retailing

So one of the great challenges in the world of funnybook retail is trying to figure out how the comics you are ordering right now are going to actually sell when they come out two or three months from now. Now, if you’ve been keeping track, you should have months, if not years, of sales data available to you at your shop, not to mention your general “feel” for customer interest and reactions, to help gauge how any particular comic is going to sell. On top of this, Marvel, DC, and other publishers allow retailers to adjust their initial order numbers on items a couple of weeks prior to their release.

Even so, there’s a bit of guesswork involved, particularly when it comes to new title launches and relaunches and, especially of late, line-wide company reboots. DC’s “New 52” relaunch was a bit worrisome, given the number of new-ish properties with no reliable or recent sales data, but DC offering retailer returns on about two-thirds of the titles afforded us the ability to err on the side of caution. And, as it turned out, we needn’t have worried, as the media coverage and customer interest and the sheer novelty of it all ensured sell-outs on just about everything.

The Marvel NOW! relaunches, which, unlike their DC counterparts, are being rolled out over several months, which perhaps cost them the “feeding frenzy” sales advantage of ALL NEW #1S ALL THE TIME ON THE SHELF RIGHT NOW!!! that gave the New 52 that solid kick in the pants. Of course, Marvel’s making up for it by putting out some of these new titles freakin’ weekly, but I’ve complained about that already. The ordering on these was a little tricky as well, combining sales histories with the possible sales bump from having a new #1, as well as considering creator involved, et cetera et cetera. Most times I ordered dead on (like for the Avengers or All-New X-Men), some titles didn’t do quite as well as I hoped (like Avengers Arena), and some titles didn’t change their sales levels at all (lookin’ at you, Iron Man).

And then there are the titles where I ordered crazy numbers, hoping 1) customer interest would lead to high sales at least on the first issue, and 2) premium sales on the assorted “limited” variant covers would help subsidize the higher order numbers. In this case, I’m specifically thinking of Superior Spider-Man, where, after selling all the variant covers at certain price levels, I only had to sell a relative handful of the regular cover to break even…and in fact, at this point I’ve sold enough of this comic that I could throw away the copies I have left and still show a significant profit (and much more profit than I would have made if I’d just ordered the exact number I’d actually sold). There are a couple of other forthcoming titles we’re trying this same sales strategy on, with Uncanny X-Men likely to follow suit, and Guardians of the Galaxy which, um, well, we’ll see how that one goes.

And then there’s basing your orders on a dream.

…

Perhaps I should explain that a bit.

So a few months ago, IDW’s My Little Pony comic turned up in the order forms, with multiple covers and limited edition variants and all that hoohar. We ordered a certain number…high for what was nominally a “kids” comic, but high enough to account for the cross-market interest in the property. And that’s where we let the number sit.

It had been at the back of my mind that maybe the number we ordered wasn’t enough, but I had other store stuff to worry about, and I didn’t particularly dwell on it or anything.

And then one night I had a dream. And in this dream, I was at the shop, looking at the sales of My Little Pony #1, and how quickly it had sold out, and I was lamenting how I didn’t raise the orders when I had the chance, the stupid thing had multiple covers on it, didn’t I realize people were going to want to buy full sets of all the covers? Plus, the Bronies. THINK OF THE BRONIES.

I awoke from this horrible nightmare, immediately sitting straight up and gasping for breath, heart racing, just like people never do when waking from nightmares except in movies, but that dream brought my concerns about the My Little Pony orders to the forefront of my thoughts. Yeah, there are multiple covers, and this is just the thing where the fans would buy one of each cover, and besides, this pony thing’s huge, it may be worth the risk to order crazy numbers on this thing. And, after talking it over with folks at the shop, and putting out feelers for customer interest, when it came time to do the couple-o-weeks-prior-to-release adjustments, crazy numbers were placed, nearly quadrupling our original order.

I have to admit, when the My Little Pony #1 finally showed up at the shop, I looked at the towering stack I pulled out of the shipping carton and thought “what have I done?” But I racked the things, separating out each cover to hold its own slot, and hoped for the best.

And I am happy to report, after pulling the #1 for back issues after its new shelf sales cycle (usually a month, though I left MLP #1 on the rack for a couple of extra weeks), all I had left from my initial triple-digit order was about a half-dozen copies. Heeding my dream warning paid off!

Okay, basing orders on dreams is likely not a solid business practice, but in this case it certainly made me reconsider something I’d otherwise put on the backburner. Would I have been as intent on increasing orders if I hadn’t had that dream-experience of being so disappointed in not getting enough copies in the shop? Maybe, maybe not…probably having the actual order-adjustment right in front of me may have triggered something. But in this case, if I may quote Adam West as Bruce Wayne: “Of what use is a dream, if not a blueprint for courageous action?”

So there you go…your pal Mike had a dream about My Little Ponies. That’s probably better than my usual work dreams about having to move comic boxes from our old store into our new store (something I did back in 1997), or dreaming about having to move our entire current store into our old, old, circa 1990 location (about 1/8th the size of where we’re at now), but it’s still a My Little Pony dream, though I’m sure none of you will make fun of me for it.

So New Avengers #2 is out this week:

…and apparently since it was decided the best way to encourage sales on a brand new series, aside from cranking out issue after issue on a biweekly or even weekly basis, was to make sure the logo is as small and unreadable as possible, I’m going to have to make a shelf sign that presents the “NEW AVENGERS” name at a legible size so that it won’t get lost among all the other comics on the shelves.

I guess the “A” alone should be clue enough that this is an Avengers title, with the assumption being that Avengers fans will buy anything that says “Avengers” on it, even though in reality that isn’t the case and people are picky about which Avengers title they’ll read. But honestly, the new New Avengers logo hasn’t been around long enough to be instantly recognizable regardless of size; the comic is going to be on a wall with a whole lot of other comics and running that small a logo is going to make it disappear; also, that’s dumb and I hate it, just to sum things up on a reasonable note. But regardless, that seems like an odd choice to make there. I’m sure, of course, that there is a dissenting opinion on this matter, that this cover is great and a real attention-grabber, but it seems to me this isn’t the way to promote sales, particularly in a market built upon relaunch after relaunch and readers are just looking for reasons to not follow yet another title. Accidentally missing issue #2 of something and realizing they can live without that particular comic is certainly reason enough.

Another comic for which I had to throw up a “THIS IS THE TITLE OF THE COMIC THAT’S RACKED RIGHT NEAR THIS SIGN ON THE SHELF” sign was Uncanny Avengers #2, which looks like it’d be easy to spot, right? Well, I don’t know if it’s because of some kind of neutralizing effect that all those red concentric lines had, clouding minds or somehow merging into the rack’s scenery, but boy did I have to point out that particular comic to people who looked on the shelves specifically for that issue and couldn’t spot it.

I realize I’m probably being a bit hard on these funnybooks. A whole slew of new releases hit the shelves each week, every week, month after month, year after year, and cover design home runs aren’t going to be hit every time. After all, not every comic can be as eyegrabbing as this.

So that “Death of Spider-Man” comic came out last week, and I don’t really have anything much to add to all the hoohar beyond what I wrote the last time something like this happened, so there you go. Also, I’ll link to this again because it’s never not true.

But, me being me, of course I’m still going to make another comment or two about this anyway. Alas, I was out of the media loop for a few days, so I had, and still have, no idea about what tone any of the real-world news outlets took with this latest space-filling fluff piece. I was told our local paper ran a story, the day after New Comics Day, so we did get a number of folks coming in looking for Amazing Spider-Man #700 following that …and, surprisingly, didn’t hear a whole lot of objection to the $7.99 cover price. At least, from the people actually buying the comic…a few folks who weren’t buying the comic did express a bit of sticker shock.

And there was some noise being made online, and pretty much nowhere else, about Avenging Spider-Man #15.1, out the same day and bridging the gap between #700 and the forthcoming Superior Spider-Man #1, regarding how nobody ordered enough and surely this was going to be a hot sellout. …Well, I ordered a very slight smidgen more than I normally do on this series (which started strong, but is fading fast), and I didn’t see a whole lot more interest in the comic than normal. Sold a couple extra copies, but I haven’t had anyone specifically asking for it. I even tried to point it out to people who were buying #700, and was generally met with “…eh.”

Perhaps we’ll see demand for #15.1 increase once Superior Spider-Man #1 is released, and it’s realized there’s a missing part of the story, there, but I don’t know. One, I suspect the majority of people buying #700 are primarily interested in the “death” event, and not that interested in following the ongoing Spider-Universe saga. Two, in the “making an ass out of U and ME…mostly ME” department, I was hoping interest, and sales, would be generated on Superior Spider-Man #1 by the mystery element…”WHO IS THE SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN?” and we’d have several months of clues and adventure and whatnot and then finally get the reveal in issue #12 where we find out it’s, I don’t know, Jack O’Lantern or Walter West or hey, maybe another clone or something. But anyway, I figured at least for the first issue there would be a lot of curiosity about this new Spider-Man, even if sales dropped off right away with #2. Since we know what the set-up is right off the bat, that mystery factor is gone. There is still that curiosity factor about how the story is going to play out, but that probably isn’t as strong a sales hook as the “WHO IS THIS GUY?” tack. I mean, c’mon, it worked for this comic!

I realize the argument can be made that basing a series around the mystery of the identity of the main character is too gimmicky, but seeing as how the whole thing is gimmicky, well…. Not that there’s anything wrong with a good gimmick, and it seems to have the people who are actually interested in reading the story talking about it, so I guess we’ll see what happens. Also, I’m wondering what they’re going to do a year or so from now when they bring back the original Spider-Man, and how they’ll retool Superior Spider-Man to keep that series around, too.

So that’s me not really having anything much to add to all the hoohar. Thank goodness I didn’t have a lot to say.

So I just started working on the Diamond order this month, where I will be ordering a number of these items non-ironically, what ridiculous hoops I have to jump through to get the variant covers, which of these Image #1s will actually sell more than a couple of copies, and of course how many hundreds of Swamp Things I’ll need for our shelves.

The craziest thing this time around is that Justice League of America #1, with its 53 variant covers (American flag, all fifty states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia). Folks have been buzzing about this since it was announced, and by buzzing I mean “griping and / or mocking,” but now I have to decide how to order the darned thing. Sure, get a bunch for our state of California, obviously, and I’m already taking some special requests for specific states. I did joke on the Twitter that I wondered if I only ordered, say, the Wyoming cover, what the customers would think, other than “Mike’s lost his mind again,” which, frankly, they probably think anyway. But if it somehow turns out there’s one cover that ends up being the “hot” one for some dumb reason, like maybe they screwed up the flag on the cover somehow and now everyone wants it as a rare “error” collectible even though every copy of that specific cover will be exactly the same (and sort of happened before when they messed up Mexico’s flag on this Superman annual)…well, what I can do about that. “No, sorry, ma’am, the New Hampshire flag cover with the boat pointing in the wrong direction is sold out. No, I didn’t order enough. I’m sorry, I didn’t expect so much demand for the New Hampshire variant here in California. Yes, ma’am, I’m stupid.”

Anyway, personally I’m sort of tempted to get for myself the cover with the Virginia flag, since I lived there for a while as a child, and the flag is pretty cool, you’d have to admit. And I’d totally get the Louisiana flag cover if they replaced, like, Catwoman on the cover with Swamp Thing. But I think I’ll have to go with the California flag, clearly the most awesome state flag of them all, what with having a bear on it. Yeah, that’s right, I said it. Our flag rules. Eat it, Vermont!

Elsewhere in the order form I have to decide how badly Marvel pumping out their books on a biweekly or even weekly basis is going to hurt their sales with frustrated fans. This week we had Cable and the X-Force #1 and Avengers Arena #1, and the second issues for both will be next week. Avengers #1, out last week, will have a new issue next week. We’ve already had four issues of Iron Man since early November, and three issues of All New X-Men since mid-November, with #4 due next week. Plus there are the last issues of a couple of the previous Avengers series which sort of log-jammed in there over the previous few weeks. This isn’t so much “giving the fans more of what they want!” as just plain ol’ rack-crowding. I’ve griped about this before…I understand the seeming advantages of it (cannibalize sales from other publishers, more of your product on the shelves, don’t give readers a chance to decide if they want to keep following the title), but there are disadvantages as well (cannibalizing sales from yourself, discouraging new readers with the expense). Much in the same way restarting a title has its plus of being a good jumping on point, and the minus of…well, you know.

And then there’s Guardians of the Galaxy #0.1 (and don’t get me started on that issue number). This is the next Marvel property to get a film adaptation, but is there enough buzz around that movie yet to drive sales on this comic? I mean, the GotG stuff of late has sold…okay, but not like best-sellers or anything. These are pretty much the definition of B-listers, which isn’t a bad thing, of course, but trying to decide to order this as a typical second-string book like I probably should, or ordering it with an eye on interest generated by a movie, which I probably shouldn’t since the movie is still at least a year off…makes it a tad more complicated than it needs to be.

It’d be a lot simpler if they’d dump the rest of those Guardians and just do a straight-up Rocket Raccoon comic. You know that character is going to be the focus of all the movie advertising, and hell, who doesn’t love space raccoons with ray guns? Nobody, that’s who.

There are some comics I see all the time…I’ve mentioned how often early Spawns show up in piles of books people are trying to offload on us (why, just yesterday I turned down a bunch of those Spawns, most of which were in lousy condition anyway). And not just Spawn…pretty much the same variety of overprinted ’80s and ’90s comics turn up on such a regular basis that I can almost turn down offered collections just at a glance. I never actually do that, because perhaps hidden among the foil-embossed Avengers and the hologram-cover Web of Spider-Mans and the Turok Dinosaur Hunters might be, you know, a comic or two I might actually have use for. In fact, in that collection with the Spawns, nearly all the other comics were in heavily-worn, unsellable condition, and the ones that weren’t were comics for which we had excess stock already…but I found a nice copy of the deluxe Robin #1, which isn’t the most expensive comic in the world, but they do sell and I can use ’em.

But, yeah, like I said, I do see a lot of the same comics turn up, but those ’80s and ’90s comics I expect to see, since most of them are as common as really common things. However, it’s not often that we get duplications on 60-year-old Tarzan comics…particularly extra-sized, squarebound Jungle Annuals that are prone to spine-splitting and losing pages and otherwise going to pieces through mishandling over the decades. I thought that was neat enough to be worth noting.

Also, a few weeks back we picked up a copy of Creepy Things #6 (Charlton Comics, 1976) in a collection, followed by a copy of the 1977 Modern Comics reprint of that same issue in another collection a day or two later. Is it COINCIDENCE, or something more…MYSTERI — no, it’s coincidence.