The Beach of the Future: Douglas examines DC's publishing schedule for next summer

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DC's graphic novel catalogue for Summer 2008 lists almost 150 books coming out between May and August. That's a lot for any publisher. Notably, there seem to be quite a few hardcovers collecting recent storylines; they include Batman: The Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul, Booster Gold: 52 Pick-Up, Superman: Escape from Bizarro World, All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder vol. 1, The Crime Bible: The Five Lessons of Blood, Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War vol. 2, Green Lantern: Tales of the Sinestro Corps, Justice League of America: The Injustice League, Superman: Last Son, The Flash: The Wild Wests, Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes, Astro City: The Dark Ages vol. 1, World of Warcraft Vol. 1, The Brave and the Bold: The Book of Destiny, All Star Superman vol. 2, The Death of the New Gods and Metal Men. Some odd choices in there--Booster Gold, for instance, feels like a paperback kind of series to me--but it'll be interesting to see how this pans out.

Showcase volumes, for those who (like me) care: vol. 4 of Superman, vol. 3 of Batman and Green Lantern, vol. 2 of Hawkman, the Atom, the Flash and the Haunted Tank, and vol. 1 of House of Secrets.

A few highlights, month by month:

MAY 2008 Batman: The Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul: One of ten Batman books coming out to catch the Dark Knight wave. Interesting to see this credited to "Grant Morrison and others," since Morrison is apparently writing exactly one episode of the crossover proper. Jack Kirby's O.M.A.C.: $25 hardcover, described as "a companion to the JACK KIRBY'S FOURTH WORLD OMNIBUS" series. I wonder if it'll be printed on newsprint, too? That was a weird but strangely effective design decision--the archivist in me howls at it, but that's also the format Kirby's work was created for, and it looks great. The Legion of Super-Heroes: 1,050 Years of the Future: a retrospective anthology commemorating 50 years since Adventure Comics #247. Absolute Sandman Vol. 3: Guess we don't have to wait a year for the next one! Vertigo: First Cut: Five bucks for the first issues of Army@Love, Crossing Midnight, DMZ, The Exterminators, Jack of Fables, Loveless and Scalped. Which suggests they'll all still be running then.

JUNE 2008 All Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder, vol. 1: Implying that there will be a second volume eventually... Demo: The Brian Wood/Becky Cloonan miniseries, in a single volume from Vertigo. Y: The Last Man Vol. 10: Whys and Wherefores: I'll be curious to see what sort of wrap-up stories there are when this hits, as opposed to when the final issue of the series is published. The New York Four: Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly's Minx book. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier: The Absolute Edition: 99 bucks.

JULY 2008 World of Warcraft vol. 1: I couldn't make it through the first issue, but I know there are some serious fans of the game out there; looks like Walter Simonson's signed on to write the whole first volume, at least. Janes in Love: The sequel to The PLAIN Janes.

AUGUST 2008 All-Star Superman Vol. 2: Well, assuming Quitely can complete three more issues by then... The Spirit Archives Vol. 25: Here's a nice surprise: this volume will reprint the complete run of the daily Spirit strip--initially drawn by Will Eisner (who only drew the first six weeks' worth, but continued to write it for a while), then by Jack Cole, and finally by Lou Fine. I'm crossing my fingers for a book reprinting all of Eisner's post-'50s Spirit stories, but I might be crossing them for a while. America's Best Comics Sampler: A $5 paperback with what looks to be the first issues of most of the non-LXG ABC titles.

And the Number One Reason I'll Never Be A Paparazzi...

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I was at Kevin O'Neill's signing at CE Sunday night...with my camera...and asked the gracious and stylish Mr. O'Neill if I could take some photos...to which he graciously and stylishly agreed....and I barely took any photos at all. Because I am absurdly meek, and a FUGGIN' IDJIT. Nonetheless:

Here's a shot of the man himself. (Obviously, I shoulda run it through some light adjustments on Picasa before uploading it.) We were shop number seven in four days on his tour, and the guy would do a sketch in anyone's Black Dossier if they wanted. Really cool.

I knew he wouldn't be anything like his drawings, more than likely, but I was still somehow unconsciously surprised he wasn't one of his terrifying lantern-jawed crazy men chortling "Hur, hur, hur!" while demeaning all of us.

I thought I could catch from this angle (behind and above him) the sort of casual charisma he radiated--it was like everyone in the store, even nearly all the people hanging out at the front all had their body turned toward him the whole time he was signing. Instead, all I really caught was that awesome infinity-loop bald spot he has--it's insanely better than the goose egg I'm sporting.

Another wuss shot by me--I thought it would be cool to catch him in mid-sketch as he draws Mina Harker in Sue Riddle's sketchbook (that's her work on the left page, I'm pretty sure). But, uh, nope.

We had a steady line the whole time I was there, as you can see. But I'm mainly putting this photo up so those who've never visited the shop can admire the lovely original Matt Wagner JSA portraits on the left, and the Mike Driggenberg original Endless portraits on the right. (Oh, and also because I didn't take enough pix of Kevin O'Neill, right?)

The first--but hopefully not the last--collaboration between Ian Brill and Kevin O'Neill: a commissioned sketch of Scott Pilgrim. Maybe we'll get lucky and Oni will release it as the "Oni Zombie" alternate cover to SP4 early next year...

Wow. See? That--that--is a perfectly shaped ear, right there.

Meanwhile, up at the front of the store...

No, but seriously. Go buy Black Dossier--it's even more filling than a 40 of MGD.

So, in conclusion: I promise to be better at taking photos in the future. Also, go to Comic Oasis and/or the wonder that is Ralph Mathieu's Alternate Reality in Vegas tomorrow night and experience the wonder that is Kevin O'Neill yourself. You won't regret it.

Extraordinary Gentlemen!

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I just want to say that Kevin O'Neill is a Prince Among Men -- we had an absolutely wonderful signing with him last night, and he was extremely gracious with his time, given virtually every person who showed significant "face time", answering their questions, and doing quick sketches for each and every person. What a class act!

If you're down in the San Jose area, Kev appears at Hijinx Comics today (Monday) from 5-8, then he goes to Las Vegas and Alternative Reality Comics [edit: and Comic Oasis, sorry, Derek!] on Tuesday to wrap up the tour.

I suspect Jeff will be along before TOO long with pics of last night's signing.

We've got an EXTREMELY limited number of copies left over that Kev signed (though no sketches, sorry!), so if you haven't been able to score your copy yet, feel free to email me and see if we can accommodate you.

THANKS AGAIN, KEVIN!!!!

*****

Also last night was Alan Moore, art spiegelman, and Dan Clowes on the Simpsons -- if you didn't see it, at least for the moment it is up on YouTube, and I thought it was perhaps the funniest 10 minutes of Simpsons I've watched this decade. Oooh, let me try that embedded thing....

Let's hope that worked...

Even my wife, Tzipora, who only barely understands comics or comics culture, was howling in laughter at this segment.

Weird ending to the episode, though -- it looks at though the Android's Dungeon is closed permanently?!?

Anyway, WATCHMEN BABIES IN V FOR VACATION is a huge winner of a joke!

[Edit #2: I just noticed the LOST GIRLS poster in the background of the clip -- nice, Fox is advertising pornography, w00t!]

-B

BLACK DOSSIER annotations

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Jess Nevins popped into one of our comments threads to point us to the online annotations of the BLACK DOSSIER HC -- I thought it deserved some time up on the front page so go look In other BD news, DC is SOLD OUT of the book (excepting whatever copies they've held back for damages and shortages) -- I found this out when I wanted more for Sunday's signing and was told "Nope."

I am cunning and strong, so I managed to get more copies, but still... when's the last time that DC sold out of a GN, and especially a HC, on the first day of release?

-B

Responding to TITLING responses

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There’s been a couple of other opinion pieces going around this last week, using my latest TILTING AT WINDMILLS as a starting point. Most notably from Johanna, and from Christopher Butcher. This is good, I like debate. Here’s the thing though: I’m not sure if it is because I’m a lousy writer (guilty!), or if people are reading what they want to read rather than what I intended to say.

I’ve been using Vertigo as my example because Vertigo has a (unstated but crystal clear) program where periodical series UNIFORMALLY get collected at about month #9 in what I think any reasonable person will conclude is the SUPERIOR value – it is cheaper, sometimes by nearly as much as half (6x$2.99 = $17.94, vs $9.95), and it does not have advertisements, and it is a "satisfying chunk"

So let’s start from there, with bullet point #1: Is there anyone who disagrees that Vertigo’s “first volume” collection release is a “better” value?

If not, then let’s move to the next bullet point, #2: the natural consequence of such a plan is that whatever potential customer base that there for these books is being tacitly encouraged to “wait” for the trade.

#3: The sales charts seem to reflect this behavior.

I don’t think that anyone has, of yet, disagreed with those first three points.

I think we, maybe, begin to differ when we get to the next one:

#4: This is a lousy plan if your economic strategy is for the production of the periodical to FUND the eventual collection. Especially when it appears that this causes the periodicals are selling below any kind of “break even” number.

Again, I was probably less than clear, but this argument has NOTHING to do with “floppy vs book”, or that people should be “made” to buy something they don’t want, or any of the other positions that people seem to be arguing against. See: I, personally, as a consumer of comics (not as a store owner) don’t buy any Vertigo periodicals, and I haven’t for at least a year, maybe two, because I *know* they’re coming soon in a book, and that the book, even if only for the lack of advertisements, is a “better read”. I figured that out a real long time ago.

So, THIS is my argument, in one sentence:

If you’re trying to be a periodical publisher that is amortizing your costs with a serialization, then you should support that serialized format in all rational ways.

Maybe the disagreement is over what “rational” is? To me, this boils down to 4 things, I think.

A) Have something in the serialization that can’t be gotten any other way. Typically, this is “the letter’s page”, but it can also be something like the “backmatter” in FELL.

B) Keep your promises to the serialization audience, in terms of meeting your schedule, not changing creative teams inappropriately, and so on.

C) Objectively look at both response to, and the aesthetic value of, the work to determine the collection strategy. Not everything *should* be collected, you know! Don’t automatically collect JUST because you have a P&L that’s predicated upon it.

D) Have enough of a pause between serialization and collection to both encourage readers to follow the serialization, and to be able to create “buzz” on a book. Yes, there will probably be some isolated and extremely rare exceptional cases when the buzz is such that doing a “quick” TP release is, in fact, the better marketing move to make, but I believe that in virtually all other cases, having a 6-18 month “gap” between serialization and collection is the much smarter move for the health of the periodical market.

If your response is “Well, who cares about the periodical market?!?” there’s not a lot for us to talk about, really – this is an “If…then” argument.

I apologize for being both an unclear, as well as an easily side-tracked writer, and for throwing in too many examples, because that let’s people focus on the example rather than the underlying point.

One more time, just so we’re clear:

If you’re trying to be a periodical publisher that is amortizing your costs with a serialization, then you should support that serialized format in all rational ways.

-B

Happy Birthday, Ben!!

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He's Four Years old today -- how does the time fly? I know I have to upload some new pics soon, but things have been hectic.

Nor are things helped by what happened this morning.

I opened the store and was sitting down to my breakfast when I heard a pitter-pat sound. Um, wtf...?

Oh, water coming from the ceiling. Oh, the pitter-pat is becoming a gush gush gush. Oh, shit, it's raining!

Yep, from the hotel above us. Again. Water is shooting out from the ceiling, cascading along the track lighting, with not just a drip drip, but with the force of a garden hose. Its from a toilet, of course, so the water isn't exactly, um, pure.

I run to the hotel, scream that there's a problem, and rush back to the store to get buckets out, and clear what I can. It's almost Rube Goldberg-like -- put a bucket over here, new leak springs over there, move something from there, more water comes over here, whee!

I look up, realize that at least five minutes have passed, and rush back to the hotel. "No, really, it's an emergency!"

Brother at the front desk had decided to keep checking out guests, and not to figure out where the leak was coming from, sheesh.

Finally he comes over, ascertains which room it would be, and we find out it was a toilet overflowing in 112. Finally it stops.

Casualties: The Crime rack, and the Women Artists section. Everything on those two racks is GONE. We also lost most of the material on the bottom shelf of the Euro rack, meaning most of the British imports, the bottom shelf of the porno comics (Gasp, no more copies of DILDO, what a loss!!!), and the bottom shelf of the left side of the New Comics Rack, so there go this week's Kids books. On, and PREVIEWS, 3 months worth.

Total damage? Nearly $3300 in product, hurray.

Landlord promises to tile all of the bathrooms in the hotel so this CAN'T happen again. I sure hope so.

Me, my hands are sticky, I need to take a shower before Ben's birthday dinner tonight. Why does shit like this (no pun intended) always happen on something like a birthday day?

I had this whole plan today where I was going to write reviews and stuff, but instead, I'm in cleanup mode.

*sigh*

Retail is FUN!!!

-B

Jeff Also Briefly Mentions Doctor 13, then Proceeds to Babble Even More Melodramatically.

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This essay is about failure. Specifically, it's a response to Abhay's brilliant review of Dr. 13: Architecture & Mortality by Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang, a review which also--among other things--is about failure: specifically, the failure of the "nostalgicore" genre (Brian Nicholson's term, not Abhay's; Abhay just defined the genre and called for a "core" name) to prevent the growing coarseness of the mainstream comics industry; the failure of an online critic to critique a shitty comic without contributing to the buzz behind it; and, most damningly--if I'm interpreting his final paragraphs correctly--the failure of those opposed to current trends in the U.S. to present any sort of dissent worth noticing, and/or the failure of the U.S. media to notice such dissent, such that the "don't tase me, bro" dude becomes a brief symbol of so much that's wrong with this country (which if I had to enumerate would be: police brutality, absurd attentionwhoreishness , the inability of most of the Internet to process anything other than ironically, and the brevity of the public attention span so that such things are dismissed as tired before they're ever truly dealt with). My essay about failure will cover all of the above and also, apparently, my failure to write a short, succinct sentence. Also covered will be my failure to organize my essay coherently, and this failure will actually take the visual form of three centered asterisks, like this:

***

So when you see three centered asterisks, you can rest assured I am acknowledging my own failure to properly organize my essay.

***

First, I think it's pretty obvious that we truly live in a golden age of complaining. The Internet, email, cell phones, talk radio--I can complain about something within seconds of it happening to me, if not to my wife then to my Twitter network, or the people on the message boards to which I belong. And let me tell you, I am not complaining about the complaining: I am incredibly grateful for all the many outlets open for my endless kvetching, whining and fitful tirade making. If you think about it, back in, I dunno, the '80s, the only people who were able to complain openly and at great length nearly anywhere were sports fans. My father, a lifelong fan of the San Francisco 49ers, did nothing but complain about that team until, thanks to Joe Montana, they suddenly became a championship team which pleased my dad but disappointed me: now that he couldn't complain about them, I talked with him that much less.

And this is my first point in response to Abhay's essay: when he says, "People who care about how charmless and talentless DCU comics in the present are? Stopped reading them, or at least I'd hope they have as that's clearly the most rational response," it seems to me to miss some very important point about human nature--or rather, it doesn't offer a consideration of human nature to superhero comic book fans we tend to offer to fans of other interests. No one but the most beleaguered domestic partner ever says to the complaining sports fan, "Well, if you're so disgusted with the way the [insert your favorite sports team here] are playing, why do you still follow them?" Interestingly, the response to that question would likely be the same: either, "You wouldn't understand," or, if the person responding was being candid, "Because I've been a following them since I was little kid."

It's what kind of drives me crazy about some of the crosstalk about superhero comics on the Internet: people are considered foolish for blindly following X-Men or Batman or Superman from the time they were little to the present, but is it really any more foolish than those dudes who go to football games painted blue and spend insane amounts of money on autographs and jerseys and box seats? It'd be nice if we could retire the idea that rationality should be applied to comic book fandom , the same way no one ever expects a sports fan to be rational about their favorite team or their favorite sport. It'd also be nice if the public at large complained about superhero fans being idiots for their passion as rarely as they do about sports fans.

I am also particularly fond of the superhero/sports team analogy because it allows some quick and easy ways to sum up long-time superhero comic book readers (some fans follow the team, and some fans follow the players, which means two fans can have utterly different experiences while watching exactly the same game) and in part because it allowed me to explain what I did for so long on the Savage Critic--it wasn't reviewing, exactly, so much as it was sports writing: people would come to the site and read reviews of books they'd already read to engage in some Monday morning quarterbacking, or to get an idea books they'd missed: finding out what had happened, so to speak, in the game they'd missed. For a very brief period, I considered writing an essay arguing that superhero comics weren't art, they were sports, and if everyone would just stop confusing them with real art, 90% of our contentious arguments would disappear and people could talk about being fans of certain writers or illustrators without having to make the claim that those writers or illustrators were "artists."

I also liked this idea, because it meant I could compare the direct market to those big schools I've read about where 80% of the funding goes to the athletic department (superheroes) and 20% went to the band (indie comics), the library (classic reprints) and the horribly underpaid, disenfranchised, potentially pervy teaching staff (Joe Matt).

Ultimately, though, I decided against it: not just because I was slandering Joe Matt for no good reason, but because there are enough examples of superhero comics as genuine art that it'd just be the grounds for another endless set of arguments. In fact, I'll go in the opposite direction and suggest that any medium able to construct a meta-work is an art: you can have literature about literature, you can have painting about painting, you can have nostalgicore --superhero comics about superhero comics--but you cannot have a football game about a football game. So, things that are unable to discuss themselves are not art? Discuss.

***

Years and years ago, I read a Joseph Campbell book describing how a group of seventeenth century monks explained how, precisely, Christ's sacrifice redeemed mankind. As I recall, it was a charming theory that suggested Christ on the cross was like bait on a hook, and his sacrifice lured Satan/Leviathan to try to ingest him, at which point God the Fisherman yanked Leviathan out of the "water," freeing all of us from evil being able to gobble us up in the future. What struck me most about this theory is how much it sounded like the stuff of Marvel letter pages from the '70s, where people tried for no-prizes for pointing out mistakes and then suggesting ideas that explained the mistakes: which is to say, that's the point I realized reading superhero comic books stemmed essentially from a religious impulse. Sports fandom, comics fandom--hell, probably all fandom since the word "fan" is likely short for the word "fanatic," deriving from a Latin word meaning "insane but divinely inspired"--stems from this impulse: the desire to belong to something bigger than oneself, and to participate in a ritual that is given power by the nature of one's belief. Weirdly, I don't believe sports stem from a religious impulse, but sports fandom does.

This brings us to one of the central paradoxes of religion, if you ask me--religion draws its power from the religious impulse, but it must contain the religious impulse in order to survive. There must be something that distinguishes the priests from the masses to which they administer, a closeness to something chosen as the vestment of spiritual power and, for the religion to survive, it must be the religion that defines what that thing is, not the masses. Moses and Jehovah raged against the building of the golden calf; The Catholic church burned any number of monks for heresy; the Pope decides what's a mortal sin, not the masses. Similarly, although the sports and comics industries need their fans to survive, a contentiousness exists between the owners and fans: the DeBartolos decide where the 49ers call home, not the fans; Joe Quesada decides whether Spider-Man stays married, not the fans. (And yes, I just compared the Pope to the DeBartolo family and Joe Quesada .) Although there are other factors in the struggle--sports teams, religions, and comic companies have all proven all susceptible to the lure of short-term profits--you cannot underestimate the not-quite-conscious battle for control that occurs between the insane and divinely inspired ones and the keepers of what they covet. For desire to remain desire, it must promise satisfaction and yet must also always go, in some crucial way, unsatisfied.

***

Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to Doctor 13: Architecture & Mortality by Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang. In it, Doctor 13, a man who refuses to believe in anything supernatural or irrational, no matter what evidence is presented to him, finds himself joining forces with a number of wildly unbelievable allies--a ghost pirate, a vampire, an intelligent caveboy, and a talking Nazi gorilla, among others--on a quest to meet The Architects: not their makers, but rather their unmakers , the men who will remove Doctor 13 and his companions from reality. In the end, Doctor 13 is able to defeat The Architects by refusing to believe in their power, but he is unable to defeat an even greater force--the readers--who in the end remove the good Doctor from reality by reaching the end of the book. And I guess this is the second point in response toAbhay's essay: the conclusion to his review is, "I enjoyed Doctor 13: Architecture & Mortality-- it's a well made book. But seeing talented people spit in the wind-- it's talented spit, but my point is the wind's a motherfucker. Basically. That's my point." For me, the end of Doctor 13: Architecture & Mortality suggests Azzarello and Chiang seem perfectly aware of this in a way other creators of nostalgiacore are not: in Doctor 13, the needs of the reader do destroy these characters, even if not in the way Abhay discusses. Azzarello and Chiang, it seems to me, are spitting in the wind deliberately, and for the same reasons I used to spit in the wind when I was a kid: to see if I could get it to hit the people next to me (in my case, my younger brothers; in Azzarello and Chiang's case, the four writers of 52) and in doing so amuse myself.

This sense of self-amusement, something that usually frustrates me in Azzarello's work (I never feel half as delighted with his writing as he seems to be) works startlingly well here, perhaps because the self-awareness that manifests itself in all the puns, visual gags, and relentless verbal slapstick, is par for the course in a work of metacommentary. Although I would've recommended this work just for the splendor of Cliff Chiang's artwork and Patricia Mulvihill's colors, I'm happy to report Azzarello's in fine form here. But I do wonder if, like Moore, Morrison, Waid & Ross or other Nostalgicore creators, he actually feels for the state of current affairs where goofy characters are conveniently excised, or if he's merely having a laugh. Certainly this quote from the last part of the Azzarello and Chiang's multipart cross-platform interview:

Well, I'm not into comics as much as you think. But I am into music. I needed to spill my love for something into this book to make it work. So I used music. I guess I needed to honestly geek out, to be able to get that geek out of the readers. Who knows why we love what we love?

suggests that, like Doctor 13, his scorn for the Architects comes more from pragmatism (how's a writer who doesn't much care about standard superheroes continue to find work when everything that's not a standard superhero is being taken away?) and obstinate rationality (a talking Nazi gorilla isn't more absurd than a guy in long underwear who flies and fights crime--they're both equally absurd) than the sort of mad love that drives Grant Morrison or Alan Moore to bemoan the fate of Animal Man or Mandrake the Magician. I don't think that's a bad thing, mind you, but I think it's worth noting how Doctor 13: Architecture & Mortality distinguishes itself from Pictopia or Flex Mentallo.

***

By the way, I want to say I agree with what K.L. Anderson points out in the comments, that Abhay's review of Dr. 13: Architecture & Mortality is quite possibly the best thing posted here on the Savage Critic, and all of my points (which so far seem to disagree with Abhay's) aren't a dismissal of that work. In fact, I was so incredibly energized by that essay (and also the section of this entry from Dick Hyacinth that discusses it), I wanted to respond. Just making that clear, before I go on to mangle more of my points, and perhaps pick more at his fine piece of work. Please remember that, as the kids today say, it really knocked me on mykeister.

***

Ironically, for someone that just spent a few hundred words defending the rights of people to continue buying and bitching about superhero books they're not happy with, I'm a huge proponent of walking away from superhero books for large periods of time. From 1989 to 1992, when I was living in Los Angeles, I shopped at Golden Apple every month and bought nearly nothing of a superheroic nature. I mean, I bought Doom Patrol, Sandman, and a few other Vertigo titles, but I couldn't care less about the Marvel books (this was during the rise of the Image artists) and was incredibly indifferent to DC (this was when everyone was dying and having their back broken, I think?). I mean, there may have been some titles I followed (I remember picking up that second Legends of the Dark Knight arc because Grant Morrison wrote it) but for the most part? I stayed away from superhero books. There just wasn't anything interesting.

Apart from causing some blind spots in my knowledge later when I worked the counter at CE (people would ask about Darkhawk and I would just stare at them blankly), this presented no problems with me at all. Fantagraphics was on a roll, not only with Love & Rockets (which I've followed from way back), but Bagge and Clowes moved from Neat Stuff and Lloyd Llewellyn to Hate and Eightball, respectively, which were tremendous improvements. I picked up an issue of Arcade that finally--FINALLY--made me "get" Crumb: since I realized I loved his middle to late period work, I slowly bought up a collection of Weirdo which turned me on to other artists. Julie Doucet and Chester Brown. There was plenty of stuff to keep me coming to the comic book store, and my knowledge and love for the form grew.

I'll be honest. I'm kind of at that point again: I brought home twelve comic books from CE last week, only seven of which were superhero books (and this was, frankly, from two weeks worth of releases) and none of which I've yet read. But I also bought (and read) the Doctor 13 trade, and Confessions of a Blabbermouth, and Hitoshi Iwaaki's amazing Parasyte, and Fumi Yoshinaga's Flower of Life. My passion for manga, which started out a few years back as a mixture of curiosity and embarrassment (I was mortified I could work in a comic book store and have such a huge amount of ignorance about such a fast-growing part of the market), is keeping me coming back to the store the same way that next issue of Eightball or Dirty Plotte or Weirdo did when I was in L.A. And just as I read Doom Patrol and Animal Man and Sandman and what have you, I'm still picking up Iron Fist and Ultimate Spider-Man and the modern day equivalent of what have you.

I figure some time will pass and more superhero books will come out that I care about. I'm fine for when that happens. But I thought it important to say to those who would care to hear it (and I know this is mostly preaching to the converted at this point) that it can actually be kind of a relief to leave the religion in the hands of the money-changers and see where else you can find your passion. In some ways, it was easier back in the '90s because the alternative market still mimicked the superhero market, and Bagge and Clowes and Brown published more than annually, but there's such an amazing backlog of material out there now, it's not going to be that hard to find something. And maybe it's time to look, for reasons I hope to explain below.

*** 

Because there is another reason we complain, apart from the spiritual component to which I alluded earlier. In the same way that hope is an admission of present misery, a complaint is an expression of powerlessness: someone who complains is either powerless to change something, or chooses not to change something (an abdication of power). The complaining on the Internet and elsewhere about seemingly everything is an expression of powerlessness, which is part of why I think Americans are probably bigger complainers now then we've ever been: no matter how we vote, no matter what we say we want, no matter what we do, we've reached a point where things aren't changing. It doesn't matter how mad people get about health care in this country, about voter fraud, about special interests and lobbyists and soft money and corporate interests and media spinelessness: it's not going to change because the people with the money don't want it to, and as long as they have the money in the banks, and the legislators in their pocket, and the media in their corner, we can't really do dick about it, other than (a) something stupid and near-meaningless, or (b) something utterly ineffectual, like bitch.

(To clarify that first option, I remember when the first big protests against the Iraq War started up here in San Francisco and how stupid it seemed: I couldn't imagine anything that would amuse the Republicans in power more than San Francisco shutting itself down. Until we can work out the kinks in the whole "Think Globally, Riot Locally" program, I'd say dissent is probably gonna stay a big old problem here in the U.S.)

I think this is part of the reason why Abhay's review hit me so powerfully: I can feel that link between Nostalgicore and the Countdown to Infinite Crisis Special and the "Don't Tase Me, Bro" guy: John Kerry didn't do anything other than let an annoying attention whore get tased for the same reason the creators of Nostalgicore can write eulogies for their beloved characters but can't revive them--powerlessness. And Abhay complained, and we responded, about a very shitty comic because it gives us a feeling of power although that feeling is itself an expression of powerlessness. And that powerlessness is what we feel when we get frustrated with "the buzz."

Which is why I think maybe those who find ourselves bitterly complaining about superhero books should, if that's the case, try something else for a while--to see if I'm wrong. Maybe we don't complain about everything as a way to blow off steam over our ultimate powerlessness in the face of our crazy-ass culture; that, just as BrianAzzarello decided to spit into the wind at the publishing company behind him, maybe it's just god-damned fun to do so. (There are times when this is god-damned fun, certainly.)

***

Or maybe we're just so god-damned spoiled and entitled that a terrible issue of Amazing Spider-Man seems like an exemplar of everything that's wrong in the world today?

***

Or maybe we recognize how wrong and flat and fake "Don't tase me, bro" sounds and we highlight that by putting it in a remix of an M.C. Hammer song?

***

Or maybe desire, in order to remain desire, must always in some crucial way go unsatisfied, and it's just easier now than it's ever been to express the frustration that results from our mostly-thwarted passion. In some ways, it would be comforting for me to think that?

***

But maybe we're getting on our computers every night and throwing the revolution we cannot have--not against the oppressors we cannot see and cannot name (in the same way Doctor 13 cannot see or name his readers), but against their easier-to-face analogues: the Architects who hold our superheroes and our superstars and our season passes from us. After all, the flames of spiritual passion are frequently fanned by material causes, and perhaps we find ourselves playing out our passions where people without recourse have chosen throughout history to play out their passions and desires--in the stories and struggles of mythical creatures, those mostly-imaginary beings we dimly recognize, in some unacknowledged corner of our hearts, as gods.

And if we turned away from them, and the passion remained, we might know.

Warning: approaching the 21st century, in fits and starts

/

So, as some of you will recall, we do (at Comix Experience) a monthly newsletter called ONOMATOPOEIA.

For a really really long time I've had people asking me when it would be available on teh intarwub, and while what I think most of them are envisioning is something more akin to an interactive order form so they can be paperless, I'm strongly suspecting that that is way way beyond my level of technical/trainable skill and/or budget, relative to the number of people who might actually do something with it.

When Mark Richman installed MOBY at the store, he also installed something called CutePDF, which puts "make a .PDF" as one of my options in any print dialogue box. Wowsers, that makes it dumbly trivial for me to put these up on the web doesn't it?

Kate McMillan talked me through the (really simple once you understand what you're looking at) act of uploading these PDFs to the site. Since I'm using Firefox, she pointed me towards FireFTP which puts the whole process in my browser window, and means the entire process, from start-to-finish, including making the .PDF is like 7 minutes.

So, yeah, I can do that.

Right now you can go to http://comixexperience.com/Subforms/ to find a .PDF of COMIX EXPERIENCE ONOMATOPOEIA #140 (for books shipping in November 2007). You can also find a copy of the subform that would normally be inserted into a CEO.

(the latter is almost certainly of no use to 99% of you)

Actually, I have to say that CE #140 is probably not a very representative issue -- because of the new POS, and Diamond getting us the photocopy of PREVIEWS really really late, it is only 8 pages instead of the usual 12.

I'm at home, so I don't have access to the two previous issues (since I started doing them at the store, now that I have a computer there) so, hrm, let me also throw up a copy of CEO #136, the issue for July 2007 shipping books. Since most of that has shipped, you can see how close we got it. 136 also has one of Lester's final "Fanboy Rampages", as well as one of Peter Wong's "Lost in Pictopias". That's probably closer to a "representative" issue.

I'll try to remember to give you notice of when each month's new issue is up, but otherwise you can check that link monthly to see when it is up (should be within a day or two of PREVIEWS going on sale)

I'm sure we're all curious as to what you think (if anything, other than "wow, Brian's layout skillz kinda suck, don't they?")

-B

Asshattery, and so forth: Hibbs burbles some

/

Like Jeff said, you being active in some way really DOES matter -- whether it is giving us a buck, or even just posting to the comments threads, it keeps us going knowing that people ARE interested.

So, since like 25% of the people posting in the shipping list thread asked, let's talk about Asshats.

I like that word, because it's really only sort of a swear -- it sounds dirtier than it really is, I think, because for me it really is more about idiocy than anything else. After all, who needs a hat for one's ass? It would quickly fall off!

(Mechanical) things are the way that they are in the DM for what are usually actually very very sound reasons. That's not to suggest or imply that the DM is perfect, or that there aren't 47 different things that go wrong in the execution, but when you look at the underlying principles behind, say, the solicitation process, they evolved into what they are because they work for the participants of the DM.

There's a reason, for example, that books generally ship monthly -- much slower than that, and the audience is much more prone to drift; much less than that, and the audience gets confused whether they've bought an issue or not.

Honestly! *one* of the (many) reasons we put in a POS system was that we get asked "did I buy this already?" quite a bit. MOST comics readers don't come in weekly. MOST don't have a pull list. MOST don't read the news sites. MOST aren't totally-organized in their collecting, making themselves lists or whatever.

So, for me, screwing with how-the-customer-buys is just an idiotic thing to do. And that makes you an Asshat.

There's no way I'm going to do this every week -- because there's weeks where no one was especially egregious, or there's nothing meaningful to say, or there's some really valid other reason. But sometimes you get some pretty obvious boners, and it's worth handing out the Award for Auspicious Asshattery.

There's even TWO this week!

AAA #1 goes to LOCAL #10. Holy, frickin' cow, this book was supposed to ship in NOVEMBER 2006. Nine months late? Are you insane? And you have the AUDACITY to not resolicit? I deeply deeply love much of what Oni puts out, but they have some of the sloppiest shipping schedules in the business. Listen: freakin' AVATAR is a more-likely-to-hit-their-shipdates publisher these days (Avatar has, to their credit, seemed to have mostly solved their shipping problems)

AAA #2 goes to an old friend of Asshattery: Robert Kirkman and WALKING DEAD #41. Dude, #40 came out LAST FUCKING WEEK. Double-you-tee-eff? Man, am I going to be swimming in "did I buy this?" questions for the next few weeks! I repeat: MOST comics customers don't come in weekly. Don't undercut your own sales. What's funny is that I believe that if WALKING DEAD shipped on an old-school schedule, like how I know that some of you could remember the days when you could set your clocks by comics -- BATMAN came out the second week of the month without fail, or whatever -- anyway, if I could tell people, "yeah, WD comes out the last week of the month, guaranteed", we'd be selling 30% more copies just like that. WD would be a top *50* comic, y'know? And the ironic thing is that I tend to suspect that with the freakish exception of MARVEL ZOMBIES, as a creator-owned book under the Image deal, Kirkman pretty much has to be making more money off of WD than any of his page-rate Marvel work.

What really makes this harder for me is that I GENUINELY like WALKING DEAD. There may be sequences I hate (like the rape stuff), but over all this is pretty much certainly Image's strongest and most consistent book. If I had written reviews last week (ah, sorry, sorry, it was order form week with a new computer system, and new hybrid method of taking orders!), I would have given #40 an "Excellent", full of wonderful and vivid characterization.

Which brings me to a special Award for Auspicious Asshattery: Diamond comics for shorting me 2/3rds of my order of WALKING DEAD #41, so I can't even fill subs, let alone have copies for the rack. Though, actually, this sorta works in my favor, because now it will look to most of my customers as though there were two weeks between issues. Hmmmmm.....

(Robert Kirkman is now allowed to make the "...and such small portions!" joke in the comment section, if he feels like it; and I will be obligated to say something self-deprecating in return)

-B

World War Wolk! Jeff brings you the photos!

/

(The nerd conundrum for the new millennium: who's stronger, Annalee or Graeme?)

Sorry these took so long to post; Douglas's signing is at the start of my workweek and was followed immediately by my garage sale (which turned out great, by the way), and after the last nine weeks or so of six day workweeks when I finally got time off, I totally slacked.

Of course, I've got no right to bitch after meeting Douglas Wolk--not only had the guy only been home 22 hours in the last month (the way he put it was, "22 hours total," which leads me to infer they were non-contiguous hours), but he still had something like 11,000 words to write before(?) he left for Burning Man (which he may be doing today, I can't remember) for his six or so regular columns.

Yeah, he's kind of a dynamo, Douglas, and yet still manages to be an incredibly sweet guy, very low-key, filled with great stories, be they about how he got his new column at The Nation, or one of the bands on his record label. (Yes, Douglas Wolk is that kind of terrifying ultra-achiever: the hyphenate.) Not that I'm an expert on either man, but he really reminds me of Scott McCloud when I first met McCloud at San Diego back in 1990--very, very smart, very kind, self-assured but not content to just rest on accrued laurels. (I hope that doesn't sound like a diss against current day Scott McCloud, by the way, because it's not: it's just that when I met McCloud in 1990 and complimented him on the great work he was doing on Zot!, he thanked me and told me he was leaving the book to do a mammoth how-to on comics, a fact at which I could only stand there and gape. "Well, you've earned my trust as a creator, so if that's what you want to do I'll be there..." I not-very-encouragingly said.)

Anyway, here's just a few photos of the signing, and if you get a chance to turn up for one of Douglas's signings in the future, you should do so because he's great.

(the man himself, Douglas Wolk)

(I don't remember what Douglas was saying here, but it obviously entrancing)

(Douglas Wolk, Peter Wong, Ian Brill, Annalee Newitz, Graeme McMillan... it's like the entire Internet showed up for this photo!)

(Hibbs achieves enlightenment, courtesy of Douglas Wolk)

Hibbs explains it all.

/

Over at Newsarama, Hibbs talks more about the POS system in the store:

"I’ve only been using POS for two weeks now; and only the one system, so nothing I say on the topic should probably be granted that much weight, really, but I can already see how this is going to transform the way that I operate my store, my ability to properly order things that have fallen “off my radar”, my accidents in double or triple ordering some material, my access to data for customer searches and special orders, and so on. If I can enact even half of the efficiencies that POS promises my store should quickly become that much more efficient and profitable."

It's not necessarily that easy, though. Go and read why.

Wolk this way!

/

(I'm going to hell for that post title, I just know it!)

This Friday, August 17th, from 4 to 7 PM, Comix Experience is very happy to host DOUGLAS WOLK, international bon vivant, Savage Critic, and author of the most excellent Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean

 

Join us for an afternoon of book signing, comics theory, continuity debate, and, unless I miss my guess, beer.

Plus, since we're in San Francisco, I'd say odds are frankly terrific that we'll also have Jeff Lester and Graeme McMillan on hand (well, after they get off work), so four, count them four Savage Critics to pontificate!

Be there or miss the most insider comics afternoon of the summer!!

-B

 

POS Follies Part 10, the conclusion

/

So, the Point of Sale has now been live for a week, as of today, and I have to say I'm in love.

There have been issues, of course -- the primary one being me trusting the Barcodes that were already in the system thinking "well, they must have scanned clearly at Starclipper, so they must all be 100% right!" Well... no. Nice idea in theory, but pretty crap in practice. I'm not 100% clear on why the differences exist -- perhaps they're from Diamond-provided codes that hadn't actually ARRIVED at SC for confirmation when they sent me the database, or something along those line -- but either way the problems are easy enough to fix, even in the middle of a transaction, and looking up books is as fast as your typing skills will allow. (So... slow for most of us Comix Experiencer types!)

I'm pretty comfortable with the gun-gun-gun nature of transactions now -- in fact, I sorta doubt I can get much faster because there's a small but crucial lag (a quarter second? Less?) between gunning an item, and the system recognizing it, but there's NO DOUBT that scanning in a stack of comics takes a whole lot longer than typing "7x299[category]" does on a cash register.

Where I can improve my time is in learning the shortcuts built in the system -- some of which are intuitive, and a few that aren't.

MOBY is the only POS system I've ever used, but, even with only a week of being live and using it, I can pretty unreservedly recommend it. The small quirks of "well, that's not how *I* would have implemented such-and-such" are often down to me just retraining my mind to HOW to do something. Everything I do and think about comics retail is very much defined by having done it in certain ways for EIGHTEEN YEARS, so challenging my preconceptions is always a decent thing.

I'll give you an example: order check-in. MOBY has a check-in procedure that I, personally, find overly-pedantic. You have to scan every bar-code in TWICE, you have to manually confirm the pricing on an item, you have to positively tell it that there are no damages.

I understand these choices -- and if I was trying to "idiot proof" a system myself, I'd probably make very similar ones. Thing is, I've got a damage rate of like .001%. Prices don't change from solicitation on 99.989% of all comics, and, so far, the barcodes for the Marvel and DC books that show up with your weekly invoice (if you've asked them for "extended format") look to be similarly accurate. I'm hoping to convince them to build me a feature that allows me to just say "YES! The invoice is fine, just import it as is", and then fix the 2-5 mistakes "in post"

(I always tend to believe that "as long as you have enough 'coverage', you can *always* 'fix it in post'" -- and doing so is usually faster than being a total fuckin' anal pendent about getting it 100% correct upfront)

Anyway, my part of check in took me an hour last week, and only 40 minutes this week. I bet I can get it down to 20 minutes or so eventually.... but I'd rather it be, y'know, 30 seconds of "Yeah yeah, it is all good", followed by 5 minutes of fixing mistakes...

One thing I LOVE about MOBY is that I can make a suggestion, and then Mark will actually work on it -- now that's customer fuckin' service!!

We've still got some minor problems and things to work out and around, but the overwhelming bulk of the work is now done, and the ability to reorder with the push of a single (series of) button (s) is... OMG! I used to spend 3 hours walking the floor every week reordering stuff, and now its going to be an approximately 10 minute process.

What you do, see, is tell it what your "minimum copies on hand" should be -- "I *always* want to have at least 3 copies of WATCHMEN on hand" or whatever -- then when you do the reorder process, if you have less than 3, it does all of the math to tell you how many you should be ordering, and spits it out in a format that Diamond understands. All I have to do now is CONFIRM the data I've been given, and maybe massage a book here or there, or look for things that maybe I didn't want to commit to a specific number until I actually saw the final product. Roolage!

My efficiency is going to double (at least)

Ultimately, if you're an existing comics shop: bite the bullet, and Just Do It -- I'm going to get back all kind of time that I used to use doing rote scut work, that can now be used more productively. If you're a NEW store, then don't even THINK about opening without POS in place.

FOr myself, I can definitely recommend MOBY to you. I may be screaming about it in a few weeks when I have to do my first order form with it, and have to beat the learning curve, but I can most certainly tell I'm going to save buckets of time in the long run by computerizing this stuff; I'm not going to sell out as easily of stuff I "forget"; and I'm NOT going to double-order stuff because I'm a doofus. Those two alone will probably pay for the cost of the system and the software in six months!

So yeah, fourteen flavors of sheer awesome, and it's going to make a damn fine comics shop way way better.

Now that we're on the downslope of the data entry that needs to be done, I'll also be making a return to reviewing. Graeme, monster that he is, wants me to review the porn, but that might be too much of a Big Boy move after not reviewing jack or shit in like six weeks or something.

So, reviews from me again starting (probably) tomorrow, yay!

In the meantime: Here's what arrived this week at CE:

AMAZING SPIDER-GIRL #11
ANNIHILATION CONQUEST WRAITH #2 (OF 4)
ARMY OF DARKNESS FROM ASHES #1
ARSENIC LULLABY PULP EDITION #1
AVENGERS CLASSIC #3
BAD PLANET #2 (OF 6) (RES)
BATMAN #667
BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL #8
BATMAN STRIKES #36
BERLIN #13
BLACK ADAM THE DARK AGE #1 (OF 6)
BLADE #12
BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL #128
BOYS #9 (RES)
BPRD KILLING GROUND #1 (OF 5)
CARTOON NETWORK ACTION PACK #16
CASANOVA #8
COUNTDOWN 38
COVER GIRL #4 (OF 5)
CRIMINAL #8
DAREDEVIL #99
DARK TOWER GUNSLINGERS GUIDEBOOK
DEADMAN #12
DMZ #22
DYNAMO 5 #6
EXILES #97
FABLES #64
FANTASTIC FIVE #3 (OF 5)
FANTASTIC FOUR AND POWER PACK #2 (OF 4)
GEN 13 #11
GHOST RIDER #14
GLISTER #1
GREEN ARROW YEAR ONE #3 (OF 6)
GREEN LANTERN #22
GRIMM FAIRY TALES #16 (RES)
GRIMM FAIRY TALES RETURN TO WONDERLAND #2 (OF 7)
HEDGE KNIGHT 2 SWORN SWORD #3 (OF 6)
INCREDIBLE HULK #109 WWH
INDIA AUTHENTIC UMA #4
IRREDEEMABLE ANT-MAN #11
JACK OF FABLES #13
JLA CLASSIFIED #41
MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN #30
MARVEL ILLUSTRATED LAST OF THE MOHICANS #3 (OF 6)
MARVEL ILLUSTRATED MAN IN THE IRON MASK #2 (OF 6)
NEW AVENGERS #33
NEW AVENGERS TRANSFORMERS #2 (OF 4)
NEW EXCALIBUR #22
NICOLAS CAGES VOODOO CHILD TEMPLESMITH COVER #2
NOVA #5
OMEGA FLIGHT #5 (OF 5) CWI
OUTSIDERS FIVE OF A KIND WEEK 2 KATANA SHAZAM
PHANTOM CVR A #18
POWERS #25
PUBLIC ENEMY #4
PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #10 CWI
RED SONJA #25
SADHU THE SILENT ONES #1
SPIDER-MAN FANTASTIC FOUR #4 (OF 4)
STAR WARS LEGACY #15
STAR WARS REBELLION #9
STORMWATCH PHD #10
ULTIMATE X-MEN #85
UNCLE SCROOGE #368
UN-MEN #1
WALT DISNEYS COMICS & STORIES #683
WORLD WAR HULK FRONT LINE #3 (OF 6)
X-FACTOR #22
ZOMBIE PROJECT #1

Books / Etc.
100 BULLETS VOL 11 ONCE UPON A CRIME TP
ALAN MOORE THE COMPLETE WILDCATS TP
BLACK METAL VOL 1 GN
CLIVE BARKERS GREAT & SECRET SHOW VOL 2 TP
COMPLETE JON SABLE FREELANCE VOL 7 TP
DOME HC
DUMMYS GUIDE TO DANGER VOL 1 TP
EC ARCHIVES TWO-FISTED TALES VOL 2 HC
ESSENTIAL DAZZLER VOL 1 TP
FEMME FATALES SEPT 2007 VOL 16 #4
FORGOTTEN REALMS VOL 5 STREAMS SILVER TP
GHOST RIDER VOL 2 LIFE & DEATH OF JOHNNY BLAZE TP
HEAVY METAL SEPTEMBER 2007 #112
LAST CALL VOL 1 GN
LEES TOY REVIEW AUG 2007 #178
LORI LOVECRAFT VOL 2 MY BLACK PAGES TP
MARVEL ADVENTURES FANTASTIC FOUR VOL 6 DIGEST TP
PIRATES VS NINJAS POCKET MANGA VOL 1
SHOWCASE PRESENTS ADAM STRANGE VOL 1 TP
STYLE SCHOOL VOL 1 TP
SUPERMAN CHRONICLES VOL 3 TP
TOYFARE 10TH ANNIVERSARY ED CVR #122
VAULT OF MICHAEL ALLRED LTD ED HC
VIDEO WATCHDOG #133
WOMEN OF MARVEL VOL 2 TP
ZOMBIE TALES VOL 1 TP

What, as they say, looks good to YOU?

-B

POS Follies Part 9

/

OK, system in and up, doors opened a bit, and we've done our first 2 sales.

OF COURSE the first sale (w/ 4 items) scanned successfully on zero of them, but he was cool enough to let me go enter the scans back into the system (though I can easialy check someone out w/o it), so the NEXT time I sell those books it should go smooth. We'll see!

Second transaction was good for 3 of the 4, and the last was my last copy of something that I won't restock anyway, so I let it go.

Anyway, back to it, more later (maybe)

-B

POS Follies Part 8

/

OK, double Ow.

Left the house at 6:30 this morning, arrived back home at midnight. Whee.

That whole "let's try to open" thing? Turned out to be not so great of an idea, weirdly enough -- still just enough training to do/things to go over/ fussy things to finish (or get into shouting distance of finished at least) So we didn't bother to try.

Oddly enough, we still pretty much did a "normal" Monday's sales, as we let in subbers who were just there to pick up thier orders, and anyone who knew JUST what they wanted.... but still, that means we'd have had a GREAT Monday if we'd let browsers in.

We will definitely be open on time tomorrow, everything is set "enough" for it -- I still have about 200-ish items that were never in MOBY's database, or needed something cleaned up, or are something special to our store, or whatever, that need to be entered.... but those can be done catch-as-catch can over the next (whatever) because they're not exactly top sellers or anything -- but the overwhelming majority (98.5% or better) of the inventory is in the computer and ready to sell. Well, 20% of it doesn't have barcodes yet (and 10% of those won't ever), but we can look up via the keyboard anything really fast.

Anyway, game on tomorrow.

I'll be back in somewhere between 7 & 8 AM to clear up my last bits of business, then I'll have one last 12 hour day before I can go back to "normal" (though I'll be working all day each day for the next bit, just to back up Rob and Sue a couple of days each as they work their way through getting comfortable of the logic of the system.)

But, yeah, it is live and selling books tomorrow.

Hurrah!

-B

POS Follies Part 7

/

Ow.

So Mark Richman of MOBY arrived on Saturday night to complete our install of the MOBY point-of-sales system, and to begin our training on it.

Saturday night, Rob Bennett and I did the hard physical inventory of the store, as Mark wrestled the hardware into working order, clearing up all the issues I couldn't figure out, like how to get all three of the different printers (receipt, bar code, and regular 8.5x11) working in harmony.

Rob and I started around 7:30 PM. "How long can it take?" I mused out loud, "I bet we can get it done in 3 hours max". Admittedly, I thought we were going to have one more body with us. We were done SEVEN hours later, at just past 2 AM. I got to bed at 3 AM ish.

I was back at the store by 9:30 AM Sunday morning to actually enter the inventory numbers into the computer. I was freaked out that my estimate of 3 hours to accomplish that was catastrophically wrong, given the inventory timing, but I actually finished it in just under 2 hours, going at a leisurely pace, and spending lots of time double checking my entries.

(Originally Jeff Lester was meant to help with the data entry -- but he had an out-of-town wedding the same weekend, so it fell to me... He'd have probably finished in an hour flat)

Noon, and Mark started training Sue, Rob and I. Spent perhaps too much time on stuff not directly related to selling-TO-a-customer type functionality, so it looks like training will roll on 'til tomorrow as we get our first customers.

Mark had some programming related to requests we made, so, rather than hover over his shoulder while he is doing that, I decided discretion as better than, etc., and retreated home to lick my wounds. I plan on leaving the house by 6:30 am tomorrow to get a jump on the last fiddly bits of inventory management (as always, there was a fair chunk of stuff that fell through the cracks), because I'm setting my goal of being done with all of that (except, maybe, the mini-comics... and we might just skip it as being too-much-work, for too-little-return to get them in the system by about 9 am tomorrow. Which probably won't happen, but I'm going to try.

Mark thinks we should stay closed in the AM, to do some last things, and while I'll probably defer to him in the end, I'm trying to work it so we CAN open at 11AM like normal, rather than 2 or 3. We already cheated a bunch of customers out of today. Rather not perpetuate that, if it is sensible to do so.

Funny, I'm not in San Diego, but I'm pretty much keeping San Diego hours, and feeling that San Diego pain, too!

One big fuck up on my part: I didn't have the barcode scanner set up properly to capture the "hanging" 4 digits in a code, so I have 200-ish scans which will end up being severely wrong. Nice thing is, you can "train" MOBY in codes "on the spot", so this will be a fairly minimal hassle.

Ugh, my brain is total mush right now, but I think we'll be very cool at some point tomorrow -- MOBY is pretty clearly 7 flavors full of wonderful, and I'm pretty confident I made the right choice in POS systems; it is both sexy and robust!

More when I have another chance to breathe... I might even be skipping on the shipping list this week 'cuz I don't know if I will have the time.

-B