Hey Folks!
Well, it’s been a busy week for me and it is not going to get any easier as I cruise into the weekend! As some of you have already heard, boyfriend extraordinaire, Hillman Crawford, had to have a bit of throat surgery on Tuesday morning and we are knee deep in the recovery. My dear Hillman essentially lost his voice nearly a decade ago and has recently discovered a big glob was resting neatly between his vocal cords thereby blocking him from speaking properly. It was really bizarre looking and when viewed through a scope looked suspiciously like an Alien face hugger…lol. In any case, the icky blockage has been removed and we are all anxiously awaiting what he will sound like once he is allowed to use his voice again next week. Hillman, meanwhile, is resting comfortably at home and being driven slowly mad by his inability to speak for a week. No worries…I’m sure he’ll be fine!
Unfortunately comic distribution is not an exact science and you have long heard me opine in the store about the various damages, shortages, and snafus that I have to deal with on a weekly basis with new comic shipment. Oftentimes these little challenges are invisible to the general public, but this week I’m afraid we had a shortage that is taking a little time to straighten out. Spawn #301 came out this week and, as per issue #300, had a whopping 17 different covers! I know this because I had at least one customer who wanted one of each cover…lol. The warehouse, however, screwed up and shorted us all of our copies of the cover H MacFarlane Parody variant and that just happened to be the cover that I chose to put on the rack. I reported the shortage immediately on Tuesday afternoon when we realized they were missing, but I didn’t hear back from my customer service rep until late in the day Wednesday about the status of the shortage. I assumed that there would be no problem getting them replaced as I had reported them early and it was a large enough number of copies that I qualified for an emergency shipment which ideally should have gotten them to us by Friday. Well, my customer service rep sent me an e-mail telling me that they were going to back order and I was essentially s#!t out of luck. I’ll admit that I lost my temper and hit the roof! I contacted Kat Salazar, director of PR & Marketing of Image Comics, to see if there was anything she can do about the situation and she said she’d look into it. Strangely enough, less than an hour later I received another e-mail from my customer service rep informing me that she had made a mistake and not only were my missing copies available, but they would be emergency shipped to me immediately. As of this writing I’m not sure if I will be seeing the shortages on Friday or Monday, but I will be getting them. So if you ordered a copy of Spawn #301 on the subscription form last week then you should have it by next week at the latest. Let’s hear it for the squeaky wheel getting the grease!
It’s an interesting new comic slate for DC Comics next week. One of the biggest question marks for me is how well the new Superman Smashes The Clan series by writer Gene Luen Yang and artist Gurihiru. Based on “Clan of the Fiery Cross”, a Superman radio serial from the 40’s, Yang presents his personal retelling of the Lee family as they team up with Superman to smash the Klan’s activities in a golden age Metropolis. The format is a kind of quasi-digest size with a cover price of $7.99 and manga inspired artwork. The project sounds interesting and rather different from the other Superman stories on the racks, but I’m just not sure how much demand there will be for it. I’ve ordered conservatively, but I’m living in a world of hope that DC will have extra copies on hand in case it turns into a break out hit. In any case, any fans of the golden age or of Superman should definitely check it out next week.
Another interesting project from DC next week is the first in their new series of one shots, Tales from the Dark Multiverse. What we are essentially getting is DC’s version of that old Marvel chestnut “What If?”. The Dark Multiverse is, of course, the roiling mass of alternate realities that seethes and boils underneath the regular multiverse. It is home to broken universe…universes where things have gone wrong that form and pop like soap bubbles before submerging back into the quantum foam from which they arise. In this first installment we find out the answer to the question, “What if Batman hadn’t taken the mantle of the bat away from Jean Paul Valley?” This might not be the first What If question I’d ask, but it certainly is an intriguing concept. I loved the old Marvel What If’s and I can honestly say that I am looking forward to this one immensely. It’s written by Scott Snyder and Kyle Higgins, a great writing team if ever there was one, with art by Javi Fernandez. Coming up in the next couple of months we have Dark Multiverse stories based on “Death of Superman”, “Blackest Night”, “Infinite Crisis”, and “The Judas Contract”. I’m excited to see where DC goes with this line and I hope it successful enough to warrant more one shots like this in the future.
Jonathon Hickman wrapped up his big start to his X-Men run this week with Powers of X #6! It is a fascinating issue, one that answers a lot of questions that have popped up and also creates more questions. Moira McTaggert has plans for mutantkind and with Xavier and Magneto working with her we will see if she has the know how and power to avert not one, but two, disastrous futures for mutants and the Earth. Of course, anyone who was expecting any kind of definitive ending to House and Powers of X are going to be sorely disappointed. This is the start, after all, to Hickman’s ambitious 2-3 year story line…the comic book equivalent to dumping all of the pieces of the puzzle onto the table. The upcoming slate of X-Titles, including X-Men, New Mutants, Excalibur, X-Force, Fallen Angels, and Marauders, will be where Hickman and his collaborators start putting the larger picture together. I, for one, can’t wait to see where all of this is going!
X-Men #1, written by Jonathon Hickman with art by Francis Yu, will be shipping in next week, so we don’t have a long wait to get right into the thick of things. I know I have been warning you about how I am going to be moving away from Marvel’s endless surfeit of variant covers, but I will be making an exception with the first issues of the new X-Titles, all of which have as many variants offered as the House and Power of X miniseries that just concluded. I had to split my orders between 5 different open order covers and all of them are on the subscription form this week. Just to explain, I keep these variant covers on the form until I get close to a sellout and then I remove them from your consideration. So if you have heart set on a specific variant then please check out the sub list ASAP so you don’t miss it. Additionally, if you don’t see the cover you are looking for then please contact me and I’ll see if there are any left for reorder.
I will be out of the store on Sunday, October 13th, to make a last-minute trip to Cedar Point. Hillman LOVES Cedar Point and we had this trip planned before his surgery was scheduled for this week and while he won’t be able to scream like a little girl on the rides I’m hoping he will still have a good time. For my part, I am not that big of a Cedar Point guy. I mean, the rides are okay, but the lines don’t thrill me and I went to the park enough as a kid that it just doesn’t have the mystique to me that it has for others. I have never experienced the “Halloweekends”, however, so I’m thinking I might get some mileage out of the haunted houses and scares. In any case, I won’t be here on Sunday, but Steve will be here to hold down the fort and I will check in to take care of any questions or requests on Monday morning at the latest. Actually, I’ll probably come home late on Sunday and throw together a reorder for any of you who place special orders on the subscription form. That’s the true example of my dedication to you!
Okily dokily, time to get his missive posted along with the shipping list and the subscription form! I can’t believe how long it takes me to update Facebook and the website every week! Oh, well, at least I have some episodes of the Great British Baking Show to watch (with my headphones on) while I putter around with it.
Have a great weekend, Folks, and I’ll see you next week!
Eddie