I can’t believe this is even being argued about.

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I’ll try to keep this brief:

Here is the point of this post made by Kevin Church:

Telling your customer base in an store marketing e-mail to not buy comics that you, presumably, have ordered and are going to stock at your shop is not a good idea.

And that’s it.

Seems pretty self-evident to me….and it must be self-evident, as the folks in Kevin’s comments section, and elsewhere, who are arguing against Kevin are doing so by bringing up things that have nothing to do with his original point. And trying to steer ’em back to that point doesn’t seem to do any good.

Yeah, I know, “ARGUING ON THE INTERNET – BAD WASTE OF TIME, OR WORST WASTE OF TIME?” I even lost my temper a bit, unfortunately, since the boneheadedness of some of those folks finally got to me. I even used a swear, OH NOES, which allegedly drove one person away, coincidentally saving him the embarrassment of actually having to address the real argument once it was laid out for him.

Look, if you want to argue Kevin’s actual point, fine. If you think retailers should broadcast a “DON’T BUY THIS COMIC” message to their entire customer base, even if it costs them sales, fine. But don’t bring in a bunch of extraneous shit that only proves that 1) you can’t read, or 2) you can’t address the actual argument.

OH NOES ANOTHER SWEAR.

EDIT: Bill D. sums it up, without being a potty mouth like me.

EDIT 2: And I’m done talking about this. I can only say the same thing so many times, and while most people get the point, some never will. If you still feel like arguing…here you go.

Here’s something a little more fun, hopefully…a brief fight scene from the forthcoming Spirit movie, taken from the San Diego Comic Con:


I suspect this may not stay online long, so if it vanishes, just look around and I’m sure it’ll turn up again.

I think it’s kind of entertaining, actually…parts of it even look like it came straight from Eisner’s pen. This certainly makes me feel better about the film than the “Remember Sin City?” trailers we’ve seen so far. Don’t know if I’m entirely sold on seeing the Octupus’ normally hidden face on-screen…but hey, if you’ve got a Samuel Jackson in your flick, you’re gonna show him off.

EDIT: Whoops! And there goes the video. Ah, well…nice while it lasted.

And now, for no good reason…

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…other than wanting to see some Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez art on the site, here are Superman and the Joker hanging out at Venice Beach:


Also, Always Remember:

CASUAL SUPERMAN IS CASUAL

images from DC Comics Presents #41 (Jan. 1982)
by Marty Pasko, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, and Frank McLaughlin
…yes, someone named McLaughlin inked this Joker story

Prepare for your immediate thrizzling.

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All you need to know about the new comics coming in this week:


My conversation with New Employee Tim regarding the imminent release of Tales Designed to Thrizzle #4:

Tim: “What’s it about?”

Me: “There’s no easy answer to that.”

Tim: “Well, what genre is it?”

Me: “It is its own genre.”

Other items coming to us from Diamond this week:

  • Absolute League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier – apparently still missing the long-promised record which is going to bum out one of my customers who wanted this book. “I’m very disappointed,” he’ll say to me, and I’ll collapse to the ground, crying, right there next to the anime magazines.
  • Beatles Collectors Edition Monopoly – don’t look at me like that, it’s a special order. Anyway, sooner or later we’re all gonna have our own personalized Monopoly sets. (Chris Sims Monopoly: “Get Kicked in the Face. Get Kicked Directly in the Face. Do Not Pass Go. Do Not Collect $200.”)
  • Death Note Misa Amane Straightjacket Version Action Figure – one hundred fifty smackers. Oh thank God it’s a special order.
  • Fall of Cthulhu: Godwar #1 – I’ve been enjoying this series from Boom! Studios, which gives us some threads of continuity from story to story, instead of several self-contained Lovecraftan horror shorts. (Ew, “horror shorts” — I had to wear a pair of those in gym class.) Not that there’s anything wrong with their short story anthologies…Cthulhu Tales #4 is also due this week.
  • Fangoria #276 – get a copy in every month (or so), and it always sells. Probably to the same guy. I’m not even sure to whom we sell it…I just know it gets sold.
  • Galaxy Quest: Global Warning #1 – kinda curious how this will do. It surprised me that someone pursued the comics license for the Galaxy Quest film…just never occurred to me that we needed to see more adventures of those characters. Guess I was wrong.
  • Helen Killer #4 – Still never got my copy of #2 that Diamond shorted us. Someone remind me to order a copy direct from the publisher while they still have ’em.
  • “I Was Kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space!” – oh, and by complete coincidence, issue #2 of a comic by that very same name is coming out this week.
  • Judge Dredd Complete Case Files Vol. 10 – These are great books filled with classic material, and would probably be consistent sellers if any of them were ever reorderable on a consistent basis. (I think I managed to get another copy of volume 5 or 6 in once.)
  • Lone Ranger #12 – oh, yeah, that’s right…there was a Lone Ranger comic coming out for a while, wasn’t there?
  • Millennium TP – a reprinting of DC’s crossover event that featured an invasion of alien imposters who infiltrated the personal and superheroic lives of their characters, taking advantage of Marvel’s current crossover event which features an invasion of alien imposters who infiltrated the personal and superheroic lives of their characters.
  • Marvel Adventures: Hulk #14 – those of you (Rick) jonesing for more Peter David-written Hulk comics…here you go. Yeah, I know, “but it’s a kids comic, it doesn’t count, blah blah blah.” It’s still fun stuff…you’ll live, fanboy.
  • Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe – a rerelease with a “skull variant” that I haven’t seen yet, but then I haven’t exactly gone looking for it, either. Anyway, this is one of our most requested backlist items from Marvel, and I’m glad it’s available again…at least for a little bit, anyway.
  • Secret Invasion #5 is joined on the rack by no less than four new Secret Invasion tie-in minis: SI: Thor, SI: Inhumans, SI: Runaways/Young Avengers, and SI: X-Men…and not to mention Captain Britain #4 is a tie-in issue as well. Goodness.
  • Sergio Aragones’ Actions Speak – it’s a reordered item, not a new one…and I have to reorder this on a pretty regular basis. Shame the companion series to this one, Louder Than Words, is out of print, and has been for quite a while.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog #191 – I can’t believe this is still coming out. One hundred ninety-one issues…that over six times as many as the last Swamp Thing series. That’s 20 more than the Swamp Thing series prior to the one prior to that last Swamp Thing series. What a world, what a world.
  • Tales Designed to Thrizzle #4 – have I mentioned this is coming out? It’s coming out.
  • So, one week after getting Uncle Scrooge #377, Walt Disney’s Comics #692, and the Vacation Special, we’re getting new issues of Scrooge and WDC&S. On one hand…at least they’re catching up, since they’re way behind schedule. On the other hand…I’m sure our Disney fans at our shop will enjoy dishing out an extra $16 this month to accommodate Gemstone’s publishing problems.
  • At long last, it’s our replacement Watchmen books that got lost a couple of weeks back! Why, I remember when we had people practically knocking the door down trying to find copies of this after seeing the trailer.

In which I reach a serious level of perversity in regards to Watchmen film merchandise.

filed under Categories watchmen

One of the unintended consequences of running my Things Not to Say… mini-comic a couple of days ago is that I am now getting people feeding me the “I’m very disappointed” line both in my comments sections and at the shop (and I’m totally looking at you, Brandon from the game store next door).

And, you know, that’s fine. So long as you all can deal with the guilt when I finally snap and wreak havoc throughout the county and strike terror into the hearts of its denizens, starting with poor, innocent Employee Aaron.

Anyhoo, I’m glad you all seemed to enjoy (or at least tolerate) some of my old mini-comics work. You can see a fuzzy scan of the cover of the print edition of Mike Sterling’s Progressive Ruin in my first anniversary post, which also has a reproduction of a letter of comment I wrote as a 12 year old, but feel free to skip that. But there’s a little more detail regarding our comics-publishing concern there, if you’re interested. And if you want to see another strip I did from those days, I posted one here three years ago…be sure to click the “page two” link for…the rest of the story.

In other (well, mostly store-related) news:

  • Watchmen appears to be available, or at least orderable, from our distributor again. But now Batman: The Dark Knight Returns is out of stock. ARGH!
  • Spent some time over the last day or so swapping out some of the promo posters from the wall and in the window…it’s always best to get those posters out of the window before they all turn the same shade of blue. I also went through our section of posters intended for retail sale and did a little maintenance, and noticed a few things:

    1. Whoo boy, nobody wants that “Brand New Day” Spider-Man/Wolverine poster.

    2. …But that “Iron Man in space” poster by Joe Quesada did very well. Thanks, popular and surprisingly-good movie!

    3. COMIC BOOK CHARACTERS WE DON’T NEED ANY MORE POSTERS OF: The Fantastic Four. Okay, maybe more solo ones of the Thing. And I realize there are a lot more posters out there of, say, Spider-Man, but Spidey posters generally sell (the poster in point 1 excepted). FF posters, not so much.

    4. Oh good gravy, we still have that damned New Warriors poster from the early ’90s? And I actually put it in the poster rack for display? “HELLO COME LOOK AT MY ALBATROSS HANGING IN THE POSTER RACK RATHER THAN AROUND MY NECK.”

    5. I think we may be past the “sell-by” date on the couple of Matrix posters we have left.

    6. Now I’m wondering what sort of Watchmen posters we’ll get as part of the movie merchandising push. These ones, for sure, but maybe we’ll get a nice shot of Rorschach, hands on his hips, standing heroically, chest and chin thrust out, and a big blocky “RORSCHACH” logo across the poster’s bottom edge. Or maybe he can be throwing a punch at the viewer. Basically, I want the same type of posters that we got with 1997’s Batman and Robin.

  • Speaking of Watchmen merchandise, it occurred to me that we’re going to get the inevitable trading card set based on the film, and that it’ll likely feature those peculiar “own a piece of the prop/costume” cards that feature a small piece of said prop/costume cut out and embedded into the card. Dr. Manhattan’s costume cards would have to be entirely from the flashbacks (“Congratulations! You are the proud owner of a piece of Dr. Manhattan’s ‘plum-smugglers’ from the Warner Bros. film ‘Watchmen'”).*

    I thought it’d be neat if they could come up with a way to make special “Rorschach” chase cards, with a layer of black liquid floating between two thin semi-translucent pieces of white plastic…but of course, it probably wouldn’t take much for one of those to break, damaging other cards in the pack/box. Maybe some kind of heat-sensitive card…a close of up Rorschach’s mask, that looks blank until you apply some heat to it and the black patterns begin to show up.

    This is what I think about when I really should be thinking about something else. Anything else.

  • Also, judging by reaction to the idea Kid Chris and I had about a Mario Kart-style Watchmen racing game…there ain’t nobody who doesn’t want that game. “Ain’t anybody?” Well, you know what I mean…the people have spoken, and they want Giant-Headed Silk Spectre and Dr. Manhattan ‘n’ so on in their little race cars. Who could blame them?
* Okay, Dr. Manhattan’s costumes, such as they are, will likely be computer-generated, too. Unless the actor will be wearing the costume, and the “Dr. Manhattan” effect will be added to his body after the fact, or…I’m thinking too much about this.

A tale of tragedy and woe.

filed under Categories wood eye

Another bizarrely disturbing strip by me, from the print edition of Mike Sterling’s Progressive Ruin, 1998:

NOTES:

1. I drew the first page, set it aside for a couple of years, then drew the second page so that I could have the finished story in my Progressive Ruin comics digest.

2. I found that math equation on the internet somewhere. I guess that’s sufficiently complex for the purposes of the strip.

3. I don’t know what the ultimate purpose of this strip is, beyond “sometimes people suck.” Or maybe “animals that can do higher math always get the shaft.” Something like that. Make up your own moral.

4. That poor snake. I remember drawing that deathgrip Tommy has the snake in, in that second panel, and thinking “this is both funny and remarkably pathetic.” Also, Tommy’s a little tall in that second panel. Maybe he’s standing on a crate or a bale of hay or something. He is at a fair.

5. My friends worry about me, sometimes.

Yes, this is where those "Things Not to Say…" posts in the sidebar came from.

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[EDIT: Ignore the “sidebar” comment in the title, there…those links vanished when I revamped the site a few years ago. You can find them here: 1 2 3.]

Straight outta 1996, it’s a mini-comic by me! Please pardon the lettering:

NOTES:

1. Isn’t that a nice paper color? “Salmon” brings out the art, don’t you think?

2. Yes, the name of our mini-comics publishing concern was “Full Frontal Harvey,” named after an overheard comment by some MTV host or ‘nother about Harvey Keitel’s performance in Bad Lieutenant.

3. I have heard every one of these.

4. The “I’m very disappointed” lady was looking for an issue of Stray Toasters we didn’t happen to have at the time, and I can still hear the particular tone of voice she used when she said that, and it still grates. ARGH.

5. Seriously, I don’t know what’s up with what I was putting on the shirts. Except for the “Democracy” t-shirt, which was the name of pal Cully’s punk band.

6. My favorite panel in this comic is the “do you sell comics” one…I swear to God, that’s where the kid was standing when he asked me that. Also: Swamp Thing cameo!

7. None of the people in these drawings are meant to look like any specific customer…except the “I’m very disappointed” lady, who looked pretty much just like that. GAH, that was annoying.

8. The “how much is this comic” panel shared the page with the copyright information, and where to mail your buck and a half for the latest issue of Wood-Eye…and featured my worst lettering ever, so I’m sparing you the horror.

Don’t worry, it’s not another linkblogging post.

filed under Categories retailing, watchmen

While breaking down the comic shipment Wednesday morning, prior to opening:

New Employee Tim: “Another Wolverine one-shot? This makes me want to punch Marvel.”

Employee Aaron: “How long have you worked here, and you already want to punch Marvel?”

Me: “Yeah, seriously…what took you so long?”

Also, we finally received an order of Watchmen trade paperbacks…not the order Diamond lost on us last week, but a second order I placed a few days after that initial doomed order, prior to DC runnin’ out of copies.

Guess what trade paperback we didn’t sell a single copy of on Wednesday? After weeks of people coming in and demanding it?

I think we’ll sell through on them by the weekend, but still, just a little annoying.

At least, I’m assuming we didn’t sell any Wednesday, as I was still feeling under the weather and left the shop early. I decided that morning that after I pulled the comic savers, did the mail order, did some reordering, and took care of some other business I had to take care of at the shop, I was going to leave early and let Employees Tim and Aaron handle the rest of the day.

I managed to leave 45 minutes before closing. Ah, well.

Other new comic day notes:

  • Okay, it’s not a new comic, but we reordered the All Star Batman and Robin hardcover a few weeks ago, and in the shipment it was originally supposed to arrive in, it didn’t. We called it in as a shortage, and replacements were on the invoice as coming in this week…and they didn’t arrive again. It’s some kind of cosmic irony that the comic store managed by the one man on the planet who unashamedly loves All Star Batman can’t get the hardcover back in stock. DARN YOU, WHOEVER’S IN CHARGE OF COSMIC IRONY!
  • Other reorder frustration: the Walking Dead volume 1 softcover has been unavailable from Diamond for about three months now, more or less. Kinda makes it hard to sell volumes 2 through 8 to new readers who might be interested in it. Yes, there is a hardcover that includes the comics from volumes 1 and 2, but a $9.95 paperback is easier to sell to someone just trying it out, as opposed to a thirty buck hardcover. Here’s hoping it’s back in print soon.
  • Army @ Love: The Art of War #1 – the “second season” of Rick Veitch’s war satire looks as if it might quite possibly be even weirder than the initial series. And it has what may be the greatest expository reintroduction to a returning series’ characters and premise yet. Also, our store sold out right away, so a-reorderin’ I will go.
  • Seeing Crossed #0 on the invoice listed as “#0 (of 9)” makes me want to hit somebody. Not unique to Crossed, I know, but still, it just sticks in my craw. It’s more hyperviolent zombie-esque shenanigans, from the looks of things, but, hey, this #0 is only a buck, it’s by Garth Ennis, and…Good Lord, does Jacen Burrows draw everything for Avatar? Does he ever sleep?
  • While I adore Final Crisis, the “director’s cut” version of #1 is…well, if you want to see the black and white linework for the entire issue, then you may get more out of the first part of the book. The interview and script make for interesting reading, but, like I said about the Final Crisis sketchbook, this sort of material may be better off being released after the project is over, when the comic can be discussed without playing coy with spoilers.

    As for Final Crisis #3…man, so densely-packed, so full of good stuff. It’s nuts, and I love it.

  • Thanks to Employee Aaron, I now think of Echo as “the comic about the girl with super-boobs.” Unfair? Yeah, probably. But hey, at least there’s no poetry like in the guy’s previous comic. Yet.
  • More Disney comics, finally. Wish they didn’t put out their two regular “monthly” comics ($7.99 each) and a Vacation Special ($9.95!) all out in the same week…but at least they’re out, and beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose.

    I know it wasn’t as long as a break between issues as Gemstone’s publishing unpleasantness from last year, but it still had some of our Disney customers getting a little testy.

  • Did you read that FX comic from IDW (last issue on sale now)? If so…why? I’m honestly not being snarky, here…what was it about FX that made you keep reading it? Is it just fans of that particular artist supporting the book?
  • Jonah Hex #34 – I liked the story, about Jonah’s difficulty in leaving his old life behind…but depending on who’s drawing Jonah’s scarred face, I have a very hard time believing that Hex doesn’t just cut that damned tiny flap of skin off his mouth. It’s such a piddling little strand in this issue…it gets to be distracting how nonsensical it is that it’d still be there.

    So, “minor nitpick of the month?” Maybe so. I remember seeing someone out there suggest that elements of Two-Face’s scarring from the Dark Knight movie would be a better way of portraying Hex’s injury.

  • Hulk #5 – I shouldn’t like this comic as much as I do. It’s big, loud, and stupid, and takes like two minutes to read…but it’s an enjoyable two minutes, with great art by Ed McGuinness. I think the Thor purists are going to cringe at this issue, though.
  • Showcase Presents House of Secrets Vol. 1 – Contains a reprint of the first Swamp Thing story, and another 500-something pages of less important stuff. Oh, okay, it has the Sergio Aragones gag pages, too.

Nothing to do with comics, but everything to do with fans of the Mystery Science Theatre 3000: the third Cinematic Titanic film, The Wasp Woman, should be available for download as you read this, and the DVD release should be available by Monday.

More linkblogging…

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…since I still feel bleah and I’d rather let everybody else do the work for me.

  • I know he’s been advertising in the sidebar recently, because he’s a kind and generous man, but I wanted to draw extra attention to Scott Saavedra’s updated-weekly webstrip Java Town. Mr. Saavedra is a swell cartoonist, and as a fan of his work for, lessee, 22 years now, I want to give him whatever support I can.
  • I haven’t pointed out this site since, well, I probably first added it to the sidebar, but Size Matters reviews mini-comics, which I love and haven’t bought enough of lately. It pleases me to know that people are still doing minis and not, say, going straight for the webcomic thing.
  • Apparently the recent release of the Hembeck Omnibus has inspired yet another go around of “100 Things I Love About Comics,” based on Fred’s strips on that topic. Well, folks are just doing fifty things this time around, which, you know, fair enough.

    I almost had a “100 Things” Valentine’s Day tradition going, inspired by Hembeck and Alan David Doane, doing my list of 100 in 2005 along with a bunch of other people, following up in 2006 and 2007, but I blew it this year when, um, I forgot until it was too late. Ah, well. Maybe I’ll try again in 2009.

    Of course, we all must bow to Tom Spurgeon’s list of a thousand things, which he did because he’s Tom Freakin’ Spurgeon and he shows us How Things Are Done just as a matter of course.

  • Article on comics in classrooms vis-à-vis the San Diego Con titled with “POW! ZOWIE! Teachers discover the comic book.” At least they had the good taste to illustrate the article with an America’s Best Comics cover from the ’40s.

    Also, just to note: the article mentions that fifteen years ago many professors would have mocked the idea of studying comics in the classroom. Well, not the late Professor Frank McConnell, whom I had as a professor at UCSB about 18 years ago, and was assigned in his courses The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen. My memories of those classes was one of the earliest posts on this site.

  • “The Top Five Environmentally Friendly Characters in Comics” – you know, really, with friends like Poison Ivy…. Also, guess who’s number one the list. G’WAN, GUESS.

    There’s a totally unnecessary slam on Captain Planet at the end of the article, too. That’s hard cheese, old bean.

  • Speaking of Swamp Thing, Showcase Presents House of Secrets volume 1 is out this week, and in response to your massive amount of inquiries (well, okay, one), I will be buying this to obtain the eleventh version of House of Secrets #92, the first appearance of Swamp Thing.

    It’s a sickness.

  • And more speaking of Swamp Thing: this columnist is tired of comic book movies, and I suppose I really can’t blame him. However, he refers to the first Swamp Thing movie as “terrible,” which is bad enough (the movie’s merely misunderstood), and, even more surprisingly, he refers to the sequel Return of the Swamp Thing as “forgettable.” Man, take it from me…if you’ve seen Return of the Swamp Thing, I’m sure you could come up with many words to describe it, but “forgettable” wouldn’t be one of them. I mean C’MON.
  • Apparently my re-linking of Harry Knowles’ entirely appalling Blade II review, even if just in my Twitter thingie, has caused terror and despair, fear and anguish, mothers to disown children, brother to turn on brother, etc. So, I promise not to link to it any more. Honest. You’ll never have to think about that review ever again. No need to thank me.
  • And now, by popular demand…Alan Moore’s favorite superhero:

Mike’s sick day linking.

filed under Categories Uncategorized

I’ve been under the weather for the last couple of days, and I’m still running a fever, so I’m going to continue my Low Content Mode for today, if you all don’t mind. Also, some advice: if you’re feeling sick on your day off from work, don’t decide that you’re going to rearrange the garage and build some shelving anyway. You’ll regret it.

So, here’s some linkage to material generated by other people:

Hmm. That was just as much work as a real post. Some “Low Content Mode.”