Just popping in for a quick Retail Intelligence note: the trailer for WATCHMEN, which debuted something like a week ago, in front of THE DARK KNIGHT (and, wow, was that a terrific film), has done something that I've never ever seen. It is selling comic books. Lots of them.

Well, or it would have, had I had any in stock!

Last Tuesday I had what would normally be a month's worth of WATCHMEN in stock (and if you remember back to last week's post, WATCHMEN was my #2 best selling TP in the last 12 months, so we're talking about a real number of copies). Every single copy sold out by mid-Saturday morning. The calls have been coming in by the dozen or more a day "Do you have WATCHMEN?!?!", so I'm going to go on a limb and suggest that no one in San Francisco has them. I put in a direct order for a "3 month supply" that I should have tomorrow, but even then I'm going to order another big stack on my next reorder cycle (unless I pay a LOT for shipping them faster, reorders take about 10 days to show) just to cover my bets (it's not like, worst case, we won't sell them *eventually*)

Interestingly, there are some calls for DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, but nothing like WATCHMEN -- and DARK KNIGHT was a fabulous and fantastic movie.

Talk on the CBIA suggest that retailers all over the country are having similar results.

-B