retailing

First off, let me extend my condolences to my blogging pal Johanna on the loss of her husband, K.C. Carlson. K.C. had been an editor on Legion of Super-Heroes, and on the comics-retailer specific publication, the appropriately-named Comics Retailer. I’m very sorry, Johanna, and I hope you’re doing as well as you’re able.

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Okay, I apologize for the delay in this entry, but we’ll wrap up our look at the Bud Plant October 1985 catalog and the ordering tips for comic shops detailed within. Here’s part one and part two…and speaking of part two, I have a few notes from my former boss Ralph in regards to a couple of entries from last time.

Surprisingly, he tells me that the P. Craig Russell opera comics sold surprisingly well for him. He says it was likely the excellent art on these books that boosted sales, but I’m holding out for a secret conclave of opera singers living in our area. Whatever the reason, they did do well, and, y’know, good! These are good comics.

In regards to Jon Sable Freelance and American Flagg!, there wasn’t an immediate drop-off on sales, according to my former boss, as the series changed hands or, um, declined in perceived quality. He said there was just a general and natural decline as the series ran on, with no new readers coming on board as things progressed.

And as to comics’ eternal question, “which sold better, Death Rattle or Tales of Terror/Twisted Tales, the answer is…well, kind of a push, really. Neither one really stood out versus the other.

Now, onto the last batch of books from this tip sheet (this time, with some info gathered from Ralph in advance):

Yes, absolutely Frank Miller coming back on Daredevil boosted sales. His initial run was highly regarded, and this return has since become a classic in its own right. Even with the new Disney+ series taking its name from this storyline.

Contrary to this column, Ralph informs me that Firestar, at least for him, didn’t sell worth beans. BEANS, I say. I do recall rarely having to restock this book in the back issue bins. I don’t even her eventual inclusion in the Avengers title did anything to perk up sales. We’re just not a Firestar town, I guess. Maybe if she sang opera….

I mean, yeah, sure, it’s a special issue of Amazing Spider-Man, it’s gonna sell. Still sells even now on the occasion I get one in a collection here at the shop. To this day, I couldn’t tell you who Hobgoblin is or what his deal was — yes, I know that’s only a Wiki link away if I really wanted to know — but that orange weirdo still has sales power even now.

While Secret Wars II wasn’t quite as popular as the original, it still sold awfully well, and interest in the tie-ins wa strong. And this may be among the best of them, an ad-free Avengers story drawn by John Buscema? Sure, let me at it! And it’s still a good seller today…had one in the shop briefly last week before being snapped up.

Ralph tells me that G.I. Joe was largely dead at his shop. Probably one of those books that sold better on newsstands, as folks going into comic shops turned their noses up at those “cartoon comics.”

By “a few issues yet,” they mean “’til #319, which is Byrne’s last issue after quitting the book over a story they didn’t want to run until they ran it in Marvel Fanfare.” Anyway, sales were strong on Byrne’s run, and when Al Milgrom took over the story/art chores with #320, my former boss sez sales didn’t drop as much as one might have thought. Byrne’s arrival on the book sorta rejuvenated interest in the character. I know the story is that Peter David got the gig writing the book shortly after this, as “nobody else wanted it,” but at least in our neck of the woods Hulk was doing okay.

Yeah, I got lazy and just lumped all of these together. For Punisher, this is the Grant/Zeck/Beatty mini-series, which, with issue #5, Zeck is replaced on pencils by Mike Vosburg, and while Grant is still credited with the plot, the script is by Jo Duffy. I did forget to ask Ralph if that did anything to sales, but my feeling is that if you were in for four issues, you were probably going to see it out with the fifth.

Marvel Saga The Official History of the Marvel Universe I did ask about…if you’re not familiar, it’s a retelling of the history of the Marvel Universe (hence the overlong name), with panels taken from various sources, connected together with text, and I’m sure someone wanted this, but not enough to make it sell a whole lot at the old shop. I think I personally bought the first two issues, and I was all “yeah, I don’t have the patience for this.” Kind of a dud as a back issue seller, with the possible exception of the issue focused on Mary Jane Watson since it’s a tie-in to the whole wedding thing. And the Galactus issue had some brief demand at one point.

X-Factor was a big seller…at first. There was a lot of excitement for the original cast of X-Men returning as a team, but enthusiasm dropped a bit once they actually saw the book. I mean, sure, eventually, Louise and Walt Simonson took over the series and things began to look up about a year later, so there’s that.

Again, my old shop was apparently the weird one out here, as, like G.I. Joe, this was one o’them “cartoon comics” for kids and not a serious adult book like Green Lantern. Anyway, probably a big newsstand seller. Boy, I wish I had lots of copies of this comic now, though.

By “Santa Claus #1″ I presume what’s meant is Marvel Comics Special #39, adapting the 1985 Santa Claus movie starring Dudley Moore and John Lithgow. Yeah, I probably wouldn’t have ordered too high on this either. I think the few times I’ve had them in back issue bins since, they were…not big sellers.

As to Young Astronauts…yeah, like this feller here, I didn’t know what this was. A quick Googling shows this was intended to be part of Marvel’s children’s imprint Star Comics, a tie-in to a new Saturday morning cartoon. However, the Challenger space shuttle disaster kinda put everyone off the “kids exploring space!” nature of this property, and the whole thing, cartoon and comic book, was canned. That link will give you all the info you need on this, including the few pics that exist. The “good creative team” included Denny O’Neill as writer, and June Bringman on pencils, and yeah, that was good. Too bad it’s all languishing in some file drawer somewhere.

Man, all these cartoon tie-ins are being pused as “HOT!” while my former boss’s recollection is that they didn’t do well at all, due to the “kid’s book” stigma. And, I mean, it’s not like kids weren’t going to his shop…I was a kid then, and I saw other younger kids there. Just these TV comics weren’t moving, I guess. Ralph noted that he’d see a lot of newsstand editions of these books show up in collections, where, again, these sorts of books were probably selling.

Just wanted to point this out because I liked this comic. An alien stuck in Victorian England, solving mysteries to occupy his mind and not be bored into literal suicide? Sure, I’m in! Written by David Michelinie, illustrated by Bret Blevins and John Ridgway. Apparently it was collected into a trade just a few years ago, and I recommend you read this however you can find it!

One of the classic indies of all time, and it’s a shame that aside from a recent cover for another comic, no new Carrot has graced us in quite a while. I pestered my old boss about sales on Flaming Carrot Comics (use the full name, please), and he said it wasn’t a huge seller compared to, like, everything else, but as black and white indies go, it did relatively well.

Just seeing all these titles together gave me a real nostalgic flashback to this period of comics. Not that I was a big reader of any of them (I think at most I may have flipped through an Elfquest, but I have read a few Blood of Draculas). For a while there, we were doing pretty good custom in the Elfquest line of comics, both in new and back issues, including this annual. I see Elfquest is doing a new push on collections, so maybe we can get interest up in this material again. Oh, also, Elfquest‘s creators Richard and Wendy Pini dropped by the old shop a couple of times, and they were very nice.

I loved both Paradax and Strange Days…don’t think they sold very well for the shop, but boy I thought they were neat.

These were oversized (about magazine-size) reprints, featuring, of course, the always-classic EC Comics stories of the 1950s. I remember having one or two kicking around the shop when I started working there, but no real backstock on them. I’m presuming they did sell well, at least for the old job. The noted sales trouble may come from their magazine size, as by and large anything bigger than a standard comic book could be a harder sell, or at least not sell in quantities equal to their smaller, floppier brethren.

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Phew, that was a lot. And I suspect I have comments that’ll need responding, so there’s maybe one more post in this series. Thanks for reading, everything, and stay safe out there!

Okay, back to the Bud Plant October 1985 distributor catalog and its ordering tips for retailers! Part one is here, part two is being read by you right now!

First off, I spoke to my former boss Ralph about a couple of the titles discussed last time. For example, I was curious if Hex was as hot for him as it apparently was for the person writing this tips sheet. He says that the first issue sold very well for him, but it petered out pretty quickly. “It was on its way out with issue #2,” to quote him.

I also asked how 3-D comics did for him, and it was sort of how I figured…popular for a while, ’til the market got flooded with them and the novelty wore off. I remember getting asked for the 3-D back issues on a relatively regular basis over the next couple of decades I was at that shop, so there was still some demand, anyway.

Booster Gold was also discussed, and again apparently it sold very well at first, and gradually slowed down as the series wore on. As DavidG mentioned, once the mystery of his origin was revealed, folks were done apparently.

And just on a whim, I asked (even though I worked at the store at the time) if the Fish Police TV show did anything for sales of the comic. The unsurprising answer is “no.”

Now let’s get into this new batch of books:

We were still in the early years of the “Put Alan Moore in Anything to Make It Sell” era, and I definitely picked this up. Of course, I’d later learn “D.R. and Quinch” was, um, inspired by O.C. and Stiggs from National Lampoon (later made into a film by Robert Altman), but I think it became enough of its own thing to still be enjoyable.

As I recall, the reprint quality was…not great. I think the images were resized from their original British publication to fit the American comic book format, but I might be thinking of other Eagle/Quality reprints. Regardless, if you want to read D.R. and Quinch, find yourself one of the trade paperback reprints.

Also, yes, while Dredd was popular, Brian Bolland-drawn Dredd was even more so.

I’ve said before, probably here, maybe on social media, that these horror and sci-fi anthologies from PC and Eclipse were, along with the Warren mags, the real successors to E.C. Comics. I really enjoyed these series, which I inexplicably only sporadically purchases, and would enjoy a nice reprinting of the whole shebang.

Oh, man, Mr. Monster. This initial 10 issue run was great, but then proceeded to never really quite find the same traction afterwards. That serious “origin” series from Dark Horse was…okay, but I never really reread it like I did those original run. And every following attempted revival of the “funny” Mr. Monster was fine, but just not the same. (I did really like the Airboy/Mr. Monster one-shot, though.)

(Actually, it’s Night Music #4 and #5.) I mean, kudos to sticking to the bit, but I was always a little surprised they kept doing these opera books as long as they did. Like this fella says, beautiful art, and primary selling point of the books…but I still sold a few of these out of back issues every once in a while. And yes, I have had opera aficianados come and ask for these. So…there, I answered my own question. That’s why these comics lasted so long…for opera fans who like comics! THEY DO EXIST

Ah, yes, the speculation days of yore. Miracleman was sold in very large numbers early on, frustration folks who wanted to invest and flip ’em, though #1 had some printing issues as I recall leaving near mint copies harder to find. Anyway, prices don’t really start going up on these until #9 and up, with #15, the special All Violence issue, being the peak. I haven’t checked lately to see if the later Neil Gaiman issues, once hot commodities, have seen a decline in demand due to the writer’s current troubles.

Sun Runners was one of those series I was intrigued by due to a write-up in an issue of Amazing Heroes but, for some reason, I never got around to getting the actual comic, like a dummy. The issue #7 is the final issue of the run, probably thanks to me not buying it, but the title would return for a couple of short runs just a coupld of years later. I liked the look of the elephant guy.

Lloyd Llewellyn was, of course, the first ongoing title by Dan Clowes, he of The Occasional Fancy and Really Good Graphic Novel of late. These old wacky stories, more often than not inspired by Silver Age superhero comic craziness, are great. I actually bought this series at the time and it remains an old favorite.

And Love and Rockets is, of course, what it is. Nice that it’s recognized for attracting lady readers early on.

I don’t think I realized #1 and #2 were that much harder to find, I bought this graphic novel, since I only had the color issues at the time. I’d later buy a copy of #3 for the flexidisc back then, and I got #1 and #2 not long ago, just to fill that ol’ hole in the collection.

Here’s another thing I need to ask my boss…how American Flagg! did post issue #12. That first year is about as classic as classic comics get, but, no offense to other creatives who came onto the book, the less Howard Chaykin there was, the less the AF! comic was. I read the whole series, and it was mostly fine, but the series was not at its peak here.

RIPPED FROM TODAY’S HEADLINES! pretty much. Even though the original creator was still writing and drawing, I think interest was slipping from readers and him for the book. Again, gonna ask the former boss about this but I’m guessing “it was in its decline” is the answer I’ll get.

Boy, Whisper seems to be the forgotten title of the Captial Comics trifecta, with Nexus and (to a lesser extent) Badger having more of a life after that publisher’s end. Ah well, just one of those things, but don’t get me wrong, it had its run, just surprised there aren’t continuing attempts at revivals. Plus, I don’t recall any back issue sales on First Adventures, much less #1.

Death Rattle is a great name for a book, and the comic (in its various incarnations) was a pretty good horror anthology. I am…not sure how it sold, so it’s another question to put to the former boss. I know I had more back issues requests for Tales of Terror/Twisted Tales than I did for Death Rattle.

I don’t have much to say about Megaton Man except it was still pretty great even if at this point it wasn’t quite as good as the earlier issues. Once it moves to shorter-run minis and one-shots, the energy comes right back.

Now the Raphael one-shot was still in that same weird magazine-esque format as the first four issues of the regular Turtles series, which I think helped it sell really well in part of its novelty and the gereral hotness of the franchise. Michelangelo came out in the regular comic book format to which the other series had since moved. ‘ve seen a lot more of Raphael in collections since.

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Yup, I’m stopping here and will be back with Part Three on Friday! There were more tips here than I thought! Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next time.

Okay, trying to not worry about problems about to hit the comics industry, between a distributor’s ongoing collapse and tariff-caused price and supply issues, so I’m going to look back at relatively happier times. Like, the October 1985 Bud Plant retailer catalog and its ordering tips for shop owners!

As I’m sure most of you know, since I keep bringing it up, I started working in comics retail in 1988. However, even prior to that I had an interest in the goings-on behind the scenes in the industry and other people’s commentary on same, hence my early adoption of ‘zines and mags like The Comics Journal. As such, I’m always looking for more information from that period, as to what perceptions were of certain titles and publishers and such.

As always, going through these tip sheets raise questions that I want to ask my former boss Ralph, from whom I was buying comics during this period. I’ll post follow-ups next time, if necessary.

This time I’m going up through the DCs, and then I’ll do the rest of the list later in the week. Okay? Okay! Then away we go:

First, here’s the great logo for the column this issue, “The New Mutips,” which is high-larious.

The first tip here, for the Robert Williams 3-D comic from Ray Zone:

…reminds me of what a big deal the 3-D gimmick was at the time. A later entry in this list (not pictured here) notes that the market for 3-D comics is “saturated,” but apparently a wild Robert Williams 3-D comic would stand out enough to be recommended so highly here.

At my Previous Place of Employment, we had a section in the back issue bins just for 3-D comics, and it was pawed through on the regular. We even had a large stock of 3-D glasses that we gave out with each purchase of a 3-D comic. (And when that old shop shut down, did I claim all those 3-D glasses for my own self? Maaaaaybe.)

Now, Fish Police was, for a time, a very hot comic. Hot enough to eventually become a…well, short-lived TV show, but hey, how may small-press comics from the mid-1980s got on TV? …Um, aside from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Like, I’m sure TMNT goosed some executive into looking for other possible hit comic-to-other-media properties, and thus Fish Police.

Anyway, this is one of those comics I wish I’d read at the time, because it does look like it’d be right up my alley. Ah well, maybe I’ll luck into a run of it here at the shop someday.

Speaking of lucking into a run, that’s exactly what happened with Elementals, where about 90% of the series showed up in a donation to the store, and I pulled them aside to read, someday, in the far off future when I can actually find the time. It was always one of those series that intrigued me, but just never jumped on board as it was running. Ah well, at least I have (most of) them now.

It’s interesting reading here that there were delays in production and a perceived drop in quality in one of the early issues. So much so that the ordering recommendation is not based on that “lower quality” issue, but on the one before it. Now, I have read at least the first half-dozen issues of the series, and I don’t recall #4 being “off” from the others around it, but maybe I’ll take another look with this in mind.

Hoo boy, on the topic of late books, I knew Continuity had its timeliness issues even as a mere Comic-Buying Member of the General Public, and not the aloof and powerful comics retailer I am today.

As a fan, I didn’t really follow anything by them, as none of it appealed to me. The anthology book Echoes of Futurepast may have been the one title I would’ve read, due to Arthur Suydam’s involvement (I was a big “Cholly and Flytrap” kid, having read those stories by Suydam in Epic Illustrated), but I just never got around to picking it up.

I do recall that some of the Continuity books did have their followings and sold well, like the two mentioned here. Plenty of folks had them on their pull lists when I started working at the shop. The eventual Deathwatch 2000 crossover event kinda put an end to all that, I believe.

Gasp! I read DC Digest, at least occasionally at the time! I’m guessing these did better on newsstands than in comic shops, hence the reaction in the tips column here. Anyway, when my eyes were up to it, these digests were nice little collections, and many of the early ones helped catch me up on DC’s history.

Textual evidence that Hex (the post-apocalyptic sci-fi adventures of our favorite weird western cowboy) was in fact a not-unpopular book! It’s remembered as a freak occurrence today, a bizarre footnote in Jonah Hex’s history, but for a while there, people did buy it. Heck, I bought it! Still have ’em all! Of course, the series ended 10 issues later, so not enough people bought it for long enough, but for a brief period of time, the beauty of Hex graced our shelves.

Omega Men #38 would be the last issue, sadly. And this person ain’t wrong…this was a really good sci-fi superhero series. Actually, the whole series makes for a good comic, but once Todd Klein and Shawn McManus come on board with #26, it becomes something great. It’s so hard to believe this run of theirs was so short.

The first issue featured, of course, the Golden Age Superman, recently given the bum’s rush out of DC’s continuity by that self-same Crisis on Infinite Earths. But, you know, they got classic Superman artist Wayne Boring to draw this, so I’m not complaining.

I honestly don’t recall if Booster Gold was perceived as A Hot Item at the time. I know it got a little more promotion than most DC debuts (I still have my “Go for the Gold – BOOSTER GOLD” pinback button), but I feel like it’s probably more appreciated in retrospect than it was at the time. (In fact, if you want to know more about Mr. Gold, you can’t do better than this site right here.)

Pretty sure these were all unused inventory back-up stories that longer had a home after the main Atari Force series ended. Regardless, this, and the parent series, were outstanding comics and went away too soon. Even the original digest-sized comics that came packed with Specially Marked Atari 2600 Game Cartridges were fun. I would gladly have read a hundred more issues of this, but am happy with the few that we got.

Oof, harsh burn on the Seven Soldiers. In fairness, All-Star Squadron, a book devoted to the World War II adventures of super-heroes on Earth 2, floundered a bit following Crisis‘s removal of any extraneous Earths beyond the one featured in all the other DC Comics.

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Okay, I’ll wrap it up next time, along with some extra info from Ralph should he be willing to tolerate my grilling. Everyone stay safe out there, and I’ll see you on Wednesday.

So thanks for the questions/discussion topics you dropped into the comments for Monday’s entry. That’s a whole lotta comic book talk for me to start makin’ with, so I’ll likely get to it next week. Also, sorry for no post on Wednesday, the mind was willing, the body less so, and thus the surprise day off.

But today I have…lazy posting, as I pulled out the Marvel “Sales to Astonish” retailer catalog from August 1993. Amongst the solicitations and sample…”artwork” that we somehow willingly tolerated then, were several full page ads for Marvel’s offerings. A couple of them I recall were used as actual print ads or house ads with the Marvel comics themselves. Others are, well, what they are, so let’s take a look, shall we?

Flashing back to that time when everyone’s favorite ersatz Thor (after Beta Ray Bill) was about to hit the scene in his snazzy new first issue, what with the foil cover gimmick an’ all. And it actually sold really well, and people were into the character. And, to some extent, the character is still remembered fondly today, even if the back issues don’t move like they used to. It was a time when you could put out a comic like this and have it get traction, at least for a while.

What really surprised me is that during the weird (and somewhat brief) comic cards book during the initial years of the pandemic, when even the 1991 Impel Marvel set was selling for stupid money after decades of literally nobody caring, that Marvel and DC didn’t try card inserts in their comics again. I seem to recall some promo cards being given away with some comics event or ‘nother around this time, and those were popular, but there wasn’t enough of that sort of thing. Granted, the marketplace now isn’t generating the same kind of money that it was back then, so things like “trading card inserts” and “foil cover gimmicks” are an expense only dipped into on a relatively rare basis.

I will note that younger folks, those who weren’t around in the ’90s for the first wave of all this stuff, love finding comics packed with cards or special cover enhancements. They weren’t jaded by the ’90s comics market experience like your boy Old Man Mike here.

I like this ad, even with the “It’s Miller Time!” blurb across the top (referencing of course Mr. Frank “THE SPIRIT movie” Miller, the auteur behind this series). I haven’t read the mini in forever, but I remember it being pretty good. A real standout in quality given the enormous amount of…possibly not top tier product being shoveled out at the time.

You see, there’s a frame around the main body of the ad, and that extremely blown up detail of Punisher’s head is indeed Not A Pretty Picture. Anyway, terrible.

Our second Gambit appearance in these ads, from the days people pretended that they liked Gambit. (Save your emails and your TikToks, I’m only kidding, maybe.) Scan’s a little crooked, which is okay because it fits with that jumble of blurbs at the bottom. And speaking of which, that’s a nice mix of ballyhooing the physical properties of the book (“Wraparound cover!” “Gambit hologram!”) with the signicance of the comics’s contents (“Wolverine’s last stand!” “Magneto returns!”), a reminder that there were still stories happening even underneath all the gimmicks and the “kewl” artwork.

Also, the toning on that ad is weird. The white hands, head, and cards with the rest of the image dimmed is a little offputting. Plus, that top card he’s supposedly throwing almost looks like it’s behind his head. Just the way it’s drawn, I’m sure, but it still looks odd.

So when I opened my store, I had a specific idea for my new comic shelving, a 36-foot long wooden rack (built in 4-foot-wide segments), with the fronts at a slight angle and flat shelves attached with, like, 12 inch gaps between them. It looks a little something…like this:

This photo was very early on…in fact, taken the night before I officially opened my shop for business…so the line of graphic novels and other products on the very top lip of the shelf isn’t there. But you get the idea of how the shelf looks. And it’s served me well for these just about ten years now.

But what he had at my previous place of employment…boy oh boy, what we had. Initially, what my old boss Ralph had were the wire freestanding comic racks, the twenty-pocket style, plus a few wire spinner racks (two of which I now own, one for home and one for the shop). Usually we had those freestanding ones “flattened” down and hanging off of pegboard mounted on the wall. It usually worked okay, though we occasionally had to ask folks “please don’t bend the comics forward on the rack” because, y’know, we were hding the secret good comics behind the ones in the front of each slot.

But eventually, what we ended up using were these, as seen in the September 1985 Bud Plant catalog:

I forget how many of these we used for the new comics…four or five of them, I guess? And we had others elsewhere in the store that we used for graphic novels as well.

Here’s a pic of dubious resolution showing the rack in action, stuffed full of good comics and also Purgatori:

The pricing is…hoo boy:

And that was in 1985 dollars, so those shelves would cost, what, one million dollars apiece now. (I rounded up slightly.) And I don’t think I knew there were two different styles of the plexiglas shelving…we had the “lipped” kind, which is what’s pictured. Just having the plain flat ones would’ve been weird, and possibly a hazard if there were any sharp corners. I mean, I’m presuming there wasn’t.

And here’s something you don’t see every day (or maybe you do, I don’t know what you get up to in your free time):

“Here, build ’em yourself if you’re too cheap to spring on the shipping.” But actually, that’s a good option, given how most comic ships weren’t…exactly swimming in coin of the realm, then as now.

Actually, looking at the pricing, I’m trying to figure out how what I did, having custom shelves built specifically for me, compares to the cost of equivalent Gabriel racks. I think it might have been less oppressive on the ol’ finances buying the Gabriels. Ah well, at least I don’t have to deal with the plexiglas shelves, which, under every day retail wear and tear, would sometimes crack or bust completely. Ah well.

Those racks served the shop well, and I know they continued using them ’til the end, at which point…I’m not sure what happened to them. I presume they were sold to another shop, or just outright discarded. Wish I had the room for them myself…maybe I’d have found a use for them, or maybe I just wanted them around as reminders of the time I spent in that old store.