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So I was rewatching one of my DVDs of Land of the Lost, which was one of my favorite television shows as a child, and I still quite enjoy today. And I realize this explanation is going to sound odd to anyone not familiar with the show…I imagine there are such people, somewhere…but this particular episode, “The Pylon Express,” contains a sequence where Holly is dragged along inside one of the mysterious Pylons, as it travels through time and space to strange and frightening locales.

It’s not the locales that were frightening to me as a kid, as much as what would happen between destinations inside the Pylon. A spinning column of lights would lower over Holly as the Pylon made its journey, and it looked a little something like this:

And here’s the thing…the sound that accompanied that column of lights really bothered me as a kid, for no good reason I can describe. It just struck me as a very spooky sound…perhaps it was just because it was in conjunction with an especially creepy series of events in this episode, but whatever it was, it had enough of an impact that even today, even playing the sound file right now to test it out before uploading it to the site, I still feel a slight twinge of that creepy-crawly sensation, that feeling of “wrongness” that sound inspires.

Here’s that sound, and I know full well it’s not going to have near the impact on you that it had on me, and in fact you’ll likely go “Mike, what is your problem”…but I can’t go on about it like this and not play it for you, right?

direct link, in case the player doesn’t work
GAH.

I probably saw this episode when it first aired in 1975, when I was six. I’m nearly 40 now. I mean, what the hell, man? It’s amazing the things that stick with you.

On Sunday at the shop, I stacked up a big pile of Justice League and Justice Society trade paperbacks on a counter that I’d taken off our shelves, with the intent of putting them back in some semblance of order and noting what we needed to reorder. This inspired the following post on my Twitter thingie:

“Don’t fall over and crush me, giant pile of Justice League/Justice Society trade paperbacks and graphic novels!”

This inspired the following exchange between my special internet pals Chris Sims and Kevin Church on their respective Twitters:

theisb @mikesterling That’s how I always imagined you’d go.

Beaucoupkevin @theisb Really? I had it pegged as a hate crime.

theisb @Beaucoupkevin When Sterling dies, let’s cremate him, and then have the ashes packed, treated and put into a package that says “I’M CHALK!”

Beaucoupkevin @theisb And then put him on eBay.

theisb @Beaucoupkevin L@@K RARE COMICS RETAILER ASHES CHALK PLUS POGS NO RESERVE

Beaucoupkevin @theisb Seller name? CHROMIUMMAN-CGC

theisb @Beaucoupkevin and we can start referring to him as “Corpse Mike.”

See, it’s pals like these what toughen me up and keep me from shedding blogger tears on the off chance someone attempts to say something mean about me. Thanks, guys!

So I had one of these still floating around the store, still shrinkwrapped, still unopened and unloved in the 13 years since it was shipped to us. Every once in a while, I’d come across it…sometimes on a shelf in the back room, sometimes up front on a bookshelf somewhere, sometimes in my stash of eBay sale material. I’d pick it up and look at it, shaking my head and thinking “you know, I really should just bust this thing open and dump the comics into our bargain boxes,” but then I find something else better to do and put this package back in one of those three previously noted areas.

This past weekend, I came across this item again, while pal Dorian happened to be around. I said to him, “oh, man, not this thing again. What am I going to do with it?”

“Put it on your site,” sez Dorian.

“Hey, yeah,” sez I, so here you go. Another white elephant haunting the aisles of our funnybook store.

Here’s the back of the package, so you can see DC’s best of 1995:

“It’s been a banner year for DC Comics, with stories and art that are hotter than ever! In this special collectors set, you’ll find the seven comics that were selected by DC Comics editors as the best of 1995.”

Actually, it’s not a bad mix of superhero books…you get a Doug Moench/Ed Barreto ish of Batman, one of Waid’s early issues of Impulse, one of the animated Batman tie-in books (which were consistently excellent), and the debut issue of that one Superman book designed to come out quarterly, during that occasional fifth publishing week to accompany the other four, essentially weekly, Superman books. Plus, you also had that the beginning of that new direction of Wonder Woman by that one fellow, which wasn’t too bad at first, and an issue of Legionnaires with, I think, the horrifying fate of Sun Boy (or at least a Sun Boy…I don’t recall exactly, as that was a reboot or two back). And then there was Sovereign Seven #1, which I won’t say anything about since there are a few thousand of you out there reading this, meaning chances are pretty good at least one of you read this comic and I don’t want to alienate that guy.

I suspect that these may be reprints produced specifically for this package, but I haven’t popped it open to check. What, ruin its collector’s value?

…yes, I’ve read the list of things that fellow hates about comics…a list that includes me. He doesn’t think I’m very amusing…which is fine, since humor is very subjective and not everyone is going to find the same things funny. And he doesn’t like my weblog, though he only seems passingly familiar with it, but that’s fine, too. I don’t need everyone to like me, and if he doesn’t like my weblog, there are plenty of others that may be more to his taste.

By and large, his objections to me and my site appear to be relatively mild. However, if you want some real good ‘n’ solid Mike Sterling hating, something with some meat and a little bit of hair on it…then my friends, I direct you to pal Dorian‘s site The Cheater Pants of Mike Sterling. Maybe there you will find the Sterling hate that you crave. I know I do!

Well, let me explain this Twitter post, then.

So I’m at the back of the store, in the process of sorting out some books, when I happen to look up and see a young woman, blonde in about her mid-20s, standing outside and peering through our front window. She sees me, and gives a brief but cheerful wave. I kinda half-heartedly wave back, before I think “oh, wait, she’s probably waving at someone else in the store,” but I look around and see no one else reacting. I then think “well, that was weird,” and go back to what I was doing.

That young woman then enters the store and asks for “Dark Phoenix comics. Do you have any Dark Phoenix comics? She’s totally my gal and I want to read up on her.”

“Yeah, sure,” sez I, and I go to the shelf and find her a copy of the Dark Phoenix Saga trade paperback.

“Do you mind if I thumb through it?” she asks. “Feel free,” I reply.

I return to the back of the store to continue my sorting. The young woman flips through the book for a couple of minutes, and then heads to the register, where Employee Aaron is manning the post. She tells him “Can you hold this for me, I’ll be back for it later today.” Aaron says that’d be fine, and before she hands it over to him, she kisses the cover, and then takes off out the door.

I didn’t catch that last bit of the transaction, but Employee Aaron reported that to me, and…being the future DEA agent that he is…he also reported to me that the young woman smelled of the marijuana. I didn’t catch that particular detail…my sense of smell isn’t that great, sometimes…but perhaps that explains her level of…enthusiasm. And why she never came back for the book. Yeah, that came as a real surprise.

The book was given a good scrubbing, by the way. It wasn’t like she left behind any lipstick stains or anything, but still, dude, don’t kiss the books.

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Would you like another brief story of oral oddities at the store? Sure you would.

Many years ago, in the pre-pal Dorian days, back when Former Employee Rob still walked the shop’s aisles, we had a door-to-door saleslady come into the store selling spray bottles of all-purpose cleaner. She was about our age (again, mid-20s, which I was at the time, and probably shocks the heck out of Employee Aaron to realize that I was once his age) and she was really up and cheerful and totally committed to trying to sell us this all-purpose cleaner.

Well, it must have been a slow day at the shop, and there weren’t any customers around, so Rob and I kinda bantered back and forth with her, asking her half-serious but mostly goofy questions about the cleaner. You know, kind of giving her a bad time about it, but not really bad, and she was laughing and having fun with the questions, so there were no hard feelings or anything. No one was being a jerk, is what I’m trying to say.

Eventually she says, “and you know what’s best about this cleaner? It’s completely non-toxic!” At that point, she removes the top from her sample bottle, and then licks the tube that draws the fluid into the spray nozzle.

I’m fairly certain both Rob and I had the same reaction to this demonstration, and that reaction was most likely “AAAAAAUGH!”

I don’t entirely recall what happened after that, but I’m pretty sure the saleslady left under her own power, and not in an ambulance. And though Rob told me later “Geez, I almost bought a bottle right then,” we ended up not buying any of the cleaning fluid.

I do feel bad about that, now. At the very least, I owe her for giving me this story.

Man, I hope there weren’t any long term effects on her, “non-toxic” or not. Ick.

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There’s no real genteel way of saying “licks the tube.” Or, at least, I coudn’t come up with one as I was writing this. I apologize.

Some period Herbie news, from The Comic Reader #28 (August 1964)…please excuse the scan, as the originals are very faded mimeographed pages and it took some finagling to make it readable:

Here’s another snippet of news, this time from The Comic Reader #20 (October 1963), in which TCR editor Jerry Bails announces another planned ‘zine:

I don’t know that this ever came out…a quick Googling reveals no evidence…but man, would I have loved to have seen it. (EDIT: Okay, I know he was likely joking, but I had to Google it in case it was actually a real thing. I mean, wouldn’t you want to see something like this?)

“Well, since there are so many babies, you have to expect a few are going to end up in wood chippers.”

“You have to throw the occasional baby into a wood chipper, which will give all those times you don’t throw a baby into a wood chipper that much more integrity.”

“Why are you against parents playing with their babies?”

“Look, there are millions of babies in the world, and only three or four have been thrown into wood chippers. Clearly you’ve made some kind of rounding error if you think this is worth getting upset about.”

“I’m far too important and busy and above all this to be wasting my time explaining to you why I disagree with your stand on wood chipper maintenance, but I’m going to post a half-dozen overwrought responses anyway before throwing a hissy fit and giving up, all the while steadfastly refusing to address your actual point.”

“People who own wood chippers should be free to throw whatever they want into them, and who are you to tell them otherwise?”

“Why do you hate wood chipper manufacturers?”

“First!”

So I know I’ve complained about this before, but I wanted to throw some actual dates out there so you all have a stronger idea of what I’m talking about.

I first posted a note in my Twitter thingie on June 21st about how Walking Dead volume 1 (softcover) wasn’t available for reorder from Diamond. My memory was that at the time I wrote that, I hadn’t been able to reorder volume 1 for a couple of weeks, perhaps even a month.

After checking the date on that Twitter post, I went through the store invoices to see when was the last time I’d actually received any copies of Walking Dead volume 1 at the shop. According to the invoices, I received a reorder of copies of volume 1 on April 30th. I generally place my reorders through the distributor website on Sundays, and items I reorder arrive (barring accident and/or shipping error) on the second Wednesday after. That means the last copies I received came from a reorder placed on April 19th.

Now, I don’t usually reorder tons of any given book at once. I have a budget I try to keep to for each week’s reorders, so I can spread the money around a bit, reordering a few each of many things I can use for the store. In cases of books with instances of higher demand, such as Walking Dead, I order what I think I can sell over a period of a week or two, and place follow-up reorders accordingly so that I’d have fresh stock coming in each week. That also gives me some leeway in case Walking Dead experiences a sales lull (which it has, in the past), and I can cut off reorders on the book, hopefully only briefly, before I get overloaded with dead (heh) stock.

As I said, I received my reorders on Walking Dead volume 1 on April 30th. I had enough to last a week or two, and I probably (though I’m not certain) tried to reorder by about mid-May.

I didn’t keep a record of attempted reorders…I usually download a copy of the in-stock list from the distributor, and pull item codes from that when putting together my reorder. If Walking Dead volume 1 was unavailable, its item code would not have been on the list, and I wouldn’t have attempted to reorder it. But I would have double-checked on the distributor website to confirm that it wasn’t available, at least. I know I did so a handful of times.

I realize some of that is vague, but having given the exact dates of the last shipment of these books to us, and having given you enough information about my reordering habits and strategies, and that I recall having had a few weeks of ill-fated attempts to get the book by the time I made that June 21st Twitter post, I think I’m not too out of line saying that Walking Dead volume 1 was likely unavailable from our distributor beginning around the middle of May.

Since the middle of May.

The first volume, reprinting the initial issues of one of Image Comics’ precious few success stories in recent memory. The keystone of a whole series of paperback books reprinting this popular series. A series that recently released its 50th issue to much attention.

The first volume, unavailable. For most of the summer.

I had a number of customers looking to start reading Walking Dead, having heard the hype and read the reviews/interviews and so on. Normally, that first volume is an easy sell…it’s only $9.99, and it has a lot of good word of mouth, so it doesn’t take much to get someone to try it out. But it’s only an easy sell if I have any to sell. And because I haven’t had any copies to sell, those are lost sales. I’ve plenty of volumes 2 through 8, but a new reader’s not going to want to jump in with the second volume. S/he wants to start from the beginning, and if I don’t have the beginning, I don’t have that new reader.

There is a hardcover volume reprinting issues 1 through 12 (the equivalent of the first two softcovers), but a $29.95 hardcover isn’t an easy sell to someone who’s on the fence about trying out something new. Even showing ’em the contents isn’t enough to get that sale, sometimes…that $29.95 is a barrier that $9.99 isn’t. I did sell a few, but more often than not I got the “I’ll wait for the softcover” response.

I suppose it’s very possible that Walking Dead volume 1 was sporadically available through our distributor during this period. Maybe it was available for a brief time on, say, a Tuesday afternoon, and I had the bad luck not to check at that moment. But from (likely) about mid-May, and (certainly) since the end of June, Walking Dead volume 1 was not available for me to reorder whenever I checked. And I didn’t just check on Sundays when I was assembling my reorder…I would spot check during the week, just on the off chance it was available again.

I understand that stock runs out, that books fall out of print, that maybe there are issues out of everyone’s control. It doesn’t change the fact that it’s frustrating for someone who sells these things for a living when there’s a book there’s actual demand for, from a publisher that could likely use the revenue, and, for most of the summer’s peak sales period, sales on the series are crippled by the unavailability of its introductory volume.

Well, through the direct sales comic shop market, anyway. Pal Dorian informed me that the chain bookstore near where he lives has plenty of them. Of course.

As the subject line of this post says, Walking Dead volume 1 is now available for reorder. When I checked on Sunday, just three days ago, it wasn’t. As I was writing this post, it was. Hopefully it won’t go away for such an extended period again.

It’s a good series. It’s a series my customers want. It’s a series I want to sell to my customers. I just wish I could have had the opportunity to sell more of them this summer.

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RELATED: Kevin Church and Benjamin Birdie more succinctly express this retail frustration in their latest installment of The Rack.

“SUPERMAN1938.COM Superman INTERNET Domain Name RARE HTF”

Well, I have to admit…he makes a good pitch:

“First, this is a SERIOUS auction for the Serious Superman Fan! With that said, you have the chance to OWN my domain name Superman1938.com, which has been registered at Godaddy by myself as the owner. I understand that this name may be worth nothing to the casual internet junkee, but to me it’s honestly worth my BUY IT NOW price! Why?! Because I absolutely LOVE Superman and am a HUGE FAN and have been ever since I was just a little kid (just like most of you), and quite honestly I still can’t beleive I own SUCH A SIGNIFICANT SUPERMAN DOMAIN NAME! It’s like I FINALLY own something Superman, that no one else has! I think that the year at the end of the name, makes this name special! 1938 Superman items are just SO hard to find, and I just love the fact that my domain name covers the very first EPIC year of the greatest Super Hero Ever! It’s incredible, i’m really happy that I was able to get this rare domain name! So, unless someone BUYS IT NOW or at least offers me a great price… I am extremely ecstatic to own this awesome Superman Domain name! Beleive me, I just won’t get rid of it! My price has to be met, and I beleive there is someone out there who will understand why I want so much for this name! To tell you the truth, and I am being honest… Whomever buys this name, will be getting an amazing deal! The opportunities are endless, so send them best offers if you are truely interested in owning Superman1938.com!”

From the Questions from Bidders section:

“Q: What can you do with this ?? I just don’t understand the significance of this. thanks, anthony.

“A: Excellent question! This domain name can be used in many different ways! For one example, say Superman1938.com might be the only place on the internet in the World to actually look for Superman items from the year 1938, including MANY KEY ISSUES ;). Collectors want to know these things, and that’s just one example.”

Huh. Well, let’s think about this. Obviously, there are Superman items from 1938 already on sale in numerous places, but maybe Superman1938.com can be a gathering of links to those sellers (sort of like Sketchcards.com).

Or maybe it could be a historical overview site, restricted to the character’s impact and influence with its initial appearance. Kind of limiting, and perhaps redundant given the amount of info about this period on other sites…but there really isn’t anything quite like those original Siegel and Shuster Superman stories. A site specifically devoted to examining the art, stories, themes, influences, etc. of those earliest books would be of interest.

Or it can be a place to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the character (as implied by the banner in the auction), but note you’ve only got a few months to go, and I imagine the 71st through 74th anniversaries won’t grab that much attention. However, you’d be all set for the big seven-five.

Or it could just be a link-dump, a central gathering place for links to Superman news and items of note around the web. Maybe not “1938” specific, but I’m guessing “Superman.com” is taken and the “1938” suffix is as good as anything else to make the domain “rare.” (Or at least “unique,” which may be what the seller actually meant.)

Or somewhere there’s a guy posting on an internet message board under the handle of “superman1938” and wants a domain of his very own.

So what would you do with this domain name? Aside from posting links to other domain name auctions, that is.

Hmmm…now I’m thinking about “SwampThing1971.com.” That’ll make me rich, I’m certain.

“Looks really impressive” is understating it, surely. “Will freak you the heck out, and all your friends as well” may be more accurate. But so long as your hands are hefty, why would you mind, right?

What the hell kind of insect is that? Perhaps some kind of weird mummy insect, with wrappings just on its legs? …There’s something almost Charles Burns-ish about how that alleged insect looks.

AVOID THE TERRIFYING CLOWNS:

There’s probably an Insane Clown Posse reference to be made here, but I’ll defer.

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BONUS CONTENT, NOT NECESSARILY TERRIFYING:

I’m assuming by “fooling” they mean “mauling and/or eating.” Well, not that Peter Porkchops was ever in danger of being eaten by Wolfie, here, but still, you imagine Wolfie was probably hoping.

Anyway, that book has “blogger who lucked into a book deal” all over it. You know whoever wrote that had a Blogspot account where he listed a new Way to Bother A Pig every day, and eventually they got compiled into a $17.95 softcover book and now it’s providing an important service for bookstores across the nation by supplying a solid foundation for the remainder tables.

I could be wrong, and maybe in the DC Funny Animal universe there’s money to be made in fostering ill relations between wolves and pigs. Or maybe pigs are just singled out, as lower-class citizenry that Funny Animal society has decided would be the target of its scorn and abuse.

More optimistically, sort of, maybe it’s not just pigs, but every animal gets to be a target of a “How to Fool…” type book, to put everyone on more or less equal footing. “How to Annoy a Sloth.” “How to Irritate an Orangutan.” “How to Badger a…Well, a Badger, I Guess.” I would hope these would be more on the good-natured side of gentle ribbing and generally friendly teasing, but given how funny animals tend to behave toward each other in the comics….

Or maybe I’m just reading too much into this. Lord knows I never do that.