but we knew it was a counterfeit, which is now sort of a collectible in and of itself. We bought it at the same time as a real #1, and they both sold to the same person. (Huh, I wonder if Cecil still owns those? Boy, I’d like to have ’em myself.)

“Like I said, forgive me if you’ve covered these topics before.”

Friend, you’re talking to a person who has a wildly extensive “Death of Superman” category, I ain’t afraid of repeat topics.

Seriously, Fred is all over the place.

filed under Categories pal plugging, retailing, this week's comics 3 Comments

On the comic shelves this week, a couple of comics by Close Personal Friends that I wish to point out to you, the potential readers of such:

First off is Fixation #1, part of the new line of crime comics from IDW:


This is written by Amy Chase, one of my regular customers and a Special Guest at the last couple of Free Comic Book Day events at the shop (here’s a nice photo of her at one, in her swell shirt), with some great art by Savanna Mayer (whose work you saw in Return to Sleepy Hollow, amongst other books). There’s moider at a convention celebrating the anniversary of a popular vampire film, but is it more than just an unstable fan? Read the comic and find out!

Also, listen to Amy chat about the series on the Cryptid Creator Corner podcast.

Also out this week is the Major Taylor hardcover from Drawn and Quarterly, about the first Black world champion cyclist:


…written and drawn by my old, old pal Fred Noland. I’ve known Fred since he was but a young’un, probably at least since the late ’80s. He was also part of the Full Frontal Harvey crew, our mini-comics concern from the mid-1990s-ish, which I’ve written about a bit. He’s had plenty of comics output since then, and you can see and read plenty of examples right here. And here. And if you’re in Berkeley, CA in a couple of weeks, you can see him in person!

Look, I just Googled Fred to see what I can link to here, and hoo boy there is A LOT. I mean, check it out, he’s everywhere. And good on him, Fred is a good guy and deserves all the success he gets.

• • • 

In response to my post about Marvel’s Midnight shenanigans, Dallas asks

“Your shoppe didn’t get the pdfs from a couple weeks ago for each of the #1 issues?”

Well, here’s the thing. My comic shop email box gets an enormous amount of messages. I mean, it’s so much, you guys. Personal emails from customers and other Real People get priority, then messages that look like they may directly impact my business (like sale notifications from eBay, or bank stuff), then emails from distributors and creators and publishers, then all the business loan/V1Agr4 come-ons, then messages from pal Ian.

I’m sure I’m missing a category, but the point is I get a lot to sort through over the course of my day, on top of already doing stuff just in-store to run my business, so there’s only so much time I can devote to the ol’ inbox. Like, the Real People Messages I obviously spend time on, but the distributor etc. emails I sometimes just look at briefly, or not at all. Maybe it’s just a brief glance to see if there’s anything that immediately needs my attention (like “Hi Mike, this is Distributor X, we’re dropping your discount to 2% unless we hear from you in the next four hours”), or if it’s a sales pitch (“Don’t forget to up your orders on Unicycle Tragedy #182 because something big we’re not explaining is going to happen in it!”).

In short, there’s a lot to go through, and, yes, sometimes something slips through the cracks. Like that email with the downloadable Midnight PDFs, which I tried to download right now but they’re already removed from the server. Ah, well. I mean, honestly, if I barely have time to get through emails, how much time am I going to spend reading full issue PDFs? …Okay, again, I really do try to at least give even the PDFs a once-over, but the number of times that sort of thing has influenced my order numbers is exactly zero. Whether or not I think something is great doesn’t matter, it’s what the customers want that matters, and my tastes don’t necessarily jibe with theirs. Otherwise that Santos Sisters issue with Flaming Carrot would have been my best-selling book of the month.

Yes, I suppose one could glean from a PDF the possible quality of a comic, and how that might impact comic sales, but that’s still a nebulous thing upon which to base one’s orders. The only real gauge for comic orders is comic sales, and sometimes, like with a new thing such as these Midnight books, we won’t know how well they’ll do until we see how well they do. I could have perused that Midnight: Fantastic Four #1, thought it was the greatest comic I’ve ever read, ordered a royal buttload of copies, and then see it wither on the rack as all the customers turned up their noses at having to start yet another event.

I actually think it’s going to sell fine, though we’ll see where things go with #2.

I do appreciate the advance PDFs…I know publishers are hesitant, they don’t want spoilers turning up on theresreallyasiteforcomicsgossipreadbylikeadults.lu weeks ahead of release, and I really should make more of an effort. However, to be completely honest, their impact on my ordering decisions is minimal, particularly in these days when orders are pretty close to the bone on most titles, both regular ongoings and new debuts. Like I said in that post, it feels like Marvel wants to get something comparable to Absolute Batman‘s seemingly-undying shelf life.

As hard as it may be to believe now, even that new Bat-title got relatively conservative orders from me. I ordered higher because 1) it’s a new imprint from DC that 2) is kicking off with a Batman book. And while I did sell through that order, it didn’t happen immediately. Over time I learned what the regular order numbers should be. Would an advance PDF (or in this particular case, the “ashcans” I received) have affected my ordering? No, not really.

I’m not saying advanced PDFs are not useful to others in deciding their order numbers. I just don’t put a lot of emphasis on them myself. Maybe that’ll change, maybe I’ll incorporate that information on a case-by-case basis. But reading a comic book that’s actually in my hand does more for my appreciation and experience than looking at a file on a screen…and if it’s a good one, I’ll definitely let my customers know about it. And if sales go up, so do my orders. It’s a more evidence-based method of ordering, and one that’s worked well for me over the years.

Letting it all hang out.

filed under Categories dc comics, marvel, publishing, retailing 9 Comments

So Marvel unleashed its “Ultimate” Universe in 2000/2001, starting with Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimate X-Men, partially out of a need to have some “new reader friendly” material on the stands free of the deep continuity in the regular Marvel Universe. Also, a collapsed comics market and Marvel being on the verge of “going away” for good probably helped push along any desperate ideas to keep them afloat. Whatever the reason, the Ultimate books came out, giving fresh starts to their properties separate from the still-ongoing Marvel Universe proper…until they became just as convoluted as the mainline universe and purpose successfully defeated.

But it ran a long time, and made lots of money and had a strong readership, and “the sweet taste of success attracts many tongues,” as no one but me says, and DC was trying to figure out how to get some of that Ultimate scratch.

First they tried with their “All-Star” line in the mid-2000s, with All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder and All-Star Superman…both sold amazingly well, though one got a little more critical acclaim than the other. All-Star Superman was a mini and wrapped up after 12 issues, while the Batman title stopped mid-story with #10, and planned Batgirl and Wonder Woman titles for the line never appeared.

Then DC tried out the “Earth One” line of graphic novels, starting in 2009, again giving fresh starts to their major properties and hoping to catch a new bookstore audience with them. The Superman and Batman series for this imprint put out multiple volumes, but never really seemed to catch any traction. The Wonder Woman run of three books was generally well received, as was the Green Lantern run. But it looks like this effort was finally abandoned a few years ago (though a collection of the Wonder Woman books as part of DC’s Compact Line has done well for me!).

And then, finally, The Third Time’s the Charm, as they say, as just a couple years ago DC launched their Absolute line. Similar to the Ultimate Universe, the Absolute Universe gave fresh starts to their heavy hitters (Supes, Bats, and Wondy) in continuities separate from the mainstream DCU. Interestingly, the milieu spins out of one of DC’s Big Event titles, positing a reality centered around the Omega Energy of the seemingly fallen Darkseid. Sorry if that sounds a little inside-baseball for anyone coming onto this out of context, but the general idea is that this is not just a darker universe, but an existence where the heroes we know lack the advantages their regular counterparts have.

At any rate, this line (which quickly added a handful of new titles) is pretty much DC just printing money at this point. Absolute Batman is far and away the biggest hit. DC just keeps issuing reprint after reprint of the entire run of individual comics, and I keep putting them on my shelves, and they keep selling. They’re up to, like, a 12th printing on #1. This is almost unheard of for just a regular monthly title at DC, especially after the trade paperback collections started getting released.

And it’s not to speculators…it’s new readers, it’s teenagers, it’s adults who’d heard about this thing online somewhere. It’s the Holy Grail of what DC and Marvel have been looking for, A Title That Gets New Readers into Comic Shops Specifically for Their Thing.

The other Absolute titles also do well, if not at quite the extreme Absolute Batman does, but they’ve found their levels and move off the shelves.

Anyway, now that DC has found its Ultimate line, Marvel seems like it’s going to try to find its Absolute line, with this new Midnight publishing initiative they’re about to launch. I was going to say “I don’t know that this is directly a response to DC’s Absolute line,” but the headline of this article, “Marvel’s new Midnight universe makes DC’s Absolute comics look ‘pretty polite,’ says Spider-Man writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson,” seems to clear up any confusion.

The “Midnight” line is horror-centric, apparently, separate from the regular Marvel Universe, with darker versions of Marvel’s mainstays, which feels like a misread of the Absolute line, but, well, we’ll see what they do with it. The solicit for the first issue of Midnight: Fantastic Four #1 reads

“FIRST STEPS INTO DARKNESS! An obsessive scientist delves into the secrets of the universe perhaps best left unknown to humankind, leaving himself and three others warped in strange and horrifying ways. What horrible secrets lie in the new dimensions they have discovered? And can humanity survive the discovery? From the twisted minds of Benjamin Percy (WOLVERINE, PUNISHER) and Kev Walker (INFERNAL HULK, DOCTOR STRANGE) comes a tale of existential dread and secrets best kept…”

I can do without the “from the twisted minds of…” business, I mean c’mon, but I don’t know, Fantastic Four as a cosmic horror comic? Or even, dare I say, Lovecraftian? Yeah, I’d be all for that.

Just so we’re clear, I’m not criticizing anything they’re doing here. I obviously haven’t read any of these yet. They could be great! They have solid creative teams. But the question is, will these capture the same attention and sales as DC’s Absolute line?

This is something I had to ask myself when I was finalizing orders on the initial releases from this line. And while I tend to order conservatively on new titles, I did bump orders up quite a bit for these books. I think they will do very well, at least at first, as everyone tries to get in on the ground floor of what they think will be the Next Big Thing. And maybe they’ll be right, and it will be the Next Big Thing.

But I honestly think it will be at best a good selling new Marvel line to already established comic fans, and not the constantly-selling, new customer-attracting, phenomenon that Absolute has been. That niche is already filled, you see, and lightning striking again seems highly unlikely.

Again, just my feeling. I could be wrong, and maybe I’ll still be selling the 12th printing of Midnight: X-Men #1 off my shelves two years from now. And I’ll be cursing myself for not having ordered ten times the amount I did for the first printing of that issue.

We’ll all see soon enough how the Midnight line does. And whether I was on target with my orders. I’ve had strong interest from my regular clientele regarding these books, and I’ll be interested to see if there’s any demand beyond that.

The post I would title “And now, escapism” except I’ve already used that one.

filed under Categories dc comics, retailing 12 Comments

So I’ve been otherwise occupied, both at work and at home, and with doing some behind-the-scenes tinkering with this here website, so today I’ll show you a picture of stacks of 1960s/1970s DC war comics I picked up over the weekend:


What a glorious, terrible-conditioned mess of books these are. Stored poorly, some water damaged, many put in comic bags that had no flaps, so what good were they…these may be in lousy condition, but at least they’ll be cheap!

I’m hoping to get started on pricing them this Tuesday, when I have some free time on my hands and presumably the rest of my body…when the customer visits will likely be low, and I won’t mind smelling more like decaying newsprint than I usually do.

Anyway, war comics! Heavy on the Sgt. Rock/Our Army at Wars, and with inexplicably a modern Spider-Man comic that’s a retailer exclusive variant. Anyway, I don’t think I’ve ever received so many of the DC war books in one shot like this before. It was a nice surprise, even with the wear and tear on them. It’s one of the joys of owning a comic book store, getting to play with old comics like these.

Or maybe it’s just a edgier version of Pixie, Dixie, and Mr. Jinks.

filed under Categories fantagraphics, retailing 3 Comments


So I had a copy of this on the shelf at the shop, Massimo Mattioli’s complete Squeak the Mouse hardcover published by Fantagraphics a year or three back.

Have you read this? I don’t know just how far these comics seeped into the awareness of comic fans. But, as you can see from the delightful cover pictured above, this is a knockoff on the dynamic between the classic Hanna Barbera cat and mouse characters Tom and Jerry. It basically answers the age-old question “what if Jerry could rip open Tom’s intestines with a chainsaw, and then go [EXPLETIVE DELETED] Tom’s girlfriend and all her buddies?”

What I am saying is that there is a whole lot of explicit violence and, shockingly, explicit sex in these Squeak the Mouse comics. I first read these in a couple of paperback volumes from the late ’80s/early ’90s, which gave me a real sense of “…should I be reading this? I mean, is it allowed?” It was expertly done and lovingly drawn, with the occasional weird insert of a photo panel that is invariably disturbing in context.

Anyway, I said I “had” a copy because someone bought it on Sunday. This person is a Simpsons fan, and was seeking out my, alas, very few available back issues from the franchise. Very quickly, though, his eyes fell upon my Squeak the Mouse book and snapped it up, saying it reminded him of the Simpsons’ own in-universe violent Tom and Jerry parody, “Itchy and Scratchy.”


I explained to this customer 1) Squeak the Mouse actually preceded The Simpsons by a few years, and 2) this is really really really really really more violent and adult than its TV follow-up. It was literally stopped by U.S. Customs at one point for “obscenity.”

I told this person several times, surely to the point of annoyance, that one of these things is not like the other, but the purchase was nevertheless completed. (And this customer also gave me a 5-star review online, so I presume he hadn’t read the book yet.)

I mean, as I said on Bluesky talking about this, I did my part. I gave him sufficient warning! But I also wondered if Squeak the Mouse was in fact an inspiration for “Itchy and Scratchy.”

A little researching (i.e. Googling about) doesn’t seem to see any explicit admission that Squeak the Mouse was a direct influence, and after all the idea of “Tom and Jerry but super-violent” isn’t really a hugely unique stretch. But it’s also likely Simpsons creator Matt Groening knew of its existence, given his early involvement in cartooning, so who’s to say.

Diamond would also have traveling sales reps who’d come to your store…PICK UP THE SLACK, LUNAR.

filed under Categories retailing 1 Comment

So the other night, as I was working on my Final ’90s Countdown post about Strange Attractors, I did what I usually do when prepping these and tried to log into the old Diamond Comics retailer portal. While that version of Diamond was no longer an operative business, having since become “Diamond Select Brands,” a division of Enesco, the product database was still (mostly) functioning on the old site and I would use it for research.

When I tried to log in last night, and received an error message (503 Service Unvailable”), which I figured wasn’t a good sign. Then I checked the page on Wednesday afternoon, and I got this:


I don’t know how long the page has been this way — I think I logged in last week, but that’s a thing of the past now. All that information, shipping dates, cancellation notices, production descriptions, all gone. I’d hoped there would have been some kind of bulk download of this info, or a back-up on the Internet Archive, but no dice. But if anyone from Diamond is reading this and needs to offload a copy of that product database, you know how to get a hold of me.

I pointed this out here and there online, and “end of an era” has been a common refrain. Not a 100% good era, not a 100% bad era, but it was definitely an era, and it was very easy to see a possible path to its end bringing about the end of the comics retail business as we know it.

Thankfully, there were companies…um, optimistic enough to pick up comics distribution, though some small press items have been lost in the shuffle. And aside from some early glitches here and there, it’s been a relatively smooth transition and as things stand now, my ordering from these new companies has become a regular and trouble-free routine, at least for me. (I know other retailers’ mileage may vary.) I’ve even picked up a toy and merchandise distributor to cover that end of the market, and am currently in the process of signing up with another such company.

I’ve even ordered a couple of things from The New Diamond…actually, one item I got in was a carryover from an order placed with Old Diamond before it fell. However I’ve since ordered a couple of figures from this latest iteration, which is now primarily toys, statues, game items, and other related products.

It’s sad to see that old website go…I can still remember logging into the Diamond BBS (that’s “Bulletin Board System,” for the terminally young amongst you) to enter and upload orders. And of course, prior to that, stores had to fill out order sheets and mail ’em off. I’m not sure what the next version of “Comics Ordering” is going to be, if it’ll be like “please submit your numbers via TikTok video,” but whatever it is, I’m sure I’ll be doing that too.

Just don’t ask me how that new Ultimate comic is selling.

filed under Categories collecting, retailing 15 Comments

Wayne queries

“[Another store] will keep as many back issues as they can, I can’t travel anymore, but I know this from THE WALKING DEAD and a few others back in the day.

“But keeping copies of ABSOLUTE BATMAN #1 in its tenth printing mean anything at all to a collector? Though I’d bet you only go back to maybe #15 now.

“Or is it that you’ll still get new customers.Buying the trade and then finding more recent issues on the racks for them to buy means you continue to get more people buying the book and possible other Absolute books?”

Believe it or not, Wayne, whatever issues in whatever current printings I can get of any of DC’s Absolute line go on the new comics rack. As of right now, especially after the restock I received earlier in the week, I have nearly every issue of Absolute Batman on the shelf, from the eleventh printing of #1 all the way to the most recent issue, the “hideously mangled” #20, plus the Ark-M special the and the annual. Note that’s not every issue, as I’m currently out of one of the issues in the teens, can’t remember which at the moment, but as soon as it’s reprinted, I’ll have it in!

And it’s a good sales tool to have ’em all on the shelf like that, as it attracts folks who have heard of these comics but don’t want to dig deep into their pocketbooks to splurge for the trade paperbacks. They sample a first issue, maybe a second, then come roarin’ back for all the rest. Having them all up and on display makes for an impressive sight, and certainly encourages sales from the curious.

Mostly, this is working for the main three, the Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman titles, which probably isn’t a surprise, and those seem to be the titles that get the most reprintings. Absolute Martian Manhunter is probably the next in demand, followed by the relatively low (but still present) demand for Absolute Green Lantern and Absolute Flash. (And for anyone wondering, the newly-released first issue of Absolute Green Arrow is selling quite well for me, thank you.)

I’ve said multiple times I’ve never back issued any of the Absolute line, but strictly speaking, that’s not true. I did have a copy of Absolute Batman #1, first printing, that had a color-breaking corner fold on the front cover that I’d set aside and completely forgotten about until well after the book was determined by the comics-noscenti to be a Hot Item, when I found it again. Priced it up (probably well too cheaply in retrospect), put it in the New Arrivals back issue bins, and watched it get purchased and carried away by a grateful customer, holding it aloft upon a silken pillow.

Are these taking up space on my new comics rack? Well, yes. Even with the Gigant-o-Rack that I have taking up an enormous amout of wallspace in my store, the Absolute comics consume a lot of real estate. However, in terms of space used vs. dollars made, it’s well worth it. And given this is one of the few Big Hits the American direct comics market has, actually bringing in new readers excited about picking up monthly single issues, I happily will devote the space to them.

Is this something I can keep up forever? Or is this something DC Comics can keep up forever, maintaining the backlist of single issues of the Absolute books in print in perpetuity? Honestly, I don’t know which will give first…my shelf space, DC’s continuing willingness to go back to press, or trees. Right now it is in DC’s best interest to keep printing these comics so long as there’s this sort of demand, and it’s in my best interest to keep them displayed and available, so long as they’re getting new customers and making money.

Realistically, I can’t keep ’em all on display forever. I’m already overlapping the issues on the shelves so that I can still make room for other new comics. Or else I just devote the entire rack to nothing but Absolute books, and put all the other releases in a short box by the register witih a sign that reads “MISC. NEW COMICS.” But I haven’t quite hit that day yet.

Now Wayne, funny you mention the “does a tenth printing of Absolute Batman #1 mean anything to a collector” thing, as I was just talking about that with a customer the other day. I mean, technically, the later printings do generally have smaller print runs than the first printings. Thus, they are in shorter supply, which could mean, I guess, higher prices should demand arise. Now, it’s not likely now that the printings are in the double digits, but who knows?

This does happen in the real world on occasion. I forget which issue exactly, but there’s like a second or third print of an issue of Ms. Marvel that goes for dumb money, and those later printings of The Killing Joke with the differently colored embossed logos tend to be pricey since they’re not always easy to find. I don’t remember the last time I saw the blue-embossed eight printing, for example. And I haven’t really checked, but I’m sure the earlier reprintings of some of the Absolute books, especially the Batman one, are gaining some pricing traction.

Those are the exceptions rather than the rule, as decades of comics collecting and pricing have told folks that “reprints aren’t as expensive as first prints.” So no, that tenth, or even eleventh, printing of Absolute Batman #1 is unlikely (but not outside the realm of possibility) to get collector demand and go for premium prices. Its real value is in getting new readers to try out comics.

Unless everyone’s speculating on the reprints.

filed under Categories batman, collecting, publishing, retailing 3 Comments

Thanks, pals, for being patient as my blogging batteries recharge. I plan to have another “My Fantastic Four-ay” post this week, and should have another installment of the Final ’90s Countdown coming along in short order.

In the meantime, let me address a question that came up in the last post, about the supposedly-damaged Absolute Batman #20s, from D:

“So are people buying 2 copies of AbBat every month, one to read & one to slab at 9.8 to flip? Or is no one actually reading the book at all and just having their issues encased?”

I’m reminded of that one creator, during the height of the pandemic-inspired comic speculation frenzy where every first appearance of anything was snapped up in desparation for making that big eBay killing, who was so excited at the huge jump in demand for their comic. “Wow! Sales are through the roof! Thanks everyone for your support!” and I just didn’t have the heart to tell ’em that this was only a speculation-fueled bump, that sales were going to drop right back down to where they were previously. And the book ended shortly thereafter (it was a Marvel book, so “ending shortly thereafter” is pretty much a given, what with current publishing stragegies).

I think the point I’m trying to make here is that if Absolute Batman was purely a title supported by speculators, I don’t think it would have lasted this long and at its current high sales volume. That said, speculation is part of the formula here, as most issues have something to generate that sort of interest (1st Absolute Catwoman! 1st Absolute Bane! 1st Absolute Robin(s)!), so that sort of investment behavior is certainly subsidizing the sales.

In general I order around the same numbers for each new issue of Absolute Batman, and I can tell the difference between the issues that have something Hot and Investable in them and those that do not, given on how many I have left over after the initial sales week. However, the amount of demand from people who seem to be actually interested in reading the comic is enough that even if the issue has extra remaining copies, they will continue to sell through the following weeks.

Here’s the thing…I haven’t back-issued any Absolute Batman. (Or any of the Absolute books, for that matter.) I keep every available issue up on the rack and for sale. DC seems intent on keeping the periodicals in print, even if they’ve been reprinted in hardcovers/trade paperbacks, which is unusual. But DC seems to recognize the strong continuing sales of the individual comics and their appeal to new readers, and keeping them in print is money in the bank for themselves and the retailers. I just placed a reorder for more reprints of the entire run, and expect to sell through those again. We’re up to an 11th printing on #1, if you can believe it.

I’m not a mind-reader, so I can’t say for certain that the majority of sales for Absolute Batman is by readers, and not by people immediately shipping them off to CGC to be slabbed and graded. But the general vibe that I’m getting is that they are being bought by readers, and said readers find the comics exciting and compelling. Nearly all my sales in the shop are single copies to customers. Only occasionally do I have someone picking up two or three copies for themselves.

Now, this is just my store. Maybe other stores that are more CGC-oriented than mine (which ain’t hard to achieve) are seeing people buy Absolute Batman by the handful for immediate flipping. I can’t deny that speculation isn’t rampant with this comic, because otherwise this recent controversy over the “damaged” copies of #20 wouldn’t have happened if a significant number of people weren’t upset about not being able to get their coveted “9.8s.” But my sense is that, given the continuing reprinting of the individual issues, given the sales patterns I see at the store, given the general buzz around the actual contents of the stories, this book is getting more reader-driven demand than speculator-driven.

If we had any sense, we wouldn’t be comic book retailers.

filed under Categories retailing 4 Comments


So the new hot book of the week is Dynamite’s Ben 10 #1, based on the cartoon from some years back and apparently in short supply in these here parts. Notably, this wasn’t an item that flew off the shelves to the normal New Comics Wednesday crowd, but rather primarily moved to new customers who came in the next day…presumably fans who heard about the book online via whatever fan channels exist for the property.

Apparently it had relatively high orders for an indie book, though as that article breaks it down, actual regular copies available to all stores (outside the “blind bags” and the retailer exclusives) were only about two-thirds of the print run. And like every book from Dynamite, there were multiple free-to-order variants, and multiple ratio variants, and the pricier foil covers, and so on.

I got multiple calls to the store looking for copies of this, from, as I noted on the Blooskees, increasingly more distant area codes, so it very much appears that demand far outsripped the available supply. And when something like that happens, the speculators start to get involved, further diminishing available copies for anyone actually interested in reading the comic.

Though I have to admit, my comics-retailer sense (in that if any of us have any sense) was telling me that most of my inquiries were coming from the fans, not the folks looking for eBay-flipping opportunities. So realistically, I don’t know how many Ben 10 #1 were immediately packed away into Gemini cardboard mailers addressed to CGC, but I’m sure it’s a non-zero percentage.

And that being the case, the big question is…what to order on #2? The Final Order Cutoff date on the second issue is next Monday, which gives me a few days to gauge actual demand. Now, I could probably have sold two to three times the copies of #1 over what I initially ordered, which wasn’t a huge amount (more on that in a moment), but it could be a mistake to drastically raise my orders on the next installment.

One, it’s a first issue, where demand is generally highest. Two, a lot of the folks weren’t regular comic buyers, which isn’t a bad thing, of course, but they’re just not in the habit of returning to a comic shop once a month to get the latest issue, and many may not return having had their interest slated with a single comic. And Three, there’s the speculator factor, who are only interested in comics were demand outstrips supply, and certainly won’t pick up any copies of a reasonably ordered second issue.

That’s not all cut ‘n’ dried, of course, but that’s just a basic distillation of what I have to consider. And then there’s the reason I didn’t order overly high in the first place, and that’s the gradually diminishing returns on Dynamite’s cartoon nostalgia comics.

Most of them started strong: Thundercats, Gargoyles, Space Ghost, Thundarr, and so on. But as time and series and spin-offs wore on, sales on the first two shrank to a very small core audience, and Thundarr‘s sales collapsed almost immediately. Space Ghost remains a relatively strong seller, but even that is only moving about half the copies it did when it first arrived on my racks.

That’s perfectly normal…most comic book series see attrition over time (with the possible exception of the perpetual motion machine that is Absolute Batman, but even that may see its time eventually). It’s no comment on their quality, it’s just a thing that happens. But when it came time to order on a Ben 10, I had to consider the apparent diminishing returns on these sorts of comics, and the fact that previous Ben 10 releases, like graphic novels, barely moved at all for me.

And I had to consider, “who was going to buy this?” I get a lot of kids who pass through the shop, but in general they don’t pay any attention to the Old TV Cartoons That Are Back in Comic Form genre. I mean, there’s always one or two, but usually they’re more interested in manga or Dog Man or the like. But I account for those sales too. Then I had to think “how many of the adults who come in here are going to care about a Ben 10 comic?” and I figured “probably the same number that still care about Thundercats and Gargoyles,” so that went into the ol’ brainpan for some thinkin’.

What I usually don’t consider (and this may be a bit of a broken record for you longtime readers here) is The Secret Other Thing, which is “people who don’t normally buy comics coming in to buy comics.” You can’t depend on that. There are plenty of comic books that come out every month were you can say “well, the general public may decide they need This Comic, so I better order lots!” but 99% of the time, they won’t.

But this 1% of the time, they did. And, that’s just what happens I guess. It’s nice when it does, and even nicer if I’m prepared for it, which is almost impossible to be so. But I did have copies on the shelves for the few lucky people who popped by and called early enough on Thursday to grab some copies, so I at least made some people happy.

What to order on #2? Probably more than I ordered on #1, but I’m not going to go buckwild. This could be a case where the demand normalizes right away, or drops almost entirely, like an Image Comics second issue, and I’m stuck with a few issues and need to drop numbers on #3. Or demand will meet my educated guess and I’ll be able to satisfy a larger number of new customers. I’ll find out in about a month or so.

No idea why Diamond went away.

filed under Categories death of superman, retailing 15 Comments

So as I may have mentioned once or thrice, I inherited a number of items from my previous place of funnybook-sellin’ employment, following that location’s final closing. Like, boxes of old promotional material, this sign, and lots of old invoices. “You might find some use from the data there,” my former boss Ralph said, and I agreed, with intentions of going through all those pages to see what I can glean.

Well, it had been a while, and I finally pulled those boxes out to poke through them. Didn’t have any real plan in mind, aside from flipping open one or two here and there for the occasional twinge of nostalgia (“we ordered *that* many of that comic?”). As far as I can tell, I have access to invoices ranging from September 1986 (exactly two years before I started working for that store), running up to sometime in 1996. I don’t know if it’s a complete run, but it’s a significant amount of information of what Ralph had ordered, and what was available, from Bud Plant, Capital Comics, and Diamond Comics, and maybe one or two others in there.

By happenstance — yes, really — I found the invoice for the week when we received Superman #75, the nigh-infamous “Death of Superman” issue, dated “11-20-92.” (That’s the Friday of the week, though I’m pretty sure the comic went on sale on Thursday the 19th.) My memory over the years was that we ordered “ten times what we normally ordered on Superman comics” for this special issue, and thus, now that I have the exact numbers, I can pin down that assumption to a more specific amount.

Now, I don’t feel comfortable giving exact order numbers, as it feels a little bit to me like giving away trade secrets or something. Every once in a while I’ll have someone at the shop ask me “so, how many copies of [title] did you order?” and I’ll answer either “enough” or (usually, because they usually only ask if I’m out) “not enough.”

As such, I’ll be telling you that, combining both the deluxe black-bagged #75 and the unbagged “newsstand” version, we got in just a little over 7 times our normal Superman comic order. I will say that number is a few hundred copies, which, under all normal circumstances, would have been plenty to meet demand.

But then, as discussed on this site plenty of times (click the category link to see), and as you likely know already, the “Death” broke in the real world news just prior to release. Which is why when we were prepping to open, we were taken by surprise by the enormous line stretching down the street waiting to get in. Even by limiting sales to one per customer (which just delighted some folks, I’ll tell you what), we were out in short order. Had we ordered 20 or 30 times our regular order of Superman, we might have had enough, though given the number of people who wanted multiple copies, maybe even more would have been necessary.

Looking at this invoice, I was reminded of a particularly aggravating problem, in that Diamond shorted us our multiple cases of boxes of Doomsday: The Death of Superman trading cards. Just the total cost of the cards alone was about equal to, like, one of my weekly Marvel invoices now. Geez louise. Anyway, I barely recall there was some kind of issue with those cards at the distribution level, in that we never got replacements on them. (Eventually, the folks at the shop would get a full set of the cards for me for a birthday or Christmas or something, since I was a longtime Superman fan. Yes, I still have that set.)

Also interesting is that this week was also the debut of Doom 2099, and you’d think its foil-enhanced first issue would be overlooked in the rush for that guy in the cape what died. But, even though we ordered about 5 times what we would normally order on Superman (to continue using that comparison point), we would — eventually — sell out of it. At this late date, I can’t recall if sales on its initial release was hindered by the Superman rush, but I do remember running out of it.

Also shipped this week: Robin III #2 (both the collectors edition and the regular version), X-Factor #86, G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #132, and, yes, Horny Biker Sluts #5.

What was amazing was the number of shortages we had, on top of not receiving the Death of Superman cards. We didn’t get our orders on Guardians of the Galaxy #32, Dracula: The Suicide Club #4, Kimagure Orange Road: A Retuirn to That Day VHS, Laundryland #4, Loco Vs. Pulverine #1 (may have been a restock, noted by Diamond as having shipped 10/31 on the invoice), the Marvel Super Heroes 1992 Holiday Special, Meatface: The Amazing Flesh #1 (um, what), Merlin #1, Night of the Living Dead: Aftermath, Nightbreed #33, Personality Presents #15 (with Michelle Pfeiffer), Rock Classics: The Doors #1, Savage Henry #23, Saved by the Bell #4, Scooby-Doo Giant Size #2, Screw Comics #1, Sherlock Holmes: Return of he Devil #2, Southern Knights #36, Stunt Dawgs #1, Tales of Screaming Horror #1, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mutant Sourcebook #1, Trailer Trash #3, UFOs Alien Contact #1 (both the regular and Deluxe Editions), Urusei Yatsura Movie: Only You VHS, XXX-Women: A Woman’s Work… #1, Yogi Bear Big Book #2, and Zoot #1. Oh, and a copy of Kitchen Sink Pipeline #70, a freebie newsletter to retailers.

And yet somehow we still had lots of comics other than Superman #75 to sell that week. Good gravy, what we put up with. Probably around this time I told our Diamond rep, after dealing with another slew of shortages, “if Diamond was a plane, I wouldn’t fly it” (a gag stolen from David Letterman). May not have been nice of me, no, but boy was I frustrated. But looking at the invoice, it looks like, for example, none of our Fantagraphics books showed up (which includes that Meatface mag), so maybe there was a problem with their books getting to Diamond on time, or something. I don’t know. Still, c’mon guys, that’s a lot of missing books. And cards. And videotapes.

Anyway, that’s a peek back at a notable shipping week from over thirty years ago. Now to find the invoice with the white-bagged Adventures of Superman #500 to see how many of those we shouldn’t have ordered.