retailing

And then there was that time Mike decided to ramble on about which of the new 52 DC titles he plans to get.

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So the general reaction from our customers to the onslaught of DC #1s quickly making its way to us has ranged from interest and excitement to “I’m giving up on DC.” It’s been a bit hard to predict just how these books are going to do, as customer response has been so mixed. And I just know that, no matter how much promotional material we put into folks’ hands, there’s gonna be at least one regular customer walking into the shop in September who will be shocked…shocked…that DC started all their books over from #1.

Anyway, I thought I’d go through the list of all these #1s and let you know what I plan to get. Or am thinking about getting. …Because it’s my weblog, that’s why.

Justice League #1 – I don’t think it’s any stretch to assume that, of all the new DC #1s, this will be the big one. It’s being released by itself at the end of August (along with the last part of the Flashpoint mini that’s leading into the big changeover) and surely most folks will be picking this up out of sheer curiosity, to see what exactly the new DC Universe status quo is going to be. That’s certainly a big reason why I’m picking it up…well, that, and it’s not like I’ll be buying a whole lot of DC Comics that week. (I’ve not been following Flashpoint, though that same curiosity may have me checking out that mini’s last issue to see how it’s setting everything up.) But I also tend to pick up whatever new iteration of Justice League happens to pop up, even if I end up not following it for long.

Action Comics #1 – I’ve been reading the main Superman titles for probably about 30 years now, through thick and thin, through mulleted Superman and Electric Superman, so I’m not stoppin’ just because they restarted the series from the first issue. Plus, it’s Grant Morrison on scripting chores, and I do like the Morrison.

Animal Man #1 – Speaking of Morrison, I was a big fan of his run on Animal Man, and I kept on with the title after Morrison’s departure, which maintained its sense of weirdness while still further developing Buddy Baker’s family life. I have a bit of fondness for the character still, whetted by that Last Days of Animal Man mini from a couple of years ago, so I’m going to give this a try. Plus, Jeff Lemire is writing, and more on that under the Frankenstein entry.

Justice League International #1 – This is in the “maybe” pile, as the main reason I’m interested in it is that it features Booster Gold written by his creator, Dan Jurgens. I was quite enjoying the Booster Gold series DC had been publishing of late, and sadly it was not one of the titles to make the transition to the new army of #1s. And I’m sure we’re not getting “The Adventures of Booster and His Justice League Pals,” so I don’t know how much actual Booster content will be in each issue. But, I’ll give it a look.

Swamp Thing #1 – Well, duh.

Batwoman #1 – The only Bat-book I’m buying (aside from Justice League International, which isn’t quite the same but you know what I mean). Being purchased primarily for the art of J.H. Williams, who has been doing absolutely beautiful work with this character.

Demon Knights #1 – Was going to be a “maybe,” but I’ve got every other Demon comic, so, heck, might as well pick it up. Plus, it’s written by Paul Cornell, and having enjoyed his recent stint on Action Comics, I imagine I’ll enjoy this series as well.

Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E. #1 – Wouldn’t have considered this, except the War Rocket Ajax crew convinced me to pick up the Jeff Lemire-scripted Flashpoint: Frankenstein tie-in, and that was a hoot. Lemire is writing this new series as well, so I’m definitely putting it on the buy pile.

Green Lantern #1 – Green Lantern is like Superman, in that he’s one of those characters/concepts I’ll usually always follow (though admittedly I skipped most of those Kyle-Rayner-as-GL years in the ’90s). I like how this series is starting, with old GL archnemesis Sinestro roped back into the Green Lantern Corps and starring in this book, but of course Hal Jordan will be back in the saddle in short order. In the meantime, though, I’m really looking forward to this book as Sinestro has always been one of my favorite supervillains.

Mister Terrific #1 – Probably picking this up, as I liked the character in Justice Society. Not much else to say, really, other than I like the idea of the hero, the world’s third smartest man, facing against a villain who’s one of the world’s two smarter dudes.

Red Lanterns #1 – Giving it a go because it’s a Green Lantern tie-in, but…not sure if I want to read a book where the entire focus is on the violent and angry Lantern corps. Fine in a supporting role, not sure I want 20 non-stop pages of it. Unless it’s the solo adventures of Dex-Starr, of course.

DC Universe Presents #1 – First story arc stars Deadman, and I’m always up for a Deadman story. Continued purchase of the series depends on which character they follow up Deadman with. I vote Adam Strange. Or Metamorpho. Or hell, both of them in the same adventure.

Green Lantern Corps #1 – Again, GL fan, so I’ll pick up the book. Hey, Kilowog is in it. I’m pretty sure I have the complete Kilowog collection.

The Fury of Firestorm #1 – Another one of my favorite characters, and I’ll always read a Firestorm series. I’m not even sure I can explain why Firestorm is a favorite character of mine.

Green Lantern: New Guardians #1 – While I like the idea of multiple-colored Lantern corps, I like them better as support characters in the other GL titles, rather than starring in their own book. (See also Red Lanterns above.) This is stretching the franchise just a little too thin, I think…but the three GL series that had been running before were selling great, even after the movie came out, so what do I know.

Justice League Dark #1 – Because John Constantine is in it. And Deadman. …I expect this comic will be very peculiar.

Superman #1 – The one Superman title taking place in “current day” (as opposed to Action, focusing mostly on Superman’s early years). It’s written and drawn…well, laid out…by George Perez, so I expect I’ll enjoy it, but it’s gonna be a while before I’m used to that new Super-armor costume.

…And that’s it, really. I may poke my nose into some of the other #1s to see if they grab my interest. I may try out the new Aquaman series, for example, or give a look to the new Jonah Hex title All-Star Western.

I am curious which titles will end up catching on. There are a few that seem doomed from the get-go, and others that will almost certainly undergo an immediate creative team change once it becomes obvious the monthly schedule just ain’t gonna happen. And while it’s a safe bet titles like Action and Green Lantern will have healthy sales, what about the second-stringers? Which of the not-so-big-name titles are going to be the breakout hits? It’ll be very interesting to see what thrives and what withers, particularly given the large number of new series and the limited consumer dollar available to purchase all these. I certainly hope every single title sells enormously well, but sadly we’ll being seeing a lot of bodies left at the side of the road as this publishing initiative progresses.

This site does not condone the concussing of ponies.

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So now that I finally started using my Tumblr site, I believe I finally found a purpose for it (aside from using it to comment on friends’ posts and reblogging awesome things, like this unused Superman versus Titano cover by Curt Swan). I think I may be using it as a “commentary track” or “greatest hits” supplement for this site, revisiting old posts and images and providing some additional info, background material, or just reminding folks of some of the older, sillier stuff. Okay, I did just repost that recent Klarion pic but c’mon, that pic is fantastic.

In other news…I’m sure most of you are aware by now of the Diamond street dates thing, in which retailers can get their comics on Tuesday in order to prep them for Wednesday sale, and woe betide you if you sell them early. I hear tell that Diamond has “secret shoppers” out there in the wild, enforcing the Wednesday street dates. Well, considering I yell even at Employee Aaron if he even looks at the books as I’m breaking down the order, I think I’m pretty safe there.

But anyway, this Tuesday, we had a large order of gaming product come in from Diamond, along with our usual comics order. I mean, a very large order. It was all prepaid for by a customer, so we had the coin of the realm on hand to take care of it, but still, it’s a bit imposing when you check the status of your UPS shipment and discover sixty boxes waiting for you. There’s always that fear that maybe your finger slipped while placing your orders three months ago and you accidentally ordered 15,000 copies of Green Hornet: Aftermath #4 and they all turned up today and OH GOD. But no, it was just the games stuff, and it was about fifty boxes all of approximately the same size and shape and while Aaron and I were tempted to build a fort with them, alas, we were too busy.

It was also a fairly sizable comics ship week as well, with a handful of notable items, like Superman #713, the next issue after the surprise Krypto fill-in for the scheduled Muslim superhero story. Some folks claimed the fill-in had something to do with the powers-that-be not liking the originally-planned story showing Superman rescuing a kitten, as it undermined the strength of the character or something. Well…guess what happens in this new issue? Go on, guess. Okay, it involves a roof, not a tree, but if anyone’s really going to split hairs over that, they are welcome to jump up my hinder.

Oh, and Superman #713 has this awesome Jeff Smith variant, and they should totally give Smith his own Superman series to do. (And speaking of Smith, the new issue of Rasl is out this week, too.)

The next issue of the Flashpoint: Frankenstein and the Creatures of the Unknown mini is also released this week, which turned out to be the only Flashpoint book I’m reading. I wasn’t going to be reading any of them, but those cats over at the War Rocket Ajax podcast convinced me to give it a try via their discussion of it on the show, and they were right: this is the stuff.

And this action figure is out this week. This is a gargantuan hunk of plastic. You could probably concuss a pony with this thing. I am praying this is how Tom Hardy looks in The Dark Knight Rises.

This is why I never believe you when you tell me your comics are “in excellent condition.”

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1. Call me at the shop on Wednesday.

2. Tell me you have a bunch of comics for sale in “really good shape.”

3. I ask how old they are, you say they’re “pretty old.”

4. I ask you for some titles, you tell me X-Force, Groo, Elric, X-Factor and so on.

5. I say “bring ’em in, let me take a look at them,” warning you that I’ll probably only be interested in the Groo books (and maybe the Elric).

6. You say you’ll be in Thursday.

7. Thursday. You don’t come in.

8. Friday. You do come in, with a filthy plastic crate filled with even filthier comics. Waterlogged, beat to hell, and just plain dirty comics. Even the comics that are in plastic bags (about half of them) are ratty and filthy.

9. I take a brief look through the comics, not even wanting to touch them, in the off-chance there might be something salvageable.

10. I decide it’s not really worth the effort, and tell you I’m not interested in any of these.

11. You take your crate of comics and depart.

12. I go home at the end of my shift Friday evening.

13. I come into the store Saturday morning. Sitting on the floor by the front counter – that same filthy plastic crate of the even filthier comics.

14. Employee who worked the closing shift the night before tells me that, after I left, an employee at a neighboring business brought the crate of comics to us, having found it dumped in the bed of his pickup truck.

15. So I end up having to deal with this box of crap comics anyway. I pull the plastic bags off the ones that are bagged so that I can dump them in the recycle bin, while going through the comics and seeing if anything actually is salvageable.

16. End result: about 200 or so unsellable comics dumped into the recylcer; about two dozen comics just about good enough for the bargain bin; two comics actually worth keeping and pricing for the regular back issue stock (that one issue of the original What If series with “What If Elektra Had Lived”) and Sub-Mariner #42); and one copy of Zot! #10 1/2 with rusty staples that I ended up giving to Employee Aaron.

17. Just to be clear, had I actually gone through the collection and paid him for the two comics I actually wanted, I may have paid two dollars, tops, for them. And maybe another buck or so for the Zot! just because you don’t see those too much any more. Ultimately, not really worth the time and effort involved here, and only really bothered with them once they were dumped on us just because I was averse to simply throwing away the comics without checking for anything usable.

18. As for the plastic crate: put outside by the back door, where hopefully someone will take it away. And not, say, dump it into the bed of any neighbor’s pickup truck. Or my pickup truck.

19. So in the future, should you happen to call and tell me you have comics for sale, and they’re all in mint condition…I’ll try to suppress the sigh, but no promises.

Hold on, need to ramble on insensibly about Flashpoint tie-in sales.

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So you may remember about a week ago, when I was talking about Flashpoint tie-in sales. In short, the debut issues of the various mini-series that were released in the first week sold well, but the first issues from the second week did not. In the time since I posted that report, those second week series still haven’t sold nearly as well as the previous week’s. In fact, I’ve had to reorder more copies of three of the four series from the first week, while still working on initial orders of the second week.

Since then, we’ve had a third wave of Flashpoint tie-in #1s, and…now, these are selling quite well. Not as well as the first week releases, but better than the second week’s.

This somewhat, but not totally, alleviates my worry that this sales trend is a precursor to the September Month of #1s from DC and the buyer’s fatigue that could set in. It appears to be more a case of “what’s being offered” than “oh man, more #1s.” The first week’s worth of books sold well, of course, being the first out of the gate and the object of reader curiosity about the event. And the best seller of the bunch, Abin Sur, which I’ve reordered multiple times, may have the additional benefit of currently-peaking Green Lantern interest (not just due to the movie, but because of the general recent popularity of the various GL comics series). And then there’s the Batman tie-in, which, well, it’s Batman, people like that dude. World of Flashpoint probably sold well because the title made it sound like it would provide more background on the series setting. The poorest seller from that first batch was Secret Seven, despite the George Perez art. Maybe it’s been too long for Shade the Changing Man to be a sales draw again?

Second week, we had Citizen Cold, which surprised me that it didn’t sell better than it did, given the Flash tie-in. Emperor Aquaman…well, Aquaman was bit of a hardsell the last time he was on the stands, so the slow movement on this series wasn’t too much of a surprise. Deathstroke: The Curse of Ravager may be suffering from the fact that the comic reading public, I think, may have a bit of Deathstroke burn-out at the moment. Frankenstein is awesome, but may appear to be a bit too much of an oddball non-traditional superhero book to sell comparatively to its spandex-clad cousins. (Which may give us a clue as to the relative sales levels of DC’s forthcoming “dark” DCU books.)

Like I said, sales are up on the third week of #1s, and, boy, it’s hard to resist this great cover:


Others: Grodd of War starring Gorilla Grodd…I forget who originally claimed that apes on covers sold comics, but by God, that person ain’t wrong. Wonder Woman and the Furies features one of DC’s Big Three characters, which probably accounts for those sales, and Legion of Doom…well, that just sounds cool. And has it been too long to attribute a Super Friends-fed nostalgic twinge to that name perhaps helping interest along? At the very least, “Legion of Doom” is a name that still holds at least a minor bit of comics culture weight.

It’s hard to say how this week’s batch of debut issues will perform. It’s easy to speculate in hindsight why certain comics sold or didn’t sell, since once you have the actual sales in hand, you can apply whatever reasons you’d like to why things went the way they did. Plus, I really thought Citizen Cold would sell great, so my precognitive abilities may not be the best. And who the hell thought Abin Sur would have a hot comic, even with other Green Lantern books selling like crazy right now?

Just as a guess, The Outsider may move the slowest, even despite the tenuous Batman connection, as it’s the most unrecognizable name of the bunch. Lois Lane and the Resistance I would like to sell well, since maybe that would encourage more Lois Lane comics, which I’m all for. (But I’d eat my hat if DC would anything as cool as the comics I linked to there.)

The other two books, Kid Flash Lost and Reverse Flash…the other Flashpoint Flash tie-in didn’t sell that quickly, but maybe these will do better since the featured characters actually have “Flash” in their names. We’ll see.

Of course, the real question about all these titles is this: how will the number 2s sell?

And those above titles will all be competing with this week’s release of the Brightest Day Swamp Thing spin-off, which will be getting all the sales, so pretty much everything else on the rack is going to suffer anyway.

We are living in a world where there are two different Abin Sur solo comics on the stands within a month of each other.

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So Abin Sur, the alien Green Lantern who crashed on Earth and passed his ring along to Hal Jordan, will have two number one issues out this month. One is part of the prequel one-shots to the film, which I couldn’t find the proper cover for online, and I don’t have one to scan since it’s not out ’til Wednesday, but all the prequels basically just have the promo posters as their cover images, that’s what I used up above there.

The other is the first issue of the three-part Flashpoint tie-in, one of the first four tie-in series that launched a couple of weeks ago. And of the bunch, this has been the fastest seller for us, necessitating a second reorder just this week for more copies. As much as I’d like to credit this to a strong but previously-unexpressed demand among fans for poor ‘ol Abin Sur to finally get his due, I’m guessing the impending release of the Green Lantern movie might have more to do with it.

But then again…while all the Green Lantern comics have been selling exceedingly well at our shop (and we’ll see if they take the usual post-movie sales drastic decline nearly all comics have once the film is released), the two movie prequel books released so far (Tomar-Re and Kilowog) haven’t really sold to expectations for us. I didn’t expect them to sell like the regular GL books, since they’re (gasp) outside of continuity, but the covers are appealing, and I was expecting some pre-movie interest in GL titles and I figured we’d move a few at least a few that way. But so far…eh, not exactly flying off the shelves here.

Now, the Flashpoint: Abin Sur book…nearly all of the first week’s batch of Flashpoint tie-ins either sold through completely or very nearly, with Secret Seven being the one that moved the slowest. The two that moved the fastest, requiring me to place immediate reorders, where the Batman tie-in and, as I said, the Abin Sur book. It could simply be that the two tie-ins focused on and titled after specific characters attracted the most reader interest, while Secret Seven and World of Flashpoint just didn’t grab the reader as readily.

The second week’s batch of tie-ins, with Citizen Cold, Deathstroke-whatever, and the other two…are selling, but not nearly as quickly. It could just be this next batch of series wasn’t as attractive…or that having four new #1s of mini-series tie-ins on top of the four #1s that came out the previous week scared folks off. And when four more new #1s come out this week…well, I’ll be interested to see how it goes.

Flashpoint itself has been selling quite well and certainly has been grabbing customer interest, and I noticed an upward bump in demand when word started getting around that this was leading into DC’s September renumbering hoohar. But…and this is probably too soon to be worrying about this sort of thing, maybe, as I’m only going off a couple weeks’ worth of observations…watching the sudden dip in hesitance about buying a bunch of first issues in subsequent weeks has me wondering if we’ll get great sales on the first week or two of DC’s #1 releases in September, with First Issue Fatigue setting in once the fourth or fifth week rolls around.

The situations are not entirely analogous, I realize. The Flashpoint tie-ins are in addition to DC’s regular monthly output, and they are “parallel universe” stories that don’t impact the “real” (ahem) stories (except in this case they sorta do, since everything’s restarting as a result of Flashpoint, but let’s not confuse the issue). The new #1s are, at least in part, carrying over from currently published series. Chances are…well, mostly good that the folks who buy Action #904 will continue buying when the numbering rotates back to numero uno. It’s the new series we’ll have to watch…not that we weren’t going to be watching the sales closely anyway. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, that I suspect a Mister Terrific #1 coming out in the first week may have more of a chance than, say, a Blackhawks #1 coming out at the end of the cycle, when folks reach the end of their willingness to try out new titles after keeping up with their regular series and sampling other new #1s in the previous weeks.

And there are other considerations, of course. A new tights-and-capes superhero #1 coming out in week 5 will still likely get more sales than a comic that is less obviously a superhero comic (i.e. Blackhawks #1) coming out in the first week.

So anyway, near the end of July, if you see me tearing what’s left of my hair out as I’m hunched over the retailer order form, you’ll know I’m trying to nail down numbers for these books. I can feel the migraine already.

I’m really not on top of this whole “digital comics” thing.

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Just to clarify…I don’t really think we won’t get an Action Comics #1000 when the time comes. That’s still about eight or so years off, and I’m sure between the restart at #1 and then, DC will revert to the original numbering on at least some books, following Marvel’s strategy of riding out that sales boost from a new first issue, and replacing it with another sales boost by switching back the numbering just before a round-numbered anniversary issue. So honestly, that’s not a real criticism…I was just being facetious.

And speaking of the relaunches…pal Dorian pointed out to me that this line-wide reversion to #1s is more about creating a promotional push for the digital-release plans than about making any kind of sales improvement in the direct market. And…yeah, I hadn’t really been thinking about it from the digital side, but of course that makes sense. Pretty much no matter what, the direct market isn’t going to grow, or at least grow quickly enough to keep the publishers happy (brief spurts of media-driven sales aside). The primary print sales strategy of late is extracting more money from the same folks…no one thinks a half-dozen Avengers or Green Lantern titles are bringing in new readers. It’s just getting the same ol’ Avengers or Green Lantern fans to dig a little deeper (or, more likely, drop another marginal book) to afford yet another negligible variation on a title they’re already reading.

In contrast, the digital initiative could potentially reach a much larger audience that would never set foot in a comic shop, and the additional incentive of “hey, get in on the ground floor” with the first issues may help. Whether this leads to more readers seeking out print editions in shops, or just subsidizes the print editions to keep prices down for just a little longer, or whether anyone will bite at all, or whether it just saves the scans_daily folks a step, I’m not sure. We’ll see what happens, of course.

The pricing for digital releases has been announced, and just from my limited observation of the response, people don’t care for the price levels being offered. (Basically, same price as print edition, dropping a dollar after a month.) Of course, the general reaction to pricing for any online entertainment that’s anything other than “free” tends to be abject horror*, and I suspect at even the frequently-suggested 99-cent price point there wouldn’t still be some headshakers moaning “too much, too much,” but…well, not sure what people were expecting. If DC undercut the comic shops, retailers would’ve raised holy hell, I’m sure, and they can’t afford to alienate those folks just yet. Especially if this whole digital thing falls flat. But…yeah, it could be over before it begins if people reject the pricing.

Boy, some insight, huh? “IT’LL WORK UNLESS IT DOESN’T.” Man, I have no idea what’s going to happen. My gut feeling is that print sales will bump up briefly, then fall back to normal, with a lot of culling of the weaker titles right quick, while digital sales will be okay, but not outstanding, with pricing being cited as the primary obstacle. Maybe a discounted digital subscription will be offered as response, assuming it can get by under retailers’ radar. Basically, I see business being as usual, with a few months of annoyance all around mixed in there while everything shakes out.

Anyway, you probably have seen DC’s announcement of some of the new titles and creative teams, and…well, surely this will be the Aquaman series that will catch on! And as a Firestorm fan, I’m looking forward to another series with the character, especially one written by Gail Simone.

There’s a new Hawkman series, too, and this is one of those cases where a full-on from-scratch reboot would probably be doing the character a favor. Hawkman doesn’t need the last couple of decades’ worth of mishmashed continuity issues weighing him down…he just needs to be awesome. “Flying dude dressed as hawk fights crime with a mace” – that’s all you need, man.

However, if you want a complete list of all the titles from The New DC, I believe Bully the Little Stuffed Bull might have that for you. #27 is the best. The. Best.
 
 
 
 

* I’m exaggerating slightly for humorous effect. Please do not “um, actually” me, or I will have you…dealt with. Remember, I’m friends with a stuffed bull.

But apparently we needed to bring that Trouble mini-series back into print.

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  • So it’s a good thing DC Comics has knocked the majority of their funnybooks down to the $2.99 price point, because you’re gonna need that money you’ve saved to buy their books this week. We have one $5.99 book being released (Action Comics #900), and for $4.99 each, the last issues of DC’s two year-long mini-series (Justice League: Generation Lost #24 and Brightest Day #24) and issue #50 of Justice Society of America. I gave up on JSA a while back, but I read the rest of these, and I may be double-tapped on Brightest Day #24 if the variant cover also features that big green swampy fella. Because, you know, I’m a sad completist.

  • So Secret Avengers #12 and Secret Defenders #12.1 in the same week? Seriously?

  • Here’s something I get asked for at the shop a lot: a trade paperback collection of Secret Wars. Oh, sure, there’s a hundred buck hardcover omnibus edition, but that’s bit of a harder sell than a theoretical $24.99 paperback containing the 12-issue series. But I bet we could sell a bunch if such a trade paperback were to be brought back into print.

    Funny, I have a lot of Civil War trades here.

  • Speaking of Secret Wars, I was speaking of Secret Wars the other day on the Twitter, and I had someone ask me if it was any good. My response was that it read like a transcript of a kid playing with his action figures (fitting, considering the Secret Wars toy tie-in line), and that it was, in a way, a form of naïve art. Like, all the basics of superhero comics distilled down to its very essence, without concern for subtlety or style.

    I’m not saying this to be critical…I like the Secret Wars series just for what it is. It’s…well, I was going to say it’s “not pretentious” but of course it is, at least in conception, if not in execution. But it’s a dumb superhero comic and sometimes you just want to read a dumb superhero comic where superheroes fight supervillains and Secret Wars fits that bill and it’s just fine.

    Anyway, Secret Wars: let’s have a trade of that, Marvel. I mean, c’mon.

  • And a trade for Infinity Gauntlet, too, for God’s sake. I get asked for that all the time. EDIT: Forgot there’s a hardcover edition coming out soon. Well, that won’t be as easy to sell as a paperback, but at least it’s something.

  • Also, it would be nice if Batman: The Dark Knight Returns were available for reorder, which it hasn’t been for the last couple of weeks. I know, I know, it happens, but still, this is one book that I hate to be without for the shop. This is, like, one of the very basic foundations for a graphic novel selection at a comic shop. You’d think everyone would have a copy by now, but no, I’m still selling plenty of them.

  • So we opened the store for Easter, which we never do, but I had to be at the shop anyway to get some work done, and, you know, what was I going to do with my Easter, anyway? Yardwork? Clean house? Hang out with family? Pfffft.

    Anyway, it’s a good thing I did, because a couple of regulars dropped by to pick up a lot of books they’d special-ordered, to the tune of several hundred dollars…okay, they were going to buy the books eventually anyway, even if they had to come on a day other than Easter, but still, better to get that money sooner than later. And I had another customer I hadn’t seen in about a decade pop in and drop some mad cash on back issues. And we were just generally busy the entire day, ultimately doing better business than we usually do on Sundays. (Also, Awesome Hospital‘s Matt Digges stopped by, because he took pity on me.)

    So, for future Easters I suspect we may remain open. I’m still closing on Christmas Day, though. And on Lefthanders Day, because I can only take the cruel oppression from you fascist righthanders for so long.

“THE ACTION NEVER ENDS”

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So we had a fella donate some boxes of comics to the shop the other day, because if it’s one thing we need, it’s more comics. Mostly it was ’80s superhero and girly comics, but there were some trading cards (in case you were wondering where that Jimmy Olsen card came from yesterday), and a handful of Marvel-produced retail bags, like this one from 1989:


I know Punisher was one of Marvel’s most popular characters at the time, but it’s still kind of weird seeing him there on the front of the bag instead of, say, Wolverine. Or Deadpool, if it were like a year ago.

And there he is again on the back of the bag:


Sorry, whoever it was who wrote the blurbs on the bag, I can say from experience that, no, people who liked the Punisher and Ghost Rider did not also like Destroyer, or, at the very least, didn’t buy it. Maybe they would have liked it if they’d bothered to look at it. Which they didn’t. …Would anyone out there like to buy some Destroyer magazines? How ’bout a dozen or so? Of each issue?

Actually, I did sell a run of those mags to a customer over the last weekend. That works about to, oh, about one set a decade. So if you want any for yourself, you better move fast!

“…He stands in imminent peril of becoming the eternal pawn of THE INFERNAL ONE.”

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I have an odd fascination with the unpublished Redeemer series written and drawn by Joe Kubert, and originally intended for release in the mid-1980s from DC Comics. It may be because it was one of my early encounters with the comic book version of “vaporware” – an advertised and hyped product (prominently featured in a favorite comics ‘zine at the time, Amazing Heroes, containing several completed pages of the first issue) that ended up never appearing.

At the shop, we newly uncovered another old box or two of promotional comics material, including a handful of DC’s “Coming Attractions” flyers listing forthcoming funnybook releases, dated October 1983 through January 1984. The front page feature of the October flyer was Redeemer:


And here is the specific information for the first issue, including what I’m assuming is the cover, though I suspect some kind of, um, Speedos or something would have been colored onto the final product:


And over the next thee installments of “Coming Attractions,” we get the info for issues #2-#4:


No idea if it got any farther than that before folks realized this series wasn’t going to happen and, hey, we should probably stop telling people about it. But reading those descriptions…just picture Kubert drawing all that. This would have been one crazy and beautiful-looking series.

Bob Rozakis writes briefly about the series’ demise, citing, among other reasons, complaints regarding the religious connotations of the title. (Wonder how those people reacted to Preacher?)

This interview indicates that the completed Redeemer stories may yet appear in a forthcoming Kubert anthology series. Can’t wait to see ’em. (Also, Kubert is doing a new Hawkman story for this anthology series, and I know you folks want to see that!)

It all eventually comes back to Swamp Thing.

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So here’s a thing that slipped past me: I was looking at our invoice for this week’s comics shipment, and noticed that Spawn #202 was on the list. “That’s funny,” I thought. “Didn’t #201 just come out a week or so ago?” And to the cycle sheets I went, and, yes…in just over a month, #200, #201, and #202 have (or are just about to) come out.

That’s not the thing that slipped past me. This is the thing that slipped past me…seeing on the cycle sheets that during 2010, only four issues of the regular Spawn series were released. And the reason that slipped by me is that…nobody complained. Not a single “when’s Spawn coming out?” that I can recall. Now, I know we have people who buy it at our shop…we don’t sell a lot of copies, not like in its heyday when it seemed like everyone was walkin’ up to the register with a Spawn in one hand, a Wizard in the other, and a copy of any given Valiant Comics title in their third hand. But we pretty consistently sell low but steady numbers on the book (with the extree-sized #200 moving about another 40% more copies than normal).

But it seems strange to me that a title that was once so prominent could fall out of notice, that it could be running so late and not attract my attention, or any customer complaints, by doing so.

On the other hand, I’m also not getting any complaints about the lateness of Image United, the “jam” book featuring most of the original Image artists, only because if this had come out on time, I’m pretty sure most everybody would have died from shock.

In other recent funnybook news, people sure have been commenting on the cover to Legion of Super-Heroes Annual #1 at our shop:


You can see a larger pic if you go to DC’s page for this issue and click on the pic. But, yeah, that’s an eyegrabber (er, so to speak, given that’s the Emerald Empress and her Eye an’ all), with Keith Giffen and John Dell doing their Kirby-est on that image. No idea if that comic itself is any good, having unfortunately dropped Legion from the reading list after 25+ years of following the title, but, you know, it looks okay, just giving it the ol’ flip-through. It’s the old Legion creative team of Paul Levitz and Giffen together again, which I know might grab the interest of some of you folks.

Something I’ve been getting a lot of requests for in the last week or two is Weird Worlds #1, the premiere issue of DC’s new sci-fi/horror anthology. And I’m suspecting it has something to do with this: here is the cover to #1:


And here is the cover to #2:


Yeah, I know having Lobo on the cover should have been a clue, but sometimes when you’re scanning the rack, you need that logo to pop out at you, and, well, with DC’s white cover theme that month, the titles were all shoved into the corner and not exactly obvious. And so, there were quite a few people who didn’t even know #1 came out, and starting asking for copies when they spotted that logo on the rack on the cover of #2.

Of course, it’s not unusual for people to ask for copies of the first issue because they didn’t notice something was out ’til they saw the second issue. Happens all the time. But it seems to be happening a lot more with Weird Worlds.

And because folks have been asking: yes, I’ve read Aaron Lopestri’s “Garbageman” serial in these first two issues of Weird Worlds, which is very much in the vein of the “man becomes monster in accident, seeks to regain humanity” genre that Swamp Thing belongs to. And it’s fine…I liked Lopestri when he worked on that other title in this genre, Sludge, and while there’s not a whole lot new here, “Garbageman” is still entertaining.

However, it does have me wonder when DC will just put out a Swamp Thing comic, already. They keep trying to fill that niche with comics like “Garbageman” and that Solomon Grundy mini, but, man, I wish they’d quit dancing around Swampy and just throw him out there, already. Okay, I know word on the street is that he’s involved in this whole Brightest Day event hoohar, but we’ll see what happens.

…And that was my “I Demand That a Certain Comic Book Publisher Bend to My Will and Bring Back My Favorite Character” whiny complaint for the day. Hope you enjoyed it.