retailing

This is all assuming there’ll eventually be a back issue market for anything coming out right now.

filed under Categories collecting, retailing 12 Comments

So this week is the first time one of those digital download codes turned up in a Marvel comic I follow (Incredible Hulk, in case you were wondering), which got me to wondering about something.

The Marvels that have a digital download code printed inside protect the code from being stolen in-store by hooligans and ne’er-do-wells by covering it with a black label, which looks a little something…like this:


Of course, it’s not as if someone couldn’t just peel it off and jot down the code anyway, but as I haven’t yet experienced a floor littered with these little black labels, I think that hasn’t become a real problem yet.

One thing I’ve been thinking about, from the “dude what sells the old comics in a collectors’ market” point of view, is this: remember Marvel Value Stamps? Those little stamp drawings that appeared on editorial pages/letter pages/etc. in ’70s Marvels that you would clip and save for…well, something or another, I guess. Anyway, for folks like me who, as I said, deal in back issue sales, those things are the bane of my existence, as you really need to go through and check that the particular comics that had said Value Stamps in them weren’t clipped out. Because, if that stamp is clipped, suddenly that Wolverine appearance in Incredible Hulk #181, normally worth exactly one billion dollars, is now only worth about five or ten cents, max. (NOTE: pricing approximate.) So, yes, a missing stamp does negatively affect the value of the comic.

So now there’s this thing, the little black sticker covering the code. I suppose technically if the sticker is missing, the comic would be incomplete (or at least, altered from its original condition as released) and therefore probably shouldn’t be sold as a mint or near mint copy. Which means, if I start dealing in used copies of these (and I really haven’t, as of yet), I’m going to have to start checking to make sure that sticker is still intact. (I should note that I haven’t experimented with the sticker in my Hulk comic yet, so I don’t know if the sticker can be reattached…I’m guessing “no.”)

Before you say anything…yes, this is a dumb thing to be thinking about. But I guarantee you, this situation is going to come up and I’m going to have to deal with it at some point. …Not that I’m looking forward to that buyer/seller interaction:

“Well, this copy of Avengers Vs. X-Men II: The X-Avengening #3 would normally be worth about ten bucks….”

“Yeah?”

“…Except the digital code sticker has been removed. Sorry, this is only about a four dollar book now.”

“…What. Seriously?”

“Yeah, really. …This isn’t my proudest moment.”

Or maybe I can go the “professional grading” route, where some of those companies squirm out of pinning a book down to a specific condition by giving it a “qualified” grade based on its apparent appearance, instead of the grade that actually should be applied based on the damage you don’t immediately see. (You know, “Qualified Near Mint, loose centerfold” — that’s probably a “VG” to you and me.) …Of course, if I ever actually write “Qualified Near Mint, missing digital code sticker” on a book I’m trying to sell at the shop, I do welcome any of you to come put me out of my misery.

(By the way, I’m totally pulling that sticker off my Incredible Hulk comic…I want to see what all this digital comic hoohar is about.)

Slightly after Before Watchmen.

filed under Categories retailing, watchmen 10 Comments

So, when we were last talking about Before Watchmen, I posted a poll asking what some of you folks were planning to regarding the series…avoid it, try it out, steal it, whatever. Thus far, three-fifths of the respondents indicated that they would not buy it.

Now, that poll may not be entirely balanced…an online fandom interested enough in the matter to 1) read comic blogs and 2) vote in an online poll may be a little more aware of the situation and thus more inclined to skew negatively. But even those in-store customers of mine who don’t pay any attention to comics news outside of whatever happens to be in Comic Shop News that week (I assure you, such customers exist) are voting the way comic readers usually vote: with their wallets.

Now that I’ve had a few days of sales to see how things go, I can report that Before Watchmen: Minutemen #1 has sold…okay. Not flying off the shelves in a Superman #75-esque frenzy of consumer demand, but moving along at a steady pace. From previous experience, I’m relatively certain once Minutemen #2 comes out, or even when the next series or two start up, we’ll get further requests for the initial releases. However, like I’d said before, we’ll see how it goes in the long run, if we’ll get consumer resistance once the series and issues start piling on.

I’ve only had a handful of customers at the shop bring up Alan Moore’s disdain for this project, and it was about 50/50 whether those particular folks picked up the book or not. And there are other reasons outside of creators’ rights issues why some customers may not be picking up the book: didn’t like the movie, didn’t care for the original comic, it’s been just plain too long since the original to care about prequels, still burnt out on Watchmen after the media saturation surrounding the film, or simply aren’t interested in a Watchmen comic not by Moore and Gibbons. But, like I said, it’s not like it’s not selling…it seems to be selling fine. It’s not a monster smash like Avengers Vs. X-Men, but I would have been surprised if it were.

I’m almost tempted to put up another poll, “Of those of you who said you wouldn’t buy Before Watchmen, how many of you bought it anyway” because c’mon, I know somebody did. And this is interesting: I usually get my share of Google referrals to my site from people looking to mooch uploaded scans of current comics, generally a few a day. But in the last week or so, I have been bombarded with searches from people looking for scans of Before Watchmen. Apparently, the demand is there to read it, just not pay for it.

Like the presumably-pseudonymous Interstate Shogun said in the comments, I’m also surprised it took DC this long to do more Watchmen comics. A few years back I swore up and down that if DC was going to do it, they’d do it when the movie came out just so they’d have more product to sell during the peak of interest in the property (aside from the misguided After Watchmen promotion, which tried to get Watchmen fans to sample similar books, such as…um, Identity Crisis and Batman: Hush). I wonder how Before Watchmen would have sold had it come out then? (I was a bit disappointed that there wasn’t a brand new one-shot comic adaptation of the film, distilling the movie, itself a paring/dumbing down of the original material, down to 64 pages or so.)

Now, about Before Watchmen: Minutemen #1 itself…it wasn’t bad. Darwyn Cooke’s art is, as always, beautiful. The story is…well, if you wanted more action from the Golden Age characters in Watchmen, here you go. It all looks relatively surface-level, expanding on material already covered in necessary depth in the original book. Not terribly deep in the metacommentary department, as most of the points made about the genre are, again, repeated from the original, aside from the very opening pages of the comic, a seeming reaction to trying to tell this story under these particular circumstances. Alan Moore as the “guy [who] throws a wrench in the gears,” taking “away your understanding of the world you live in” — the superhero comics genre — and the folks who “search for the things that brought [them] happiness in the past” — the way superhero comics were before everyone thought imitating Watchmen was the way to go. And of course there’s Mason’s (Cooke’s) own reaction to trying to duplicate Moore and Gibbon’s style from the original.

…And this has been “Mike Overanalyzes A Dumb Ol’ Comic Book at Stupid O’Clock in the Morning.” Thanks for putting up with these rambling thoughts on the topic, folks, and I’ll see you again in a day or two.

Just a little before Before Watchmen.

filed under Categories reader participation, retailing, watchmen 44 Comments

So I was talking with pal Dorian the other day about the impending release this Wednesday of Before Watchmen: Minutemen #1, and how I thought it, and the Before Watchmen project as a whole, were going to sell.

I think it’s going to sell great, at least at first. As I noted before, there may be a bunch of online outrage about it, but Internet reaction =/= instore sales. Plus, some of those people complaining about Before Watchmen are still going to buy it anyway, because of course they will. (Yes, yes, I know, not you…you don’t need to tell me so in the comments.)

I have been receiving several requests for the Before Watchmen books, as well as a number of comic-saver folks adding it to their pull lists, so, like I said, it should have a strong start, at first. Once we’re a month or two in, and people begin to realize “oh, man, this is like a half-dozen or so new mini-series I have to follow, isn’t it,” then we’ll start to see the sales attrition as the picking-and-choosing begins. (Or maybe the, I don’t know, Ozymandias series will be the Greatest Thing Ever and a sales juggernaut.) Of course, having the “Crimson Corsair” back-ups run through all the minis is a clever way of encouraging readers to get the whole enchilada rather than have missing chapters of that particular serial…assuming of course “Crimson Corsair” is enough of a draw.

I don’t expect a flop. There is enough curiosity out there in this project, even if it’s just “what the hell is DC doing?” disbelief, to drive initial sales. And believe it or not, there are still people who go to the comic shops who spend little or no time online perusing the comic news sites or message boards and will have no idea there’s any brouhaha at all about this Before Watchmen situation. They’ll just see the logo on the stands, think “huh, I remember reading Watchmen, that wasn’t half-bad” and throw the comic in their piles.

Anyway, having mocked the value of online reaction, I am now seeking…your online reaction, via that most most scientific method of pinning down the public’s opinion, the blog poll. I have quite a few options there, but I’m sure it’s not 100% comprehensive…if you have a write-in choice, just drop it in the comments.

When in doubt…SWAMP THING POST.

filed under Categories retailing, swamp thing 14 Comments

 

  • So, Yahoo Answers, what do you have for me today?


    And the sole, and entirely gracious, response:


    By “Knightfall #11” they’re of course referring to Batman #497 from 1993, where, as the first person says, more or less, Batman is taken out by Bane and we get months and months and months of repercussions and crossovers and eventually The Dark Knight Rises. It was quite the hot item at the time, and I do still get the occasional request for it, and the three trade paperbacks reprinting that whole hoohar have been consistent sellers. Or, rather, they were before the third volume suddenly became unavailable for reorders recently, just in time for the aforementioned Bane-enriched Dark Knight Rises to be released in theatres, so you can imagine how thrilled I am about that.

    As a result of its popularity during its initial release, we’ve got plenty of copies of Batman #497. It’s relatively common, and I still see them in collections brought into the shop for sale all the time. But the New 52 Swamp Thing #1…in that New 52 first issue-buying frenzy, nearly all the first issues sold out for us, and most (if not all) of the those first issues went to second printings (and in the case of Justice League, an eighth printing). And we still have demand for first printings of those initial issues from the majority of those series.

    In other words, if someone came in, and the only two comics they had for sale were Batman #497 and Swamp Thing (New 52 version) #1, and I could only buy one, for whatever reason, I would pay handsomely for the latter, and decline the former, and that someone doing the selling would walk away with one shiny American nickel in his pocket following the transaction.

    So right now, I have more demand for Swamp Thing. Yeah, yeah, I know, “of course you do.” But I mean that in the “people want those New 52 #1s” sense, not in the “people love Swamp Thing because he’s the best” sense, which is true nonetheless, but not my argument here, exactly.

    Now, the specific question is which will be worth more in “a few years,” to which my answer to that kind of question usually is “come back in a few years and I’ll tell you.” In terms of strict scarcity, there’s probably only a fraction of the Swamp Thing #1s in print (maybe tens of thousands) compared to that issue of Batman (maybe hundreds of thousands), so all other things being equal that first Swampy should be worth a million dollars at least. But, people do like the Batman, so I suppose I’ll give that the edge in eventual value, if I have to. And if you wait long enough, after all the trees finally die off, all paper products will be extremely valuable, because I assure you no one’s gonna want to go back to using corncobs for…well, you know.

    •  

  • “‘The Swamp Thing’ Goofy But Strong” – a very brief review of Wes Craven’s 1982 cinematic masterpiece Swamp Thing…the reviewer accidentally writes “something less than a classic” when I’m sure he meant “totally the textbook definition of a classic,” but I’ll overlook the error.

    •  

  • You are completely not ready to gaze upon this Swamp Thing costume. You really aren’t.

    Okay, tough guy, you think you’re ready? Then click here if you dare.

    …

    Yeah, I thought you weren’t ready. Anyway, here’s a pic of the costume from a slightly less disturbing distance, and then there’s this photo recreating that famous Emma Frost/Swamp Thing team-up of years ago. Remember that comic? That was awesome.

    •  

  • Here’s that crazy-ass Animal Man/Swamp Thing diptych that’ll grace the twelfth issue of both series, courtesy Steve Pugh and Yanick Paquette.

    •  

  • So someone keeps going on in my comments about the supposed fate of this current Swamp Thing series, though Googling hasn’t turned up any news on the subject. It has been selling very well for us, and I’m pretty sure it’s not just because I, Swamp Thing’s Best Friend, work here…I think it’s selling reasonably well overall. If someone thinks he’s got information otherwise, then let’s see it, rather than just bemoaning the comic’s alleged demise at me. (The subscription shenanigans don’t count, I think, since that seems to be just DC penny-pinching processing costs rather than a precursor to impending cancellations.)

The Avengers movie sucked, and here’s why.

filed under Categories movie reviews, retailing 15 Comments

…Ah, I’m just yankin’ your chains, I thought it was pretty good. And, let’s face it, with a handful of popular superhero films functioning as prequels and the unavoidable advertising onslaught, the film could have been directed by the reanimated corpse of Ed Wood and still pulled in more money over the course of the opening weekend than most everyone who’s reading this has ever seen, combined. But, credit where credit is due, Whedon and the gang did a good job making all this nonsense entertaining and appealing to the general public, which kept people buying tickets past that first weekend. Of course, they had good characters to work with, thanks to Jack Kirby and the rest of the Marvel Bullpen, and in a good and just world it would have been “Jack Kirby’s” — well, okay, “Stan ‘n’ Jack’s The Avengers” and not Marvel’s The Avengers on the marquee.

And, yes, as you’ve likely heard, the Hulk is the best part of the film. Finally, it is understood by Hollywood that Hulk smashing stuff is fun, and the Hulk/Banner relationship can have some gravitas without dragging the rest of the film down with it. I fully expect this newly-remade golden egg-laden goose to be cut open for new Hulk movies, but perhaps I’m just being cynical.

I’m not going to go overlong on my comments about The Avengers, like I usually do for my movie “reviews,” but I did want to note a couple of things: first, when I saw Iron Man and Captain America teaming up to fight Loki, the 12-year-old part of Mike’s brain immediately thought “WHOA! COOL!” while the grown-up part of Mike’s brain thought “…what the hell am I looking at? Is this actually happening?” Fortunately, 12-Year-Old Mike won out, because, damn, it was Iron Man and Captain America fighting Loki. In live-action. On a movie screen. Played by actual adults. That hits me right in the nerd-spot.

Second, there’s this bit of business which really annoyed me ahead of my seeing the film. Thankfully, they were just very minor props whose sole use was as beacons for Iron Man’s costume, and we didn’t get any sales pitch beyond a long, lingering look at them onscreen, but still, I glared at them and thought unhappy things when I saw them. “Ooh, I know what you are!” I thought, clutching at the armrests of the theatre’s chair. …Okay, I actually just rolled my eyes a bit, but c’mon.

Finally…did I mention that this post may contain spoilers? Because freakin’ THANOS, man:


I’m totally in the bag for Jim Starlin, especially for Thanos, and if we get full-on Thanos action in the next movie, as implied by that mid-credits scene, that will indeed be an Oscar-winner…in my heart. I mean, just picture this on the silver screen:


You’re right, it would be beautiful.

So, anyway, The Avengers…a fun superhero movie, and probably in the top…oh, six or seven superhero movies ever made, I’d guess, somewhere after these two.

Speaking of Thanos, I’ve had a handful of people coming into the shop over the last couple of weeks asking after 1) Infinity Gauntlet, 2) Thanos Quest, and 3) Iron Man #55 (the first appearance of Thanos), usually saying something along the lines of “I bet these are really popular thanks to the Avengers movie!” Well…not really, no…those particular titles have been in high demand for the better part of twenty years. I don’t think I’ve had every issue of Infinity Gauntlet in stock at the same time more than a dozen times since the series wrapped up way back when, and copies of Thanos Quest blow out the door almost as quickly as we buy them. And it’s been a while, but I’m pretty sure nobody cared too much about Iron Man #55 ’til after Thanos came back in the early ’90s…now I almost never see copies of it.

To answer Andrew‘s question from the other day, about the Avengers movie effect on sales…actually, I don’t think I’ve seen that big of a bump. We’re doing very well right now, but I’m not getting that “we’re only here because of the Avengers movie” vibe from anyone…except maybe the people looking for “key” Thanos comics. Avengers Vs. The X-Men is doing exceptionally well, though that’s more preaching to the converted than bringing in new readers. I am getting some kids here and there picking up Avengers comics that probably normally wouldn’t, and, you know, I’ll take it.
 

images from Silver Surfer #34 (February 1990) by Jim Starlin, Ron Lim & Tom Christopher; Warlock Special Edition #6 (May 1983), reprinting Marvel Two-in-One Annual #2 (1977), by Starlin & Joe Rubinstein; movie poster from Internet parts unknown…I just like the sound of “Los Vengadores”

Or maybe it could be released bi-weekly…my expectations aren’t totally unrealistic.

filed under Categories grendel, retailing, swamp thing, this week's comics 10 Comments

So we had that little Avengers Vs. X-Men release party thingie last night…that’s where we get special dispensation from Marvel ‘n’ Diamond to release the comic ahead of the normal Wednesday street date. Well, a whole four hours ahead, I guess, since technically I could have started selling all the week’s new comics the second Felix’s paws were pointed at the witching hour*, but frankly I’ve put in enough time at the shop lately. I needs my beauty sleep…I mean, really, have you seen me?

But away, we put out the AvX #1s, and moved quite a few, which kind of surprised me since our town tends to roll up the sidewalks once nighttime rolls around, but we had a bunch of folks stroll on in and a good time was had by all. And we had bit of a mini-sale, too, so it was definitely worth staying open a little later than we normally do on Tuesdays.

I was mostly still working on processing the new comics order and pulling for the comic savers, so I tended to let other folks at the shop handle the AvX crowd. But there were a couple of things about this week’s new comics I wanted to point out:

1. Looks like Marvel is moving toward that slightly less-slick/”self-cover” format on some of their books. It’s not quite the same as the paperstock of the interior pages, but the covers ain’t as slick as they used to be. It’s not like that for every Marvel this week, but it is for quite a few of them.

2. The third issue of that Avengers movie tie-in Fury’s Big Week is out this week…and for second there I thought all our copies were damaged and missing pages. But no, it’s 20 pages of comics, the covers…and no ads. A while back Johanna was wondering what happened to comic book ads, in which it seemed like all the ads in recent Marvel and DC comics were just house ads for other Marvel and DC comics. But Fury’s Big Week doesn’t even have those…it just does away with the extra non-story pages altogether and gives you a 20-page booklet. Were previous issues of this series like this, and I just didn’t notice it?

Anyway, I guess this is the next cost-cutting device in maintaining the monthly floppy format…just plain using less paper, since they’re not making any money selling ad space on the extra pages anyway.

3. Also, Dave Sim has a new issue of Glamourpuss out. I love this comic, but God help you if you try to explain to someone what it’s about, because they’ll just look at you funny.

4. Swamp Thing is also out this week, with New Swampy finally making his debut. …I think it was worth the wait, though I wish every issue were 64 pages long, no ads, and released weekly, which I think is an entirely reasonable and economically-sound demand.

Enough about new comics…let me talk very briefly about some old comics. Reader Tom asks

I’d be happy to see an update, however brief, on the Great Grendel reread you were doing a while back… they were favourite comics of mind but I’m not sure they’ve aged well.

Yeah, I have a bad habit of not following up on things like “I’M TOTALLY GOING TO REREAD ALL OF, SAY, JUSTICE LEAGUE TASK FORCE AND REPORT BACK TO YOU” because Mike of Bloggings Future occasionally doesn’t like being constrained by plans made by Mike of Bloggings Past and I just never get around to, you know, stuff.

But I did reread all the Matt Wagner-written Grendels, and the Four Devils, One Hell mini by James Robinson, and a few of the other minis…and pretty much got burnt out/lost interest at about the same point in the various 1990s Grendel minis as I did when they were originally coming out. The minis that came out after that (including 1999’s Devil Child, which I first read during this “great Grendel reread”) tied back in to the early Hunter Rose-era of Grendel, which I have far more interest in than the future-history storylines that occupied most of the ’90s issues. I did reread all those late ’90s/2000s Grendel, but I think I’ll probably never get around to reading those few minis that I skipped originally. Ah, well…it’s not like I haven’t read enough comics.

* Yes, I know on most Felix-style clocks the hands aren’t in the shape of Felix’s paws. But I wrote it and don’t feel like changing it. So there.

Just when I thought I’d never use the “SMALLVILLE” category tag again.

filed under Categories retailing, smallville, watchmen 12 Comments

So I was just going to leave this post (and my smartypantsiness on the Twitter) to be my comment on the whole “Before Watchmen” prequel thing, since that’s been discussed to death by everyone already. But (and you knew there was a “but” coming), I did have someone come into the shop a couple of days ago to buy a copy of the Watchmen trade paperback, telling me the specific reason he was buying it was because of the prequels announcement. “The prequels look interesting,” he said, “and since I never did read the original, I thought I’d better get it before those prequels started coming out!”

Now, for us, sales peaked on the Watchmen trade just prior to the movie’s release, then dropped to almost nothing as soon as it was out. (You know, as usual with comic book movies.) We used to reorder the book every week prior to the movie ever being a factor, ordered tons of the book when the movie was a Big Deal, and now if I reorder the book more than once every few months, I’m surprised. The local market may just be saturated after the big movie-inspired sales bump, on top of the fact that we’ve been selling the darn thing for twenty five years and most comic fans who had even the vaguest interest in giving Watchmen a go have already went.

On the other hand, we may be experiencing a Howard the Duck event, in which the reputation of a once highly-regarded comic has been supplanted by the reputation of a not-so-regarded film adaptation. Any new customers spotting Watchmen on the shelves will think “oh, yeah, that dumb weirdly-violent movie,” not “hey, isn’t that the ground-breaking deconstructionist comic about the state of the superhero genre as it stood in the mid 1980s?”

I’ve no idea how sales on the Watchmen trades have been overall. I can only go by how things are doing at our shop. Maybe its sales haven’t dropped as drastically everywhere else as they did for us, but this is a quarter-century old comic that’s been consistently available for sale, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it isn’t moving like it used to.

So there you go: the Watchmen prequels could very well get those last few stragglers who haven’t picked up Watchmen to maybe try it out, bumping up interest in an item that may have hit some rough times in its post-film adaptation era. I’m basing this entirely on the single data source of our store, and on one customer transaction, but I’ve written posts for this site on shakier foundations, so why would I stop now.

But of course it’s promotion to help keep one of DC’s most famous evergreen graphic novels alive, but going from one famously self-contained graphic novel to, eventually, a shelf of eight graphic novels could be more of an imposing detriment than a long-term sales boost. I guess we’ll see.

Now speaking of which…I have no idea how to order on these prequel mini-series. I’m hoping DC will make the first issues of all of them returnable, so I can order high in case these really take off, but not get stuck if they receive the “check this out, comics based on that crappy movie” reaction. Yeah, yeah, I know everyone online threw a huge shit-fit when “Before Watchmen” was announced, but if actual sales were tied to online reaction, All Star Batman and Robin wouldn’t have been the best-selling comic on our shelves in any given month it deigned to come out.

I suspect they’ll sell reasonably well, but I don’t expect they’ll have the life expectancy of the original, which probably didn’t need to be said but I said it anyway. At the very least, however, it’ll hopefully get a few new people gaining an appreciation for Moore and Gibbons’ Watchmen…even if it’s only by comparison.

I realize none of this gets into the moral or artistic issues of whether or not DC should be doing publishing new Watchmen comics. There are already plenty of other folks arguing about that right now, and maybe I’ll discuss it in a later post, if I feel like getting more grey hair.

For another look at this whole prequel hoohar, here’s the presumably-pseudonymous Sleestak with the article “Controversy as Advertising.”

• • •

In other news, I was looking at DC Comics’ site to check some info on the Watchmen stuff, when I saw this headline:

“ANNOUNCING SMALLVILLE SEASON 11”


OH GOD NO…oh, wait, it’s just a Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8/9-esque comics-only follow-up. I hope it’s just page after page of never quite showing heavily photo-referenced drawings of Tom Welling in his Superman suit…like, he’s always in shadow or behind potted palm trees or something.

The Great Grendel Re-Read Project continues apace…

filed under Categories grendel, retailing 9 Comments

…and actually jumped ahead a bit the night my technical problems began, as I passed the time waiting for utility software and installation-type things to work on my computer by working my way through that pile of Grendel I just happened to have sittin’ here. (In case you’re curious, as of today, I’m about two or three series into the Grendel Tales from the early ’90s, after skipping ahead and reading the harrowing Devil’s Child from a few years ago.)

In the process of rereading these, I was reminded of this particular product, as advertised in the later Comico issues from about ’89 or so:


I’m pretty sure this was the same product available in comic shops and not just through mail order, as at the time we certainly had a stack of about five or six packages of Grendel masks at the shop. (That $34.95 price point sounds about right.) It took us…a while to sell them, but sell they did, and I kind of wish we still had them so I could run across rooftops at night throw ’em on the eBay or something.

Fine, I was joking about the “running across rooftops” thing maybe, but I did have a regular customer of ours ask me way back when what would happen if someone bought one of these masks, wore it while getting up to some hijinks (i.e. of a felonious nature) and suddenly Action News Team 7 is there at the shop’s front door wondering what my part was in all this. I think I told him I’d throw on one of the other Grendel masks and chase them out, because hey, no such thing as bad publicity.

…Okay, I probably wouldn’t have done that, and I’m pretty sure no one who did buy the masks was likely to go out on a crime spree, thanks to my extensive background checks, so I’m pretty sure I was safe from being the center of a media firestorm. Well, at least until a couple of years later when Superman died and fingers started pointing at me — “He’s the one! That comic shop guy killed Superman!”

Anyway, that’s a swell ad, and I hope and pray that was actually Grendel creator Matt Wagner modelling the mask in the photos there, because that would be awesome. Yeah, I know, it probably isn’t, but don’t you poop on my dreams.

I have no idea if The Shade has “The” in its title, or if Huntress doesn’t, and I’m not going to check. So there.

filed under Categories blogging about blogging is a sin, dc comics, retailing, sir-links-a-lot 10 Comments

So Trevor A asked in a comment yesterday if I’d discuss some of DC’s post-New 52 titles and how they’re doing in this brave new retail world. The two he mentions specifically are The Shade and Huntress, and…they’re both doing…okay, I suppose, with Huntress selling just slightly better. They’re definitely at the low end of the sales scale when compared to the New 52 line…not as low as Static Shock or I, Vampire, but maybe around Voodoo levels. Not great, but they seem to be consistent from issue to issue at least, enough so that when I heard that talk about The Shade mini-series possibly getting canned halfway through, I was a bit surprised. It doesn’t seem likely now, as that would be definite egg in DC’s face if they had to cut a mini-series short so soon after their big publishing initiative.

Plus, not that I’m some big publishing marketing genius or anything, but I’d think there’d be a payoff in finishing the mini and collecting it into a trade as a companion to the Starman series it spun off from. …Which of course begs the question why they wouldn’t just go straight to graphic novel format to begin with, but that wouldn’t be a strategy they’d take with a third-stringer like the Shade, I’d imagine.

Well, that went off on a tangent a bit. So, Trevor A, what I’m trying to tell you is that those two series at least are selling okay, if not great. Other post-52 series like T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and My Greatest Adventure are selling about as well, with Penguin: Pain and Prejudice being kind of the surprise hit, necessitating multiple reorders to fill back issue requests.

In other news:

  • Super-Team Family presents…Swamp Thing and Man-Thing!

  • A new storyline over at The Rack begins with Three Days of the Con, Part One.

  • Tony Isabella re-presents: Watchmen 2: Rorschach’s Revenge.

  • REMINDER: you need more robot detectives in your life. Thus, Copernicus Jones.

  • Oh, right…this isn’t a link to anything, but I wanted to thank longtime reader and commenter philip (with the lowercase “p”) for dropping by the store and daring to meet me in person, thus getting to see me in my natural unshaved and mostly undyed state. I of course thanked him for his visit by prying as much money as I could out of his hands. Thanks, philip, for coming by!

  • Pals Dorian and Ken have another batch cooked up of those movie trailer reviews that I like so much.

  • Bully, the Little Stuffed Bull That Walks Like A Little Stuffed Bull, brings us all what we didn’t know we wanted, but what we definitely needed: 366 Days of Alfred Pennyworth. …It is far more than we deserve.

  • Also, I wanted to thank all of you for still coming back and reading my site. December was…not a great month for me, with health issues and working extra hours and just plain getting a bit burnt out, which of course affected content here. I’m feeling a lot better now, so hopefully everything will be up and running here as normal. Or whatever passes for normal. …Thanks, gang, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

“It’s the New 52 / Comin’ right at you”

filed under Categories dc comics, retailing 19 Comments

Now on with part two of my “so how is all that new 52 hoohar doin’ five months on” overview, following up on that long-ago post where I asked you, the faithful reader, what you thought of them. Part one was yesterday, in case you forgot, and in case you didn’t, I’m sure I’ll link to part one once or twice more.

Grifter – Now had I been thinking, I probably would have ended yesterday’s post with Grifter since this is one of those titles I don’t really have anything to say about, beyond that it’s selling at all which is nothing short of a shock. Another one of those titles that isn’t generating a lot of buzz or attention but still has a small, stable following.

Hawk and Dove – Gotta give it to Rob Liefeld, he’s still on the book. And it’s maintaining…not great sales, but certainly respectable sales, and our customers do seem to be enjoying it. So, hey, that’s fine with me.

I, Vampire – Unfortunately, probably one of the two poorest selling titles of the new 52 for us. Vampire backlash from the comic fans, maybe? Perhaps seeing it as too…pandering, or something? I don’t know. Even the Constantine appearance in the latest issue didn’t do anything to spark interest.

Justice League – The best seller of the bunch, and, as I said before, it’s actually improved a bit since the debut. Okay, it’s still big, loud, and stupid, but it’s big, loud, stupid and entertaining. The mindlessly fun box office blockbuster of DC’s current line-up.

Justice League Dark – I’m not even quite sure what’s going on in this book…probably one of those titles that benefits from reading successive issues at once rather than with a month between, losing the nuances. Not that there’s a lot of “nuance” here, but c’mon. Still, oddly enjoyable and it’s Peter Milligan writing Shade the Changing Man again, and there’s gotta be value to that.

Justice League International – Haven’t looked at it since I didn’t finish reading the first issue after losing interest halfway through. Sells about a third of what Justice League does, which means it’s got some reasonable sales.

Legion of Super-Heroes, Legion Lost – I honestly think it’s probably time to mothball the Legion for a while and make people miss ’em. Seriously, despite the occasional sales bump that comes from yet another reboot/relaunch (like, oh, say, the New 52 #1s) sales always drop right back down to where they were before. And I do mean “down.” Maybe it’s just us…maybe our local Legion fans have simply just dwindled in number. But that their comics do occasionally spike in sales tells me that at least part of our customer base is interested in the Legion, they’re just not interested in the Legion comics coming out right now.

Men of War – Another of the lower sellers, probably not surprisingly, though the people who do read it seem to enjoy it quite a bit.

Mister Terrific – Noted before that this book was kind of a disappointment for me…and apparently not just for me, as some of the prerelease excitement for this book among our customer base had us thinking it’d do really well…which it didn’t. Well, okay, that’s not fair…it did okay, and it’s still maintaining some lower mid-range numbers, so it has its fans.

Nightwing – Kinda surprised the hell out of me when I found out how well this book was selling for us. Not Action/Justice League numbers or anything, but certainly well up there. Lot of you kids out there are Nightwing fans, I guess.

OMAC – Such the best comic. A total Jack Kirby riff, and rightfully includes a credit for Kirby in the book now (which was overlooked in the first issue). Lots of noise and punching and crazy characters and even pulled off a two-page splash in the latest issue which didn’t make me immediately think “hey, you’ve only got 20 pages, cut that out” because it was awesome. Does okay for us, a lower mid-range title, but the folks that read it love it. As well they should.

Red Hood and the Outlaws – One of the better sellers at first, though it’s dropped just a bit. Despite all the fanguish about Starfire’s particular…portrayal in the first issue, we were getting the most requests for this title from our female customer base. Also, one of the employees is really into this title. Maybe a little too into it.

Resurrection Man – A lot of our longtime customers were equal-parts happy and surprised to see this title come back. Not a big seller, but selling more than I expected a revived non-big name title from a decade ago would.

Savage Hawkman – People want a Hawkman title, but it doesn’t appear to be this Hawkman title. Started off okay, but has seen some attrition and drops from comic saver files over the last month or two. It’s just not catching on, unfortunately. Still selling well enough, but probably needs a change in direction right quick to hang on to the readers it has.

Static Shock – The other poorest seller of the relaunch for us, which surprises me a bit. Are people seeing the name “Static Shock” and associating it with the cartoon, and thinking that they don’t want to read a “cartoon adaptation?” Is it maybe just too little, too late past the character’s peak popularity? I honestly have no idea.

Stormwatch – Didn’t really expect this to sell, but it’s doing fine. …Pretty much all I have to say about it, really. Some folks are surprised DC went with this instead of another Authority relaunch, but I’m kind of Authoritied-out so I’m glad they didn’t.

Suicide Squad – Started strongly, dropped about a…third, maybe, in sales, but even so still selling above-average numbers for the New 52 titles. Another one of those comics where the online reaction to the comic was belied by actual sales. Had a lot of people asking about it in the first month or two.

Superboy, Supergirl – Both these Superman tie-ins are selling quite well, with Supergirl having the edge. Supergirl is also getting a lot of back issue requests.

Superman – I can appreciate that George Perez is trying to give people their money’s worth with each issue, cramming as much story in there as possible, but it still feels like it’s getting in the way of telling the story. Like I said, it’s improving, and with a creative team change imminent, it’s very possible these problems will go away…or be replaced by whole new problems, but we’ll see. Sales were strong at first, and are slightly less-strong now, though still doing very well. Probably selling at about two-thirds of Action.

Swamp Thing – Another surprise from the New 52, where, like Animal Man, it’s selling a lot more than anyone would have predicted. And in our store’s case, I promise it’s not because of me pushing the book, honest! Kind of wish that the long, slow build-up to the eventual Return of Swamp Thing (no relation) was maybe a little faster-paced (and the lack of Swamp Thing thus far has cost the title a reader or two at the shop), but response has mostly been very positive for this series.

Teen Titans – That initial promo image was pretty roundly mocked, and rightfully so. However, the series is selling fairly on par or slightly more with the last Titans series or two, and I’ve had a pal or two whose tastes I trust tell me that it’s actually a better comic than you might have thought given that initial negative buzz.

Voodoo – A lower seller from the New 52, which shows nekkid gals can’t sell everything. Has its fans, and while not a big seller, it’s a consistent one, and that’ll do.

Wonder Woman – I really had a negative reaction to the first issue, as we were given a dark, moody and violent Wonder Woman comic instead of one that perhaps could sell to that potentially large audience of little girls that maybe, just maybe, might be interested in a character that, as pal Dorian has so accurately described, is a superhero who is also a princess. Sounds like printing money to me, but that’s not the audience DC wants coming into comic shops or buying comics online, so oh well. (And while we get little girls wanting superhero comics in our shop, I suspect we’re more the exception than the rule.) But, Wonder Woman is selling very well, and people I respect are telling me it’s good, so don’t pay any attention to me.

…

Overall, even with my being a bit of a Negative Nelly here and there, the new 52 relaunch has been a net gain for DC, with relaunched titles generally selling at or over what they were selling before, and several of the new titles maintaining consistent, if not always heavy, numbers. Despite a few clunkers here and there, a not unexpected result on some of the non-superhero…or less traditionally-superhero…books, this relaunch is doing well for us, and it’s certainly stirred up interest from our customer base, not just in DC Comics, but in comics across the board, which is definitely welcomed. In a marketplace that’s been relatively moribund for far too long, any excitement about the comics themselves, in the stories and characters as opposed to simply just as investable commodities, is something I’m glad to see. (Not that there weren’t some people with dollar signs in their eyes when all these new #1s were cranked out, but that period came and went fairly quickly.)

And besides, it was all worth it just to put Swamp Thing back on the stands. All worth it.