If you need comic related news go to either comicbookresources.com or newsarama.com and you can find out everything you ever needed to know about the San Diego Comic Con. Which I’ve been told was pretty damn cool (and big) this year.
If you are looking for something to do this coming weekend, you catch an Iowa Cubs baseball game, Sunday afternoon. The Iowa Cubs are giving away 5,000 special edition Marvel Comics before the 1:05 Sunday game against the Las Vegas 51′s. Tickets are still available and can be had at iowacubs.com. If you do make it to the stadium, stop by our booth on the main concourse and say hello.
Also this week, a big congratulations goes out to The New Midwest Cage Fighting Championship’s Light-heavy Weight Champion Chuck Grigsby. The Reverend took only 46 seconds to dispatch his competitor on Saturday night. Chuck didn’t just look good in the match, he destroyed this poor guy. We’ve been sponsoring Chuck for awhile now, but that is only part of the reason I mention this. Chuck is one of the really good guys I’ve had the privilege of getting to know while being here at the cup. So, really and truly, Good Job Chuck! You are THE MAN!
Monthly Archive for July, 2007
I want to pass on more convention news. As many of you may be considering a trip to one of the several conventions over the next month, there is one more to think about. Fall Con is October 6th and 7th. This is a great convention held at the Minnesota State Fair Grounds in St. Paul. I’ll remind everyone as we get closer, but if you have one of the days free, I highly recommend the drive up for one of the best cons in the Midwest.
Also, I want to spotlight a new release from my favorite comic company. Last week Zero Killer #1 arrived from Dark Horse. It was a quick read, but I want more. Set in a post apocalyptic alternate universe New York, the first issue follows Zero, a highly skilled martial artist, who is hunting down a couple of rogue bandits who happen to be preying on a young girl at the time. The base story reminds me of bits of Escape from New York and Akira. The book is written by Arvid Nelson and great art by Matt Camp. The colors are done by Eisner winner, Dave Stewart and they really bring the book to life. He is the best in the business.
Dark Horse is trying a few new books, with Zero Killer being the first to hit shelves. Umbrella Academy is the next to arrive, sometime in August. I have, personally, always been a big fan of what DH chooses to publish. Most people think of them as just a licensed product publisher, but the independent quality they’ve put out in the last ten years far exceeds the rather run of the mill licensed stuff they’ve done. Hellboy and BPRD are two examples and both beat anything being put out by Marvel and the non-Vertigo side of DC. An older series, Concrete, and mini-series, Revelations, are two of the best comics ever published. So, it is not surprising Zero Killer is good, it’s Dark Horse.
Not much going on this week. So, I’ll point out a couple books coming out this week and then give you a bit of retailer news that had Tyler and I laughing hysterically.
All Flash #1, what the hell is this? Well, it’s a single issue one shot originally listed as Flash #14 as a way to divert attention away from what happened in issue 13. Lets just say in that issue it was a seriously bad day for Bart Allen, the Flash for the last year.
All Flash #1 is written by Mark Waid, who will be the regular writer on the series, which will start next month with the original volume two numbering, issue 213.
All Flash #1 will sort-of tie everything together that has happened in recent issues of JLA and Flash. If you want to see pages from All Flash #1 go to newsarama.com had them in an article last week.
A whole crapload of World War Hulk crossovers come out this week, as well as issue two of the mini-series. I want to encourage you to sign up to have the issues pulled if you want them. The same goes for the X-Title’s summer crossover, Endangered Species. I wish I could order a bunch of extras, but I can’t or there wouldn’t be a shop. I can’t return the unsold copies, so, until the industry changes…
Speaking of the industry…
Posted at “Lying in the Gutters:”
http://www.comicbookresources.com/columns/index.cgi?column=litg
AND ALL THE COMIC SHOPS POINT AND LAUGH AT BORDERS
I understand that Borders books stores, merrily stripping their covers to unsold copies of Marvel’s Stephen King adaptation “Dark Tower,” have been told that actually the comics aren’t returnable, like all the other newsstand comics they buy.
It seems that Borders either went through Diamond or to Marvel direct and bought their stock on ‘unreturnable’ terms.
And then forgot to tell the store managers.
Maybe you don’t think it’s as funny as we do. It’s the little victories and I’m still laughing… wait, they still got all their money back for the rest of the books they sent in?… damn.
I have a new person working for me and last week I had to explain how the comic book industry works. It’s something I think very few comic customers really know about and since I have a little extra time on my hands this week I thought I would use it to explain this process to you.
As you know there are two huge publishers in comics, Marvel and DC and these two make up about 70% or more of all the profits in the American comic industry. They do not distribute their own comics. This is done through Diamond Comics Distributors. Some time ago they got DC and Marvel to sign exclusive distribution deals and because of this the smaller companies followed suit, making them the only distributor in America. Diamond is, for all intents and purposes, a monopoly. As a retailer I can not get comic books in a timely fashion from anyone else. There are options for trades, but they are slim and the abilities to get them on the day they are supposed to hit stands is limited.
Because they are only distributor, Diamond offers (really more like gives/tells) retailers its terms. Depending on how much you order, you will get a discount. The more you order, the better the discount. However, what you order and do not sell is NOT returnable. Unlike nearly every other form of literary endeavor, direct market comics are non-returnable. This is why retailers want to keep the issues on the shelves as close to the sell through mark as possible and why when you come in and are looking for that issue of Spider-man from three months ago, it might not be there or if it is and it’s at a less reputable store it may be jacked up in price.
All orders are placed two months in advance, making it very difficult to figure out what trends are going to be. Marvel, and more recently DC, have started giving the ability to cut down or increase orders by a Final Order Cut-off (FOC) date. This has made it much easier on the retailer to get a better read on what the trends are on books. This is why hold lists are so important. We have hard numbers to go off of, rather then just grasping at straws.
The FOC really is a big help, probably the single best change in the industry in a decade, but it still keeps all of the burden of responsibility on the retailer instead of the publisher. The retailer takes the risk and the publisher keeps churning out the product. Now you see why retailers hate big surprises with out fore-warning (Cap #25) or hype without pay off (Avengers #31.) .
There are two other major variables in the process, the printer and the shipper.  For the most part the printer, Quebecor, is fairly reliable, but of course they are, they’re Canadian. The problems arise after the comics leave the great white north. Diamond has one main distribution hub in Memphis and several others scattered around the US. We get our books out of Plattsburgh, no, not Wisconsin where the Bears football training camp is, it would be in Plattsburgh, NEW YORK! This in and of itself wouldn’t be a problem except very little is kept in Plattsburgh and has to be moved from Memphis to Plattsburgh to ship to us. We could do direct shipments from Memphis, but their are extra costs, of course. This is why when you come in to order a single issue and the clerk says it’ll take nearly two weeks to get it, it’s because Diamond has to send it from Memphis to Plattsburgh and then to us.
And to get it to us, they use UPS. In this entire process the biggest chance of a mangled, bent or destroyed comic arises in shipping and UPS does its dandiest to make sure they do not arrive mangled, bent or destroyed (or so they say.) I have very little nice to say about UPS, so…
That is the basic process in which you get your comics. I can go into more (nasty) detail, if you would like to know more stop in and I’ll bend your ear.
Reminder, It’s the 4th of July on Wednesday, and that means comics will be in on Thursday. We will only be open from 8am to noon on Wednesday.
First thing this week, Congratulations to a long time customer who fought this last weekend at the TFC event at Wells Fargo. Chuck “the Reverend” Grigsby was victorious due to tap out in the first round. We’ve been a sponsor of The God’s Son for awhile and we are very happy to hear that there could be a title fight coming soon. Good luck Chuck and when we get a little closer, I’ll let everyone know so you can go support him. Here’s a link to his myspace page: www.myspace.com/godsson60 for more info.
Secondly, this week, you will need to excuse me for this, but I need to talk reality for a bit. There is a political issue that I want brought to your attention. Next week is the vote for the increase in the local sales tax. I, as most small business owners are, am very opposed to this. We have tax figured into most of our coffee drinks and an increase means an increase in coffee prices, plain and simple. I do not want to do this, but will have to if it passes. In addition, the tax is regressive in nature. It taxes those who can least afford to pay it disproportionately more then those who can. I’m not going to bore you with more details, you can look them up if you care here: http://www.nolocaloption.com/FAQ.html . If you want the supposed pro’s of the tax increase you can pick up a Des Moines Register, they have been running propaganda pieces nearly every day on why this is such a bang up good thing. I’m sorry to bring this up in what should be a comic book related e-mail, but if this passes, you will be effected when you come in and buy your comics, so be informed and go vote. Please.
There are only a couple of comics I’m going to point out this week. I’ve read Thor #1 and it’s pretty good for a first issue. I’m certainly intrigued and will read issue two when it comes out.
Also, I have restock of World War Hulk and all of the Fallen Son books coming in, in case you missed them.
On the DC side of things, the 3D issue in the Donner/Johns/Kubert debacle will finally arrive. I wouldn’t even care if the story hadn’t been pretty good and, well, it’s in 3D. So, I just dare you not to get it. Come on… it’s in 3D!!