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So yes, I started a Patreon account for myself, to fund this website. It’s something I’d been thinking about doing for a few months now, and actually had it ready to go for the last few weeks, but held off because 1) there was a thing going ’round a while back about comic sites opening up Patreons and I didn’t want to look like I was jumping on the bandwagon, and 2) there’s been a whole lot of awful stuff happening in The Real World over the last few weeks and it never seemed like an appropriate time.
But first, let me get a couple of things about of the way. I don’t plan on having any contributor-exclusive content…I don’t want anyone to feel as if they’re missing out on anything. Not that anything I write is so important and life-changing that people will start harming themselves if they aren’t part of the Progressive Ruin Elite and don’t have access to the Secret Good Stuff. But, basically, I don’t want to leave anyone out. This doesn’t preclude some eventual perk, though I don’t know what that will be. Buy you a cup of coffee, maybe? I don’t know.
Also, my production of Progressive Ruin isn’t dependent on financial support. Even if I wasn’t paid to do it, I’d still do it. I mean, I’d like to have a little scratch in exchange for the hours, days, years I’ve worked on this site. I have the big ol’ sidebar ad which helps with paying for hosting, but the Amazon referrals have declined of late and I’ve been looking for a way to replace that minimal income without putting up more ads.
I think Patreon is the way to go. It’s completely voluntary, and it’s just a small thingie in the sidebar to this site (and, um, there’s this meandering post, too). If you can pledge, like, a buck a month, every little bit will help. And of course you don’t have to…I’ll still be providing new content on this site every couple of days or so for everyone who wants it. Some of it might even be good, but no promises.
“But Mike! You own a comic book store! Surely you must be independently wealthy by now!” Well, sure, you’d think, but it turns out that comics retail isn’t necessarily a direct path to fortune. And starting up and running a small business is expensive. Everything’s going fine, it’s all paying for itself, I’m getting paid, but I’m working long hours and my free time is just that much more precious. Getting a wee bit of coin of the realm in exchange for using up some of said free time on this site would be welcome.
As I say in the introduction to my Patreon, one of my plans is to go back and clean up old Progressive Ruin posts, fix broken links and formatting, etc. I’ve been sort of doing that anyway, like when I occasionally link to an old post and decide to refurbish it a little so I don’t send you to old Haloscan comments or Journalista entries. What I want to do is start at the beginning and work my way forward, knocking everything back into shape. As this is nearly thirteen years of nearly-daily posts, clearly this will take some more of my free time, and subsidizing the project via Patreon pledges wouldn’t hurt.
Whether you contribute or not is fine. If you can spare a bit every month, that’s great…if you can’t, that’s okay, too. I appreciate all of my readers, even Ian, and the fact that my comment sections are regularly filled with funny and informative commentary from readers who aren’t insane hasn’t gone unnoticed by me. You folks out there are a big part of what makes my site what it is, and you all support me just by regularly reading what I write. Thank all of you for that.
Anyway, here’s one more link to my Patreon. I promise to try not to overdue plugging the thing here and elsewhere…and if I do, just give me a little tap on the shoulder and let me know.
Trouble with Comics had a massive response to Question Time this week…so massive that the responses were posted in three parts, all of which can be found here. The Question this time around is “what are your three favorite current titles?” and you can find my response at the end of Part Three.
Also, Twitter pal Ryan is Kickstartererering a comics-related novel he’s written, Four Color Bleed, and you can check out the details about that, including a preview sample of the novel, right here. Plus, my pal Weshoyot is one of the artists on the project, so you’ll be helping her out, too!
• • •
A few days ago I was chatting with pal Nat, and somehow the topic came up about a particular bagged four-pack of comic books published by Hamilton Comics in the mid-1990s that was distributed exclusively through the Walmart store chain. Three of the included books were the Eek! the Cat mini-series, pictured here in a scan “borrowed” from this eBay auction:
Nat wrote one of the stories featured in this comic, which is why he owns a couple of copies of the four-pack, and also why he was able to let me know the fourth comic in said pack was inexplicably the comic book adaptation of the Alex Winter/Tom Stern horror/comedy film Freaked:
(Image also “borrowed,” this time from the Comic Book Database.)
Now, why Eek! the Cat and Freaked were paired up like this, aside from Hamilton having these apparently piled up in a warehouse and undistributed to comic book shops (sadly, because I would have been all over that Freaked comic) I don’t know. But this was bit of an oddity, I thought, and what use is this blog if I can’t showcase oddities?
§ May 20th, 2016 § Filed under self-promotion, sterling silver comics Comments Off on Today’s short post brought to you by Mike’s recovery Thursday night from dental work earlier in the day.
Hey gang, I’ll be back on Monday with real posting, but meanwhile please enjoy my contribution to the latest Trouble with Comics Question Time, in which we discuss moments we really like from comics we don’t like all that much. My response is a comic I’ve discussed on this site before, but it’s been, like, a decade, so maybe it’ll all seem fresh and new.
Speaking of fresh and new, don’t forget that The Biggest Bang and Amelia Cole writer D.J. Kirkbride is going to be at my store this Saturday (said store being Sterling Silver Comics, located in Camarillo, CA). I expect you all to be there. …Yes, even you, the fellow from Rhode Island. They have planes for a reason, you know.
Turning out to be another Low Content Mode week at the ol’ site, due to other plans and Free Comic Book Day prep and so on. Sorry about that! One of those plans involved a family member buying me and the girlfriend tickets for Captain America: Civil War for a Thursday night viewing, so I’ll be rushing out of the shop and straight to that this evening. I’ve been hearing that it’s almost as good as Batman V Superman, but I guess I’ll see for myself soon enough.
I’ll probably get back to your questions starting next Monday, but in the meantime, remember to attend Free Comic Book Day this Saturday wherever you shop or bank, but try to come by my shop and meet ME ME ME and oh also Jaime “Love and Rockets” Hernandez, who’ll also be there, I guess. “Love and Rockets” is his actual middle name, by the way. I wouldn’t lie about that.
Also, I responded to the latest Question Time over at Trouble with Comics, re: my plans for convention season (do those plans involve excessive nudity? You’ll have to click that link to find out!). And pal Andrew is continuing his “Me and the Terrible ’90s” series, if you want to read good comics blogging, unlike what you’ve been finding on my site lately.
Anyway, happy Free Comic Book Day to everyone this weekend, and I’ll be back this Monday. Though I bet I’ll probably show up here before then plugging Free Comic Book Day again. Did I mention Free Comic Book Day? FREE COMIC BOOK DAY
First off, let me point you in the direction of pal Andrew’s latest endeavor, a personal retelling of his frontline battles that could only be called “Me and the Terrible ’90s.” That link will take you to Parts One and Two of the series, and will also show you the immediate precursors looking at awful merch ads from Wizard (as opposed to all those great merch ads). Anyway, it’s more great writing from Andrew, and that’s always worth celebrating.
Now, if I may plug myself (“…In public!? GASP”), here is the most recent Question Time over at Trouble with Comics, in which we discuss those creator(s) that we did not like at first blush, but gained an appreciation for as time went by. Please note my use of the parenthetical pluralization on “creator(s)” is mostly theoretical, as each and every one of us somehow managed to pick the same person. And it’s the worst person we could have picked for this. We are all horrible people. At least I can manage to lightly salve my soul with the knowledge that I once got to shake this person’s hand and thank him for all his great work. I don’t know what all those other guys at TWC are gonna do. (Also, the last link in my answer is supposed to go to this…not sure how that other link got published, since the correct link is in my final draft of the response, but we’ll get it fixed!)
Now let me address a couple of questions from my latest “ask me stuff” post:
Thom H. ashks:
“Any thoughts on the Ellis/Shalvie/Bellaire book Injection? I think it’s the best book on the stands right now — not to mention the best thing Ellis has written in years — and I don’t see much written about it on the Internet. How does is sell for you? Have you read it? How does it compare to other Ellis work in your opinion? etc. etc.”
I haven’t had a chance to read it…the dread irony of owning a comic shop is less time to read comics, I’m sure I’ve said before. But, it’s selling reasonably well for an Image book…not Walking Dead heights, no, but certainly better than some of their D.O.A. titles. It has a consistent following, and the occasional latecomers who catch up on the back issues. It’s also one of the few comics that customers regularly point out to me as one of their favorites, so…you know, that’s encouraging. As far as how it compares to other Ellis titles…well, like I said, I haven’t read it, but that customers are regularly talking about it makes it probably one of his most well-received books since Moon Knight.
• • •
Jay from Tennessee graces my land with
“Of course in your opinion, what is the best series of Shadow comics in the past 40 years and why?”
Well, that would be the Andrew Helfer/Kyle Baker run during the late 1980s…actually, the whole 19-issue run was good, with Bill Sienkiewicz on the first story arc, and the four-issue mini-series that kicked this iteration of the Shadow off, by Howard Chaykin, is a hoot as well. But Helfer/Baker’s particular brand of irreverence and black humor really did it for me, and you were never quite sure just what horrible thing was going to happen next. That they managed to (um, SPOILER ALERT, I guess) kill the Shadow and keep him dead for several issues was a remarkably entertaining feat, and the cover to the final issue is a thing of beauty.
I’ve read and liked other Shadow comics since, but they all seem so staid and mannered compared to the freewheeling craziness of Helfer/Baker’s run. I did write a bit about this series over a decade ago, so some of the links in that old post are going to be broken. Sorry about that! But this was a fine series, and now it’s been 27 years since I started waiting for that one-shot to wrap it all up!
1. I’m still taking questions and/or topics for discussion re: this crazy comics business we’re all interested in, if you’d like to contribute any. I’ll probably start going through them this coming Monday.
2. The latest Question Time over at Trouble with Comics involves creators we once liked but not so much anymore, and my response is more about my changing attitudes and perceptions rather than a reflection on the creator in question. It’s not you, pal, it’s me.
3. Hey, pal Dave resurfaced at his currently-retired site to present a comic he wrote.
Over at Trouble with Comics, the question this week is “what are your three favorite resurrections in comics?” Turns out two of my picks are related to two of my answers from last week’s “favorite deaths” question. GO FIGURE.
Anyhoo, once again, I’m sorry for the week of light content. Just had some full days in (cough) The Real World lately, but I’m not goin’ anywhere!
So I posted my Free Comic Book Day announcement in various places (such as my store’s site) yesterday, and thought I’d post it here, too (click to super-size):
Yup, Jaime’s going to have to put up with my shenanigans for a few hours that day, but hopefully enough of you fine folks will drop by to balance out my behavior. Also, that wasn’t the first version of the flyer I posted…I originally posted my initial attempt on Twitter with the comment “I’M NOT A GRAPHIC DESIGNER,” but fortunately Twitter pal Robb stepped in and said “…BUT I AM!” and knocked everything into the decent shape you see above.
Also, I’ve contributed once again to Question Time over there at Trouble with Comics, answering the query regarding my favorite three deaths. In comics, that is. I don’t suppose any of my answers will be any surprise, though I feel bad that I forgot about the one that made fellow Troublemaker Joe’s #3.
§ March 23rd, 2016 § Filed under self-promotion Comments Off on Here’s that link I promised you.
The Trouble with Comics Question of the Week, focused on the state of newspaper strips and featuring my typical overlong response, is now live for your perusal. Enjoy, won’t you?
§ March 9th, 2016 § Filed under retailing, self-promotion Comments Off on In which I’m basically just rewriting something I posted in 2013.
So this week’s Question over at Trouble with Comics is about “enhanced” covers (versus the variant cover topic we covered last week), and what we thought about ’em, and whether there were any we liked, et cetera, et cetera. I threw an answer or two into my response, including one cover I discussed on this site, lo, a decade ago now so I supposed enough time had passed to revisit it.
Fellow Troublemaker Logan had this to say in his own response:
“With the possible exception of the poly-bagged Deadpool card, can any retailer still move their copies of X-Force #1 at even face value? Yet it still gets mentioned in conversations regarding how many copies were sold, how popular the book was, and so on. The only gimmick to it was that there were different trading cards bagged with each issue,* and I don’t recall there being a shortage on any particular card, Mike Sterling would have a better memory of that though.”
The asterisk there was to an editorial footnote reminding us of the “reverse image UPC boxes” which I’d somehow driven out of my mind, though apparently that was a big deal in regards to how “collectible” and “rare” any particular variant of X-Force #1 happened to be. And by “collectible” and “rare” I mean “just slightly more copies of X-Force #1 out there than, say, grains of sand.”
Now, as I do recall, the cards themselves were available in equal numbers. It’s been a couple of decades, but that’s my recollection. But as I noted in this post from a few years ago (where I note the then-decline of Deadpool’s recent popularity and the lack of any kind of promised Deadpool movie…boy, that’s almost “political pundit” levels of foretelling, there), those comics sold like crazy, and even sells once in a while to this day. Yes, even at more than face value. Why, one can get upwards of $3 to $5 bucks per copy, even! Not very often, no, but it does happen.
There is still no shortage of these in the direct market, especially at stores that were open at the time, and even in new stores like mine where they just kinda turn up whether you’re trying to buy ’em from collections or not. And I think it’s because of that proliferation that, even now, even after an actual Deadpool movie is in honest-to-God real-life movie theaters and viewed by presumably willing audiences, there is, like I noted in that old post, still negligible interest in the Deadpool appearances in those early X-Force comics. I mean, people still want those New Mutants #98s with his first appearance, sure (I even had one in my shop for about five minutes last week before it was claimed), but that Deadpool trading card edition of X-Force #1, or that story with Mr. ‘Pool in #2…nope, no one’s biting yet, movie or no.
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