retailing

You have your nostalgia triggers, and I have mine.

filed under Categories collecting, retailing 16 Comments

Yup, a few more of these Whitman funnybook pre-packs made their way into the shop, only a few short months after that Star Wars one popped up. And while none of these were from series I particularly perused at the time (aside from my Battlestar Galactica treasury edition, and a single issue from the monthly series), even just feeling the (still-sealed!) bags in my hand took me back to that time, so long ago, when I was reading comics. …Oh, wait, I’m still reading them now. Well, you know what I mean.


Like I said, I had the treasury edition (adapting the pilot film) and one issue…that one issue being #3, which was part three of the adaptation of the pilot film, so, well, my 1970s comic dollar wasn’t very well spent, there, I guess. I keep meaning to check out the issues of this series illustrated by Walt Simonson.


I don’t know a whole lot about Shogun Warriors. I mean, I remember it being on the stands an’ all, and I may vaguely recall the toys the comics were based on as well. This is one of those series that had a price bump partially because it’s a ’70s Marvel title and those are getting harder to find in top condition, and maybe kinda sorta from riding that ’70s toy nostalgia wave even though nobody’s nostalgic for this. (NOTE: I exaggerate for lightly-humorous effect…do not email me with links to your comprehensive “Shogun Warriors Forever” web shrine.)

I can’t even say for sure I’ve ever even looked inside a copy. I’m pretty certain we have a full run in the back issue bins at the shop…maybe I’ll take a look. Someday.


So I was absolutely fascinated with the Micronauts toys as a kid…I think I had a couple of the figures, and maybe a vehicle, but I think a foot was put down at some point and I had to pick between one or the other parents’-wallet-draining sci-fi franchise toy line, and Star Wars received my young nod. But boy, did I pore over the one or two catalogs I had for the Micronauts toys, imagining how wonderful they must have been. The only person I encountered back then who had any extensive collection of these toys at all was some friend of a friend, so my direct exposure to these items was tantalizingly brief.

I only ever read one issue of the series…guess which one…though I kept meaning to get around to reading a couple of the later issues that tied into John Byrne’s Fantastic Four run. Though, oddly enough, this mini-series, which I inexplicably bought off the rack, still remains a favorite.


Most of the three-packs shown here contain the first three issues of their respective series, but this Buck Rogers pack, featuring comics based on the Gil Gerard TV show, holds issue #2 – #4. According to the interesting publishing notes on this Grand Comics Database entry, the numbering of the series picked up from the previous Buck Rogers series published by Gold Key back in 1964. So, you know, just 15 years between issues. I wonder if any of the kids buying Buck Rogers #2 in 1979 were driven crazy, desperately seeking that first issue, thinking they were missing some exciting four-color adventure starring Gerard and Erin Gray and Twiki. Plus, according to that same entry, #10 of the series also went AWOL, just to pick up a few of the Buck Rogers fanboy stragglers not yet driven to madness by the lack of an obvious #1.

“Oh, the fluids I’ve seen.”

filed under Categories free comic book day, pal plugging, retailing 12 Comments

So there were a couple of questions/comments/whatevers for my last post regarding Free Comic Book Day, and I thought I’d address them here, since I was apparently too lazy to actually respond in the comments section:

  • Snark Shark sez that my new strategy of de-emphasizing pre-bagged distribution of the FCBD books would “save [me] all that needless bagging!” Honestly, I wouldn’t say it was “needless,” as such…there is a measure of convenience to the customer, yes, but there is also the unfortunate fact that…well, how should I put this? You know how cable companies resist the idea of à la carte subscriptions, picking and choosing what channels you’d want and pay for? To steal the explanation from Wikipedia, “when channels are bundled into large subscription tiers, less popular niche channels are more likely to survive because their cost is borne by both viewers and non-viewers, alike.” In other words, if given the opportunity to pick and choose, subscribers would probably overwhelmingly support the Wrestling Bikini Girls Channel, or the Paranormal Horseshit Passed Off As Something Worthwhile Channel, while less popular channels like the Something Actually Educational Channel would wither away and die.

    So what I’m saying is that by slapping together bags of the freebie books, I’m distributing certain comics to people who, possibly, may not have picked the book up on their own. And half the battle to get folks to even look at certain comics is won just by getting them to take the darned thing home with them. Thus, it’s not completely needless…but it is a lot of work, and it does get rid of a lot of comics maybe a little too quickly. I’m interested to see how our new emphasis on “build yer own FCBD bag” distribution will go.

  • Casey notes “Mike, it seems you get quite a kick out of this FCBD business,” and, yeah, I do. It’s a lot of work, a lot of money up front, and a lot of frustration hearing about other retailers totally fouling it up…but the actual day of the event is a blast, always very busy and it’s a lot of fun chatting about comics with excited people all day. Plus, I get to write obsessively long blog posts about the behind-the-scenes planning, and you folks know I always enjoy writing obsessively long blog posts!

  • The amazingly-named ScienceGiant asks “if you did have to make a purchase what would be your age appropriate recommendation for an 8 year old? (Daughter, if relevant).”

    Well, that can be tough, because you never know what kids will want. I think it was on the Twitter where I noted that a while back I had a couple of young girls, probably 8 to 10, come into the shop and buy a bunch of Hulk comics…this was before the Avengers movie, if you wondering. So, you never know.

    If your local shop has ’em, Amelia Rules is a good one to try, or that perennial favorite Bone. Also, Ptor mentions a comment or two later that Owly is a good’un, too. If she’s looking for superhero-y stuff (or if that’s all that’s available locally), point her at the (unfortunately now cancelled) Superman Family Adventures, or back issues of Teen Titans Go. The rereleased Smurfs books are a lot of fun, too. Be sure to tell her those are better than the movie.

    This actually came up on Sunday, when I had a dad looking for comics for his 7-year-old daughter, who wanted Wonder Woman. There aren’t any current Wonder Woman comics that any parent would be comfortable giving his or her child, so I had to dig back into the back issue bins to find some issues of Adventures in the DC Universe, and some 1980s pre-Crisis Wonder Woman. I would have pulled out some of the Justice League comics based on the animated series, too, had it come to that.

    Or you can have her just look at the new comic rack and see what catches her eye. Kids being kids, she’ll probably gravitate to the absolute last thing you’d want her reading, but some trial and error will narrow things down to something she’d like.

  • Snark Shark returns with “what would be appropriate for an obnoxious 40 year old?” and boy, the jokes just log-jammed in my head, there. Everything from “a swift kick in the pants” to “[WRITER’S NAME REDACTED] has a new comic out this Wednesday!” to “just spin around a few times in the middle of the shop with your eyes closed and your arm pointing out, and see what you’re pointing at when you stop.”

  • The previously mentioned Ptor explained “I’m just a customer helping out a fellow while I shop and look for a nice place to pee on your floor (which seems to be a thing).” And yes it was, once, long ago, when a child probably old enough to know better decided to answer the call of nature right on the floor in front of the new comics…this was a couple of shops ago, so there is no Memorial Urine Stain in the current storefront at which anyone may pay homage.

    But anyway, the topic came up on Twitter the other night, as it does, and pal Carla up there at Metro Entertainment topped my story with her tale of woe of an encounter with a young lad in the process of twining the turkey and meeting the press. Frankly, I’ll take pee any day, he said expecting that sentence in no way to be taken out of context.

• • •

In other news…Bully, the Bull That Is Simultaneously Stuffed and Little, did another one of his fantastic Ten of a Kind posts, focusing on those classic Go-Go Checks covers…and I helped a wee bit! Go for the covers, stay for the always-swell commentary!

Insert joke here about Stan Lee being some new guy they’re trying out on a start-up title rather than risking him on any established books.

filed under Categories marvel, retailing 10 Comments

So I came across a copy of the Marvel Comics Previews promo catalog “for new publications scheduled to ship in 1992” –


…and I’d somehow totally blanked on the fact that the Marvel 2099 imprint was going to be called “Marvel 2093” at one point:


In the “marketing” section, it describes this particular marketing initiative thusly:

“These titles literally are ‘Marvel: the Next Generation’ and if you remember the popularity of other popular series with that designation you’ll be able to imagine how well these books will do.”

Well, sure, I loved Match Game: The Next Generation, AKA Match Game ’73, and sure enough, the 2099 line (as it would later be called, when cooler heads prevailed and decided “2099” was exactly six years’ worth of awesome better than that piddling “2093”) did indeed do very well. At least until the entire comics market tanked shortly thereafter, but, you know, whaddaya gonna do?

Anyway, back to the catalog: each title had its own entry, with a logo and a rough sketch of what the character may or may not look like when the comic was finally beaten into shape:


And just look at those creative teams!


Okay, to be fair, at least one writer was on board at print time:


The text pieces for all the books describe them in the most general of terms, usually along the lines of “like the modern day Marvel heroes, only more future-y,” without any specifics like character names, settings, how exactly the characters are going to be different, etc. Well, the entry for Doom 2093 pushes the “is this really the Doom from the present-day Marvel Universe?” angle, so that hook at least was present this early in the development process.

This catalog is an interesting look back at Marvel’s marketing strategies during comics’ last big sales hurrah, and I suspect, as I dig deeper through its pages, I’m going to wax nostalgic over those salad days when you could sell a comic such as Punisher 2093 like this:

“It will also be a natural must buy for all the fans who picked up the Punisher Armory title this year. People have always associated the Punisher with the latest in hi-tech ordnance and this series takes the association to the ultimate degree. Just remember the success of Terminator 2 or Die Hard to envision the vast potential for this series.”

Probably the first and last time the sales success of the amazing Punisher Armory was used as a marketing tool for another book.

“RARE H@T WYOMING VARIANT L@@K”

filed under Categories retailing, this week's comics 12 Comments


So after one day, it’s probably too soon to tell how Justice League of America #1 is selling, though unsurprisingly it’s the California and the American flag covers that are the most in demand at our shop. Mostly I seem to be getting the incredulous “wait, they really did 53 covers on this thing?” response from customers, and who can blame them, really?

I did sell one of those complete factory packs of all 53 variants to a customer, and the retail price on those packs is like a $60 savings over buying each cover individually. In fact, when I was figuring out our wholesale costs on these things, it turns out the per-unit cost difference between buying Justice League of America #1s individually and getting them as part of that complete pack is…52 cents. DC’s really carrying that “New 52” thing to the extreme.

Okay, it’s just a coincidence, based on our particular discount levels, but that was a good way to encourage retailers to carry all the covers by offering them at such a significant discount in that complete package. In fact, it was such a discount that I triple-checked the numbers to make sure I wasn’t making some kind of terrible mistake. (Yeah, yeah, “aside from ordering Justice League of America #1,” I know, wiseguys.)

Well, we’ll see if I have any specific requests or any odd trends of demand in the sale of this comic over the next week or so. Will everyone want that New Jersey variant? Will no one please buy the lonely, lonely Rhode Island variant? …I guess I’ll find out soon enough.


One of the things I’ve been sort of half-following over the years is what kind of language is becoming more acceptable in your more-or-less general audiences comic book. Having a character exclaim “Jesus Christ!” in your Green Lantern comic, as Kyle Rayner does in Green Lantern: New Guardians #17 (explicitly as an expression of shock, and not as someone using that as a proper name specifically to refer to Jesus as He pops up during a battle with, I don’t know, Goldface, though that would be pretty shocking in its own right) is probably not the sort of thing that would have flown under the purview of even the mostly-toothless Comics Code Authority as of a few years back. This isn’t the first example of this sort of religiously-themed exclamation I’ve noticed of late, and I don’t mention it out of some sense of prudery, but rather out of interest in what language is permissible and what companies believe their perceived audiences to be.

I think the first place I noticed language a little stronger beyond the usual “hells” and “damns” in your typical superhero book was during the Giffen/DeMatteis era Justice League, in which Guy Gardner says that he’s “pissed off.” (Clark Kent also dropped a “pissed off” in Action #838 back in 2006, which I’ve noted briefly on the site in the past, and I still don’t buy it as something he’d say.)

And of course, there’s this.

(Before you bring it up…I don’t consider the thing in All-Star Batman — you know what I’m talking about — to be part of the trend, as All-Star Batman was more of a special project than an example of a typical monthly superhero comic. God knows it wasn’t monthly.)

Speaking of hells and damns:


Well, this comic straight up gives you “fucking” on page one, a word you likely won’t be seeing in the ongoing DC Universe “New 52” Constantine series that will be attempting to fill that Hellblazer-shaped hole on the stands.

It’s been a good run, Hellblazer, and I’m sorry to see you go. I bought your first issue off the rack back in the late ’80s, and I stayed with you all the way to the end. I’m still not sure how I feel about the wrap-up to your Vertigo run…I may need to go back and reread your last year or so and see how it all holds together…but I think it holds true to the character we’ve all known and followed for all these years.

Okay, enough talking directly to the comic book. It’s somewhat satisfying to have a complete set of Hellblazer, terrifying as it is to realize I read each issue, month by month, for its entire run. And I really don’t mind the existence of the DC Universe Constantine series…I’ve been enjoying the character’s involvement in the surprisingly entertaining Justice League Dark, and the announcement of Jeff Lemire joining Constantine as writer has only increased my interest. And after 300 issues of the Vertigo run and all that entails, I don’t mind a different direction for a while. It seems unlikely we’ll get 300 issues of Constantine, but I suspect I’ll enjoy it while it exists.

Also this week, we had Classic Popeye #7:


I’m sorry for all the swearing in this post, Popeye. I know you swore in your comics, too, but at least you had the class to use &@$*%! unlike poor ol’ classless me.

The stick and the beehive.

filed under Categories retailing 9 Comments

So the next trick here in ordering from Previews this month is DC’s “WTF Certified” books, which, as previously noted in my last End of Civilization, and as more accurately explained here, involves fold-out covers on each of their superhero books that reveal some kind of shocking event.

Will this bump up sales across the board? Maybe slightly…every time there’s some kind of event or gimmick like this, there are always a few customers who decide they need one of each. During the last “Zero Month” thing, I had a few folks picking up one of each, so it’s likely it’ll happen again. It’s not enough to drastically change sales on anything…it’s not suddenly going to make, say, Sword of Sorcery our #1 book, but it’s usually good for moving a few extra numbers on some of the titles.

The actual gimmick in this case is the “shocking” event revealed by the fold-out cover, and as a marketing tool goes…well, it’s not as if anyone has to buy the comic, take it home, and then discover the startling secret that waits within. People can just zip along the racks, peeking inside each comic and seeing what’s going on, which will probably annoy me come April when the books are out, but it’s not really the kind of thing where I feel comfortable saying “hey, stop looking at those covers,” because frankly that just sounds ridiculous. (Now, if they just park there and read the comics cover to cover, then the kickin’ boots come out, because that’s just not cool.)

The real problem is which “shocking event” is going to be the one that’s going to be the real game-changer for the title involved (or, rather, apparent game-changer, because you’ve read superhero comics before, you know how this works) and will get all the attention and rack up lots of extra sales. Or lots of theoretical extra sales, because there’s no way to predict which one will be the one and everyone will be caught by surprise and not have enough and will have to wait for the eventual second and third printings which won’t sell to expectations because the speculators who were driving the initial demand wanted the first printings to sell on the eBay even though technically the later printings will likely be more “scarce” than the first and thus seemingly should be more collectible and oh hey a run-on sentence how ’bout that.

That’s the Previews conundrum of the month. Well, that, and wondering if the fact that I’m not ordering any of the Hello Kitty KISS vinyl toys for the shop makes me a fascist censor oppressing both Gene Simmons and the creators of Hello Kitty. I’m sure those sharp legal minds and political analysts on comic book message boards will let me know.

Speaking of which, going back to that Superman comic…I like that one comic shop’s idea of donating its profits from the comic to the appropriate charities. (I also like their response to people criticizing their decision.) I think we may do the same…since, like I said, we will still get a very small handful of copies for folks who have it on preorder, that will be a nice way to balance things out. People who have to have the comic will get it, and the money goes to a good cause. Not a lot of money, because I’m still not going to put that issue on the shelf, but it’s better than nothing.

And in conclusion, this whole situation sucks, and I’m just trying to deal with it the best way I can, in a way I can live with. Those of you who have given me your support, including many of our customers, I appreciate it. Even the one fellow who wrote in and told me why he wasn’t going to read my site any more, because of my particular stance…he was polite about it, and, despite disagreeing with his viewpoint, I appreciated that as well, even if it’s too bad that I’m going to lose him as a reader. The drive-by sniping in the comments, I’m less thrilled with, but that tends to say more about the sniper than the snipee, and, well, That’s The Internet.

If nothing else, hopefully the message has been sent to DC why folks may object to having that certain writer on that specific character. Not that it seems to matter, but at least we said something.

That Superman comic.

filed under Categories retailing

In response to some inquiries I’ve had on the matter, and inspired by our friends over at Zeus Comics, after talking it over with the owner we have decided that we will not be stocking the print edition of that Orson Scott Card Superman comic at the shop (beyond the couple of copies for customers who have preexisting, ongoing comic savers for Superman items).

A few years ago I had the privilege of being part of pal Dorian‘s groom’s party, during that brief period of time marriages for gay couples were permitted in California. I stood up with him at the front of church, stood by as he and Peter read their vows, and it was as beautiful and fine a wedding as I’d ever been in. And those two guys are as devoted a couple as I’ve ever seen. They are my friends, and I am not going to support someone like Card, who is directly trying to take away marriage rights from my friends or anyone else.

I know, I know…we carried the Ender’s Game comics. We’ve carried other comics by creators with reprehensible positions (though mostly expressed via Internet hot air, rather than being on a board, like Card, to try to enforce those positions on people). But this particular Superman comic is the one where the line is being drawn, where a message is hopefully being sent that we don’t want to support someone who is on the wrong side of history, on the wrong side of progress, and, when you get right down to it, on the wrong side of basic human decency.

I don’t know if it will do any good. DC’s already released a statement backing Card, and I’m sure some beancounters over there are breathlessly anticipating big controversy-fueled sales. But they won’t get them from us.

Pal Dave pretty much sums it up.

Also, comments are off on this post. Apologies to my regular readers and commenters, whose welcome participation on my site I have always appreciated, but I’ve seen some of the troglodytes who’ve been leaving comments elsewhere on this topic…the kind of comments that try to argue “wanting to take away rights” and “wanting to gain and keep rights” are somehow morally equivalent…and I don’t need any drive-by jerks landing here to put in their two cents, or, rather, their nonsense.

Don’t worry, there’s more retailin’ talk after the pog talk.

filed under Categories blogging about blogging is a sin, pogs, retailing 5 Comments

A small reminder: I’m about to wind down the daily posting over at pogressiveruin.com, the Internet’s #1 source for watching a middle-aged man slowly drive himself crazy wallowing in some fad from a couple decades ago. I don’t know if we’ve learned anything, but one thing’s for sure: we certainly got to see a lot of large scans of pogs.

Anyway, I originally intended to go into that site with a finish line in mind, and that finish line was always meant to be six months after I started. I figure that’s probably enough. It’s not grinding to a complete halt…I’d like to keep the option open for featuring any more future oddball cap discoveries from this collection, so there will probably still be a new entry every now and again. But, as of February 15th, the daily posts there are done.

If you followed that site, I appreciate it! Also…why? Are you nuts?

In other news: it’s time for me to start going through Previews for actual business-related reasons instead of End of Civilization reasons, and put together the monthly comics order. So basically, take this post and multiply it by several thousand items. Not every comic requires that much hemming and / or hawing over the numbers, of course. I have sales histories for many titles, and I can easily base orders on those, noting any increases or decreases and adjusting accordingly

And then of course there are the comics that never change sales levels, ever, no matter what the publisher does, what gimmicks they try, etc. For example, sales on one particular long-running-through-a-variety-of-publishers property have been pretty much unchanged for some time now. Don’t go up, don’t go down, don’t do nothin’ but sell the same number of copies every month. But when a second series featuring this same property was solicited, I thought the variety of different covers, plus the fact that it’s a new first issue of this once very popular character, might encourage additional pick-ups. And, when the comic came out…hey, we sold more copies of a comic based on this specific property than we normally have of late! …Then I realized that one of our regular customers who usually bought the other series bought one copy each of most of the variants of this new #1, so while we technically did increase sales of individual copies, we didn’t increase the number of actual customers for it. So while it was a good thing for me to bump up orders like I did, it didn’t actually bump up readership, but that’s okay. Not everything works like I planned…and I did sell more comics, so I guess I shouldn’t complain.

History (well, really recent history, as the story in the previous paragraph wasn’t from that long ago) is sort of repeating itself this week, with the release of this new Ghostbusters comic from IDW. IDW’s previous Ghostbusters comics started off…okay, saleswise, but have slowed down a bit for us. I’m taking a bit of a chance on this new series, having bumped orders up a wee bit over what I normally sell on Ghostbusters, since I think the comic looks like fun, the covers stand out, and my plan was (which I in fact implemented last night as I was setting up the racks) to display each cover separately, rather than shoving them all together into a single shelf space, which should garner a little extra attention. I may just sell more of the first issue, and maybe we’ll be back to regular Ghostbusters sales levels with the second, but there would be no chance of increasing sales on #2 if I don’t have the #1s for people to try out right now.

Maybe it’s good money after bad, I don’t know, but it doesn’t hurt to give it a try. Ghostbusters is a known property that people generally like, and with a bit of sales strategy combined with a comic that looks a little more appealing than the previous GB attempts from IDW, maybe I’ll sell a few more copies. Worth a shot.

Now if they could somehow bring back the Slimer solo title, then IDW would be cookin’ with gas!

That Neil Diamond / Swamp Thing duet is my favorite.

filed under Categories retailing 7 Comments

So the worst thing about that $7.99 Young Romance one-shot DC put out last week was trying to decide, back in November or December or whenever, how many I wanted to order for the shop. As most of you know, comic shops have to place their comic orders about two months or so ahead of time, and for some publishers (particularly the “big” publishers, like DC, Marvel, Image, etc.) we get to do final tweaking on those orders three weeks or so before they actually ship, just in case there are any last minute reasons to change ’em, like any sort of sudden decline/increase in interest in the title at the shop that wasn’t evident when the original orders were placed.

Now, this Young Romance thing. It costs $7.99, which is a lot to ask of a comic fan, frankly. That pushed my order estimates down. The cover features Superman and Wonder Woman in midst of a super-smooch: given recent interest in the Supes/Wondy romance (and people are interested and talking about it, at least at the shop, which is in contrast, I realize, to the online rending of garments over this development), that pushed numbers up. It’s an anthology: numbers down. Batman/Catwoman story and a Nightwing story: numbers up. Apollo/Midnighter story: sadly, while I’m glad this particular relationship wasn’t forgotten for this book, it was no influence on orders – the Authority ship has sailed, it seems*, and overall the novelty of mixing former Wildstorm characters into what remains of the DC Universe no longer appears to be a sales factor of any sort.

In short, trying to order stuff like this is annoying. On a lot of titles, I have sales histories to help me judge. Even on holiday specials, I have reports, but sales on these can vary very widely, and for no real good reason. And so, I placed my order, basing my best guess on “how many expensive anthology comics can I usually sell” and “will the Superman/Wonder Woman cover sell the book?” and “let me roll some of these D&D dice and see what numbers come up.” And when it came time for the final order adjustments a few weeks later, I saw no reason to fiddle with my ordering decision on this book.

END RESULT: I sold nearly all the copies I ordered, save for two or three, by Sunday. And since the majority of a new comic’s sales are generally in the first week they’re on the rack, I am going to toot my own horn and consider that a success. At least more of a success than a first-day sell-out followed by a string of phone calls inquiring after it, or having every copy I ordered still on the shelf right now.

Please note: I said “generally,” which now gives me pause to wonder “am I going to have to place an immediate reorder” and “how many more copies can I reasonably expect to sell over the next few weeks?” and “boy, people are sure complaining about this comic online…should I order extra copies to meet the demand that will generate?**”

And of course, most importantly, “how many copies will I blow off the shelves once people find out this is one of the Valentine’s Day cards included in this comic?”


“Hello, Diamond Comics! Please send me 5,000 more copies of Young Romance, please! Thank you very much!”
 
 

* Though I wonder if a New 52 relaunch of Authority would do well…but I fear it would probably be Justice League: Authority which would sort of desperately miss the point.

** See also Injustice: Gods Among Us #1, which is suddenly receiving a lot of demand two weeks after its release.

I figured Sluggo just sprang fully formed from the forehead of Zeus.

filed under Categories retailing, sir-links-a-lot, sluggo, swamp thing 7 Comments

So Paul wrote in and asked if I had any comment on this week’s delayed arrival of Scarlet #6 from Marvel’s Icon imprint. And I said, “oh, was it late?” and I checked our cycle sheets at the store, and BEHOLD:

#1 – 7/8/10
#2 – 9/1/10
#3 – 11/4/10
#4 – 1/19/10
#5 – 3/28/11
#6 – 2/6/13

Wow, nearly two years between the last two issues. Not quite Ultimate Hulk Vs. Wolverine level, but pretty close. I probably just didn’t notice it because, unlike that Hulk/Wolverine thing, I didn’t have people asking me every day when it was coming out. Or any day, for that matter. Is anything really late if nobody’s waiting for it? …Ooh, okay, that’s a bit harsh. I’m sorry. But not too sorry, because I have to sell these things, and a two-year gap between issues is kind of bullshit, and certainly no way to keep a readership.

And of course there’s the other end of the spectrum, in which we got three issues of The Avengers over the last three weeks, which is also ridiculous. Or two issues of Superior Spider-Man over the last two weeks. Or seven issues of All-New X-Men since mid-November. I’d like to see comics released on a rational, responsible schedule, one where retailers and customers can plan out their spending, and one where the market isn’t flooded so quickly with consecutive issues of a series to the point of discouraging readership, but I suspect I’ll see “Steve Ditko Sings The Hits – Live On-Stage Revue” before that ever happens.

Mmm. Okay, now I’m angry. WHY MUST YOU POKE THE BULL, PAUL?

Let us go on to happier things:

  • I am getting comments and multiple emails from folks telling me that the current Nancy comic strips are retelling the origin of Sluggo. Read ’em yourself, starting here. …To think I’d ever see the word “reboot” in a Nancy strip, that wasn’t about, say, Sluggo putting on two pairs of boots.

  • Big Rich Handley, creator of the Roots of the Swamp Thing website, recently interviewed former Swampy artist Steve Bissette and former Thingy writer Nancy Collins. Good readin’ all around…go check those out.

  • This is interesting…John MacLeod, one of the contributors to this issue of Ultra Klutz I discussed a while back, popped up in the comments to that post with a couple of details about his contribution to the comic. And it turns out you can read his Dishman comics online (along with his commentary)…and be sure to take a look at his more recent project, Space Kid.

My two cents’ worth, times two.

filed under Categories blogging about blogging is a sin, cartoons, pal plugging, retailing 3 Comments

So I had a fellow bring by a couple of comics he wanted to sell…an issue of Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (1960s series) and a copy of Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, both of which had these taped to the front covers:


As it turns out, these comics were stored in such a way that the tape essentially dried out, and with only minimal effort these additions came right off, leaving behind only minor discoloration where the tape had once adhered to the paper. And while I offered the customer many times that long ago asking price of two cents apiece, it still wasn’t a whole lot, since the comics otherwise were in what we like to call “previously well-loved condition,” and the customer opted to hang onto them. He did thank me for taking those tags off the covers, and now, here they are, for you to enjoy.

Also, please don’t tape things directly to your comics. Unless you’re going to bring them to me and I can show them on my site and say “look what this person did to his or her comic…can you believe it?”

• • •

In my End of Civilization post from a few days ago, I noted the existence of the Batman and Robin action figures done in the style of Aardman Animation and how I was baffled that such a thing would even exist. Now…well, it is sort of amazing that such a thing is in the world, these Bat-Aardman figures, but I honestly hadn’t realized there are actual animated shorts by Aardman featuring these characters. A quick Googling reveals that this is hardly news to anyone except me, since I 1) cancelled my cable long ago and thus haven’t seen this DC Nation thing, 2) don’t read comic websites aside from my own, because I’m so amazing and perhaps somewhat self-aggrandizing, and 3) don’t really have a third thing. In short, that these animated shorts passed me by is just One of Those Things, I Guess, and since I do enjoy Aardman’s output, I should track ’em down someday.

But honestly:


…this is a thing that is real. Just look at it. …Look at it.

• • •

Normally, I’d just delete spam comments, but this is a comment in French extolling the virtues of hentai, so I just left it after editing out the website address because it made me laugh. YOU WIN, SPAMMERS.

• • •

So I discovered (or, given my usual track record for such things, “found out long after everyone else” — see earlier this post) that our funnybook distributor Diamond Comics apparently has a Twitter account.

Huh. Well. …I mean, I’d happily run that account for them, for, you know, the occasional drop shipment of some coin of the realm, but, well, there might be a conflict of interest there for me.

• • •

In other news, pal and fellow Bureau Chief Euge, AKA ADAM WARROCK, will be performing at our shop in a couple of weeks! This will soon increase the number of Internet pals I’ve met and touched in person by one! PREPARE TO BE TOUCHED, EUGE.