From The Comic Reader #28 (1964):

“SUPERMAN. Look for several parallel world stories in the Superman line. Which ones, I don’t know, since they will all have surprise endings.”

“HAWKMAN. It is reported that Murphy Anderson has done a great job on the Shadow Thief. The title of #5 is ‘Steal, Shadow, Steal.'”

“BATMAN. […] The Nov. DETECTIVE features ‘Hunters of the Elephants’ Graveyard’. When an ‘elephant goddess’ appears to Batman, it may give you the shudders; but the new Batman won’t let you down. […] The cover story of the Nov. Superman will actually show Batman’s eyes through the holes in his mask!”

“THE ATOM #16 features the Mighty Mite against a villain who knows beforehand that he’ll beat our hero! It’s a book-lengther.”

“Popeye is still the king. According to Variety, Popeye is the king of the Cartoons.”

“The following item was written in code, and broken with the Superman code. ‘Coming soon! Three issues of SHOWCASE devoted to the Legion of Super-heroes!'”

For more modern DC Comics news, here are the new solicitations. Not much to say, other than ooh, I like this cover; this Krypto comic looks absolutely fantastic; and while I love the Armored Lex Luthor, this just looks goofy.

71 COPIES OF NEW TEEN TITANS #20

So you may remember my discussion from a few days ago regarding a large collection of books that was essentially dumped on us. A small portion of the books we could actually use, but the rest?

58 COPIES OF PHANTOM ZONE #2

Well, I’m not sure what we’re going to do with these excess books…aside from my taking pictures of the books en masse for my own amusement. A number of the books I may be able to sell off on the eBay…one at a time may take a while, and even lots containing, say, 20 copies of the same book may be difficult to move. Of course, there are always donations to various charities, which may be the final fate for some of these books, at least.

74 COPIES OF THE SMURFS #1

There may have been another option, as we’re still in the process of selling tens of thousands of comics in bulk to an international buyer, and perhaps we may have been able to unload some of these books on him. However, that buyer’s condition of purchase is that the books be in new shape (Very Fine or better). About 90% of the books in this collection I’m discussing are in average shape (VG) at best.

83 COPIES OF KRULL #1

Which brings up another point. This collection is comprised mostly of multiple copies of first issues, early issues of some series, anniversary issues and annuals, and so forth. The person who assembled this collection was obviously interested in “playing the market” with these books, investing for future resale. However, no attempt was made at keeping these books in sellable condition. They were stored in unwieldy cardboard boxes, with flaps that didn’t even seal off the boxes when closed, and many books have dust damage, mold spotting, crunches and creases from being piled improperly in the boxes, and so forth. Most of these books are today only a few dollars even in mint condition, and easy to find in that shape. In the conditions the these books are in, the only way they’ll sell is for pennies on the dollar.

32 COPIES OF SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING #2

So basically, all this effort assembling this collection, purchasing dozens of copies of each of these comics, was for nothing. The books were gathered, and left to rot.

And the thing is, even if the books had been kept in perfect, pristine mint condition, they’d still be hard to sell. Yes, Krull #1 may list in the price guide for a few dollars in mint condition, but you’d still have to find a buyer…which may not be easy since they’re virtually no demand for it. And even if you do find a buyer — a store, or a private collector — it’s unlikely you’ll be able to sell all 83 copies to that same person. Any profit you may have realized selling your mint copies of Krull would be eaten up by the time searching for potential buyers, who are few and far between.

Of all the books from this collection, the ones I might be able to sell in fairly short order are the copies of The Life of Pope John Paul II. A distant second would be the Smurfs comics, which will sell eventually, but I certainly don’t want or need to store 74 copies. I might be able to sell a dozen or so over the next year…having more copies than that gets into “diminishing returns” territory, as I now how to worry about storing the darn things for the foreseeable future.

117 COPIES OF THE FALCON #1

I’m really not meaning to single out this particular collection for abuse. I’ve seen several collections along the same lines…people buying for investment who 1) invariably choose the wrong comics to buy in multiples, and 2) don’t take care of them anyway, so the books end up being even less desirable. It just seems so…wasteful, I guess.

However, the comics appear to be our problem, now, so it looks like I’ll have to go to extreme measures to move these books out. I wonder what our customers would think if they came to the store one New Comics Day and saw this on the rack:

77 COPIES OF DRAGONSLAYER #1

Something I was thinking about…given the large amount of news coverage that Marvel’s “surprise revelation” has been receiving lately, we’ve had surprisingly few non-comic fans (or “civilians,” or “mundanes,” or “new customers”) coming in for the comic in question. (And, come to think of it, I haven’t had many inquiries regarding the lesbian Batwoman either.)

I’m not saying Civil War #2 isn’t selling…it’s selling quite well, actually. The only extra sales the publicity seems to be generating is from folks what already buy the funnybooks on a regular basis.

Used to be a time when a comic could have the barest mention in a real world news source, and our phone would ring off the hook for the next day or two from people asking about it. When Rob Liefeld appeared on a late-night talk show to plug the debut of Youngblood #1, the next day we had a line of people stretching down the block, anxiously waiting their chance to snap up this piece of comics history.

Of course, most of those instances were from the period of Batman movie fervor/speculator market/high public awareness of comics, as contrasted with today, where we’re more or less back to “oh, comic books, they still make those?”

Don’t have a point to this, really, beyond “things ain’t like they were back in the old days.” Plus, I wanted to remind some of you that believe it or not, folks once wanted the Youngblood in a bad way.

Things I shouldn’t have to say to the customer running a role playing game at the game store next door:

“I don’t care if there are dogs present in your game setting, your loud barking is disturbing my customers. Please keep it down.”

And yes, I got a dirty look from the person for my trouble, since apparently I’m the jerk.

Hey, a 3-D Superman screensaver, for free! Superman flies through the Metropolis cityscape while your choice of Superman theme songs plays in the background. Available for Windows and Mac.

Here’s an similar screensaver featuring Spider-Man from the same site.

Single Series #1 (1938)

The above was acquired in a collection earlier this week, along with several other Captain and the Kids/Katzenjammer Kids comics. But that’s the oldest one in the bunch, the first issue of the series that would eventually become Comics on Parade.

You can read more about the Katzenjammer Kids comic strip at this comprehensive website.

And the strip is still running.

EDIT: Find more Captain and the Kids at Barnacle Press.

Okay, maybe in retrospect I shouldn’t have gone with the “packing a book for a customer” story in the last post. It amused me at the time, since I could just see a disaster waiting to happen to that book in transit, but I guess it’s a “you had to be there” moment.

But I did want to give an example of the kind of customer service that we try to provide, to counterbalance the tales I usually relate here of our smart-aleckiness, or of things at the shop going awry, or of “customers” mistreating us…not to mention just trying to counter the usual stereotype of the slovenly comic store clerk more interested in sitting on his butt, eating and watching television and/or reading the new X-Men than helping his own clientele.*

I don’t toot the store’s horn an awful lot on this site, but hey, our store has been in business for 26 years…we must be doing something right. Not saying we’re perfect…there are plenty of things that could use some improvement, but at least we’re trying.

And contrary to what this anonymous commenter implied, we don’t help just the “cute” people. If that were true, I never would have helped Employees Nathan and Aaron back when they were customers. (bada-bing!)

In happier news…my favorite comic news source, the Unsinkable Tom Spurgeon, points us to this article with details about DC Comics’ forthcoming Snakes on a Plane comic book. Fantastic. I’m assuming it’s an adaptation, and not, say, a prequel (“Who are these snakes? Where do they come from? What dark compulsions drive them?”).

Please let there be photo covers on these. Please.

* Says the guy who spent his break on new comics day setting up a couple photographs for his website.

For my most recent column for Comic Book Galaxy, I discussed people who came to our store with the apparent purpose of making us miserable.

Well, I found this commentary on my article, and nicely expounds on the issues I brought forth. Go, read.

MATT DRUDGE IN “CAN’T SPELL ‘SPIDER-MAN'” SHOCKER. (“spoiler,” if it still can be considered as such, in image)

At the store, a couple days ago:

Employee Aaron: “Where should I file the Family Guy comics?”

Me: “Well, you could put them with the Simpsons books.”

Aaron: “Oh damn….!”

File under “horn, tooting of one’s own:” So on Thursday, we had a young woman looking for a copy of a particular DC Comics trade paperback. Alas, we’d run through all our copies, and our reorder had not yet arrived. I did have a copy of the large slipcased hardcover “Absolute” edition of the very same book, which the woman liked even better than the plain ol’ softcover.

She bought it, and mentioned that, while the book was great, it was going to cost a lot to ship to her fiance, for whom it was a gift.

Well, where does he live, I ask, and which she replies with the name of one of the southern states.

Can’t you ship that book by media mail? It should be pretty cheap that way, I suggest. She didn’t understand what exactly I meant by that, which is okay…it seems like I live at the post office, what with all the mail order our store does, so I’m not going to be too hard on her for not knowing as much about the different mailing services as I do.

Since I happened to be in the middle of packing up mail order for the store, I whipped out one of the priority mail flat rate boxes, telling her it would only cost $8.10 to ship the book in one of these. Here, take it, I’ve got plenty of them, I tell her.

Wow, thanks, sez she, and asks where the post office is. I give her directions, at which point she says she’s just going to seal the book into the box and take it to the post office right away.

Whoa, I exclaim, hold on there, that box is quite a bit larger than the book, so the book’s just going to rattle around in there…do you want some packing material?

Before she can answer, I just say, here, give me the box and the book, at which point I proceed to pack the book up for her, sealing up the box and making it ready for the tender mercies of the postal service.

So there you go…Mike giving the customers the full service treatment. Ooh, yeah. That’s the kind of quality customer relations I deliver.

Yes, I just told a story about packing a book into a box. Every day is a new adventure.

Inspired by the greatness that is Composite Superman, here is a very rough sketch of Composite Swamp Thing (half Swampy, half Man-Thing), which I doodled out right quick at work yesterday:

So I bet you’re wondering where the Official William Shatner Website Forum stands on the whole gay superhero thing. Well, wonder no more, effendi:

“A gay Superman and other annoyances”

“Jay Leno mentioned in his monologue tonite that in the upcoming “Superman Returns” that our new Superman comes across as gay. Just what the world needs today, a gay Superman.”

“Why can’t gay folks create their own heros? This is not an attack, but a genuine question. I am sure that there are plenty of historical role models who were gay. Why not choose one of them to immortalize in the comics?”

“From what I read, it’s not that they made Superman gay (unlike Batwoman who’s history they’re rewriting to make her a lesbian) but rather bad acting and writing makes him SEEM gay.”

“I thought Superman was already gay.
Just look at his choice of outfit.”

“It’s axiomatic that a guy with the power of flight is going to be light in the loafers but I’ll wait to watch the DVD before I pass judgement.”

I believe this person is trying to make a point of some kind:

“I’m trying really hard to be gay cuz I think it’ll be really cool and fun. I like girls, but I think they’ll understand if I decide to be brokeback for a while. I can’t wait! This will be the thrill of a lifetime!”

The James Randi Educational Foundation Forum has some thoughts on the matter as well:

“Twenty plus years of Vertigo, the Watchmen, Maus, Strangers in Paradise, and the rest, but somehow this the mainstream media waits for this very tepid bit to make a big deal about?”

“I think you’re missing one crucial piece of the puzzle:

“‘Originally Posted by CNN.com article:
(DC Comics, like CNN, is a division of Time Warner.)'”