retailing

New comics and new magazines about old comics.

filed under Categories retailing, sick day, this week's comics

What stinks about being sick is that I suddenly have more time to read, but I’m not able to easily concentrate on what it is I’m reading, which makes things a little difficult. So, of course, both the new issues of The Comics Journal and Alter Ego come out. I’m feeling a little better now, but there was no way I was going to be able to read these last night. Oy. TCJ contains a series of articles about Cerebus and its creator, Dave Sim, plus an interview with Ed Brubaker and reprints from George Carlson’s Jingle Jangle Tales. I own a handful of Jingle Jangle Tales, and they’re all demented and brilliant…if you’ve not seen this comic before, you have to take a peek at the new TCJ. Anyway, this new issue looks interesting, but I haven’t been able to do more than just skim it, unfortunately.

The new Alter Ego has more stuff about Frankenstein’s Monster in comic books than you’d ever want to see, ever…it does has a short Frankie-focused interview with Bernie Wrightson, plus a look at a comic I haven’t read enough of, Dick Briefer’s version of Frankenstein. This issue includes 25 daily strips by Briefer for a proposed Frankenstein daily, and they’re really something else.

Other new arrivals (possible SPOILERS):

Mad Magazine #447 – Sergio Aragones brings us “A Mad Look at Politicians,” which is great, as Aragones always is. The mag also includes a pull-out Alfred E. Neuman for President poster. Look for the Mort Drucker George W. Bush as the Cat in The Hat cover.

Punisher #12 – okay, okay, the story’s finally over, for all you people who got tired of it. I enjoyed it, myself. Sometimes I need a little morally-abhorrent mayhem in my comics reading, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

Astro City – A Visitor’s Guide – eek, $5.95? But there’s a lot of material packed into this comic…lots of text pages that I’ll have to read later when I’m not so sick, a short comic by Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson, and Ben Oliver) and an extensive gallery of Astro City’s inhabitants by a variety of artists (including Howard Chaykin, Kelley Jones, Dave Gibbons, and Bruce Timm). I think you’ll get your money’s worth out of this funnybook.

Fallen Angel #16 – good as usual, and equally good is the news that Fallen Angel sales have bumped up a bit, with the possibility of a second collection. The promo comic helped, but I’d like to think a little online word-of-mouth (via comics weblogs and elsewhere) helped a bit, too.

Action Comics #820 – I read Superman comics, so you don’t have to…the art on this issue by Carlos D’Anda is nicely done, reminding me a bit of Art Adams (appropriate, given Adams’ work on the covers lately). But, really, the story didn’t really do anything for me…the villain’s M.O. seemed different from what I remembered, and the sudden focus on the guest-hero near the end of the book was admittedly interesting, but out of nowhere and out of place, I think.

Also: JSA #66 (a happy ending all around, I guess, as one of the “mistakes” of Zero Hour is corrected), Fables #30 (Snow White finally gives birth, and the winner of the Fabletown election discovers the cloud in his silver lining…very amusing issue), Ex Machina #5 (really, you need to be reading this comic), Challengers of The Unknown #5 (there’s nothing quite like a Howard Chaykin comic), and Tom Strong #29 (it’s an “everything you know is wrong” story, but at least for once there’s no pretense at trying to fool the reader that really everything we know is wrong).

Other arrivals: the SPX 2004 Anthology (the War issue, which has an alarming cover by Steve Lieber, featuring a tank rolling over the remains of comic characters, Charlie Brown’s shirt fluttering on the barrel), Secret War #3 (just took a brief glance through it…is it really half “S.H.I.E.L.D.” files?), and X-Force #3 (…I’m just still amazed this is actually happening).

We also received our incentive packs for our orders on the Dreadstar reprint volumes. Fortunately, we were going to order quite a few of the Dreadstar books anyway, so it’s not like we had to bump up our orders a lot to reach the incentive plateaus (like we had to on that most recent issue of Wolverine in order to get the variant…which arrived this week, finally). And it’s a good thing we didn’t, because we would have been pissed…included in the packs were four copies of the Battle of the Planets paperbacks that reprinted the Gold Key comic book series. You remember, the books that featured such terrible black and white reproductions of the comics that the publisher had to take returns on them? This is apparently how the publisher is getting rid of them again. Well, crud.

"I will pick up your dirty bird!"

filed under Categories retailing

1. Finally, after months (well, days) of me badgering him, pal Dorian has posted photographic proof of the Baby Huey movie.

2. All I have to say about the most recent episode of Justice League Unlimited – God bless you, Paul Dini, for giving us an animated version of B’wana Beast. I even got a kick out of his “surfer” accent (and somewhere, The World’s Biggest B’wana Beast Fan is writing a letter of protest). The episode as a whole was a lot of fun, and very much played for laughs…that was original Not Ready for Prime Time Player Laraine Newman as Medusa! Also, they’re still playing with the romantic connection between Batman and Wonder Woman…when did this whole Batman/WW romance Zeitgeist start going around? It’s been popping up in the comics over the last couple of years, now it’s in the cartoons…somehow, this is all Grant Morrison’s fault, I’m sure.



3. That panel to the right is from the infamous Iron Man #157, as described in detail over on the Comic Treadmill. And yes, having now perused said funnybook, it’s as incredibly average as H says. Really, the most you can say about it is that yes, it fills 20 (or however many) pages, thus allowing Marvel to publish an Iron Man comic that month.

3a. And yes, H and Mag, I do indeed have more copies of this comic available.

3b. Speaking of the Treadmill, did you see this panel Mag posted? If you like out-of-context comic panels, like I know I do, then you really need to check it out.

4. For those of you who had a hard time believing that people treat our store like a day-care center like Dorian said, let me relate a story from Sunday: so I was working at the back counter, putting together some reorders, when I spotted a couple of little girls (about 3 and 4, maybe) wandering around unattended. They were running (which I had to put a stop to before they fell and got hurt), they were spinning one of the comic racks around as fast as they could (I had to put a stop to that too, being the mean old man that I am), they were coming to the counter I was working at and grabbing papers, tape dispensers, what have you, off that counter, and just generally getting underfoot (particularly in employees-only areas). No parents in sight, mind you. After a few minutes of trying to be patient with them, I finally had to draw the line when the older girl grabbed one of my pencils and attempted to write on some of the comic boxes.

Well, that was enough. I finally tracked down their parents, who up to this point had made no attempt to keep tabs on their kids, on the other side of the store (we have a fairly sizable shop) and informed them that they’ll have to supervise their children. The mom’s response? “But I’ve been supervising them all day.” Yes, I swear to you, she actually said that. I’m sorry if asking you to do your job as a parent is an inconvenience, but unless you’re going to pay me some babysitting money, I’m not going to take care of your children for you.

5. And here’s something incredibly immature of me to post, but you know kids were giggling over these panels 35 years ago:




from Huckleberry Hound #38 (July 1969)

In which I talk about my faovorite subject, me.

filed under Categories collecting, retailing

1. Courtesy pal Tom again…more reviews of Green Arrow’s arrows. Hey, I think it’s funny.

2. Word on the street is that Thought Balloon’s Kevin Melrose has a new site, Scryptic Studios, for “aspiring, semi-professional, and professional comic book writers.” Neat! (I particularly like Kevin’s confession on this page.)

3. THE MEME: From the Comics Journal message board, a list of questions regarding comic stores and comic-buying habits…I see pal Ian answered those questions — that’s my place of employment he’s talkin’ ’bout, brother! I thought it might be at least a little interesting (well, for me, anyway) to answer these, at least from the perspective of someone who manages a comic shop:

A. Do you tend to go to the nearest store, the best store, any store, or does it matter?

I go to the store I work at. Actually, before I entered my indentured servitude, that was my store of choice since first shopping there over 20 years ago.

B. Ladies, what books do you tend to purchase, or what kind would you like to purchase (if you are a male please leave blank or supply what a girlfriend reads)?

The girlfriend really, really, really likes Spider-Man…she was also a fan of Marvel’s G.I. Joe series.

C. What one thing would you add or change about your most frequented store (i.e. What is the worst thing about the store)?

I would change the backroom organization (i.e. less stuff), and get even more shelves for the front of the store. Ideally, I would love more space…we may have to wait for one of our neighboring stores to move out so we can knock down a wall and expand, because I’ll be damned if I’m moving the whole store again. (After our last move into a larger location a few years back, I had dreams about moving boxes of comics for months.)

Oh, and I’d also change my salary to a million dollars a month.

D. What one thing would you not change (i.e. What is the best thing about the store)?

The wide and varied selection of new and old funnybooks! And our customers…despite my recent gripes about certain types of customers, we’ve got a pretty good clientele with several cool and nice people.

E. Do you read any small press comic books currently? Which one(s)? (examples: Lone Star Press, Avatar)

Yes…I’ve been a long supporter of independent comics, stemming in part from being exposed to a wide selection of indies at my shop of choice from the very beginning of my comic-shop patronage. I’ll check out just about anything from Fantagraphics, Slave Labor, and, oh, that AiT/Planetlar company too, I guess…and I’ll poke through any indie that happens to grab my attention.

F. What back issues do you buy?

Mostly DC’s funny animal stuff by Shelly Mayer, as well as his Sugar & Spike, Nancy comics, the Dell/Gold Key Peanuts comics (still missing a couple!), Turok (the original good stuff, not Valiant era), any fun-looking Silver Age Superman-family comics, 1950s and 60s-era Archies, Herbie, and old fanzines.

G. How do you decide what comic book to buy? Writer, artist, character, word of mouth, etc?

All kinds of things…I notice that I’ll buy DC Comics based on character, while Marvel books I’ll buy based on creator, more or less (though I’ve been buying Hulk for decades, through thick and thin). Word of mouth usually doesn’t convince me to buy comics, but all that talk about Street Angel online got me to try it out. Mostly…if it grabs my eye, it’s halfway there to getting onto my purchase pile.

H. Do you buy strictly current age comic books or do you buy older comic books? What kinds?

I mostly buy new comics, if only because I’ve been buying comics on a regular basis for the last 25 years…if I wanted to read it, I would have bought it off the shelf when it was new.

I. How do you feel about graded comic books?

I’m assuming this means those slabbed, “professionally-graded” comics you see people paying too much for on eBay all the time. I don’t know…I can understand the need for such a service, given most auction sellers can’t grade their way out of a paper bag (to use one of our favorite nonsensical expressions)…but the end result is people paying far too much for items that don’t warrant such prices. People investing too much money in overpriced slabbed books are people that won’t be in the hobby much longer, once they realize they’ll never get back the money they’ve spent.

J. What comic book related merchandise do you buy?

Not much…I do occasionally pick up a single HeroClix of certain characters (like Swamp Thing, natch), and I’ll buy the DC Direct Golden Age character action figures, though they’ve mostly dried up lately. Also, I am still sort of semi-looking for that Fin Fang Foom figure Toy Biz put out a while ago.

K. What do you read if you are not reading comic books?

Geez…just about anything. I’m a voracious (and fast, thankfully!) reader. Just finished The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (lent to me by a customer, who had also let me borrow his run of Flashman novels). Also just read Coalescent by Stephen Baxter (who for once didn’t end his science fiction novel with “we’ll never interact with other worlds in any meaningful fashion, we’re pretty much stuck on Earth, and there’s no escape from the entropical death of the universe. The end”). On the waiting to read pile: Death Rat by Mystery Science Theatre 3000‘s Mike Nelson. I also have a subscription to Macaddict. And I’m slowly working my way through The Old West history series from Time/Life Books that my parents subscribed to in the early-to-mid-70s, and have just recently given to me. And, sometimes, if I’m waiting for something on the computer (like for a CD to burn, a restart, etc.), I’ll pick up the dictionary that I keep on the desk near my Mac and just randomly go through a page.

L. What do you buy at comic book conventions?

I haven’t been in years…when I did go, I just mostly poured through the dollar boxes looking for bargains. My best find was someone selling 1960s Archie comics three for a buck. Woo-hoo!