Rory Root's Memorial

I haven't seen anyone else write about it (or, at least Tom 'n' Ace 'n' Dirk ain't linked to anything yet), so let me take a stab at saying something about the memorial for Rory Root at Comic Relief this past Saturday night.

I traveled to the Memorial with Jeff and Graeme, as well as Anina Bennett and Paul Guinan. We arrived right around 7 PM, while the event itself was scheduled to start at 5. I was told that the actual Stand-Up-And-Say-Something portion of it started about 6 (and it lasted until 10:30 or 11 or so, wow!)

When we showed up, the street in front of CR was packed, with probably 40-50 people milling about talking, reminiscing on the sidewalk. Immediately I recognized tons of people who came in from out of town -- oh, there's Diana Schutz, there's Larry Marder, there's Bob Wayne, it went on like that pretty much all night, every time I turned I saw someone in comics who'd flown in from out of town for this. To a certain extent, it might have been almost good that it happened the same weekend as Heroes Con, because otherwise maybe it would have shut down traffic, y'know?

Then there were all of the retailers. Wow, there were a lot of folks flying out-of-state for this -- Jim Hanley and Steve Gursky, Matt Lehman, Brad Bankston, Mike Malve, Hell Kelly Down came down all the way from Alberta - and I'm missing a couple of people there. Then there were at least 25, maybe 30 retailers from inside California. Honestly if you wanted to pull a string of comic book store heists up and down the left coast, last Saturday would have been the day to do it -- all of the owners were out of town!

I'm awful at eyeballing numbers in a crowd, and it's even harder in CR because the store is so ginormous it throws off my sense of scale, but I'm guessing that at certain points there were likely upwards of 125 people inside the store at one time. It was packed.

It was also kind of like walking into an oven. Thursday and Friday had been EVIL hot days in the Bay Area (at least by Bay Area standards), but Saturday had started to cool off. So, OUTside the store it was a wonderfully pleasant summer evening, with a nice breeze and all, but, wham 20 degrees hotter once you get two steps in, from the heat of the crowd, and lack of any real ventilation.

I heard a lot of great Rory stories, both delivered to the crowd, as well as shared in small groups, and we talked a lot about comics more generally, and saw people we might not have seen in a long time, and had lots of food and beer and just generally a good ass time. Which is pretty much what Rory would have loved.

I'm young enough that this kind of thing is really rare for me (and thank god for that), and I never really know what the etiquette of things should be. Everyone asks "how are you doing?" and I am sorta not sure if that's in the "What's up?" sense or the "How hard is the loss hitting you?" It is maybe even weirder now, because "enough" time has passed that most of his friends are just now starting to "get over it". I open with "my condolences" to a handful of people -- Rory's family, Todd, ex-Partner Mike, because I feel like they really deserve more than the "how are you doing?" but I still feel kind of awkward and strange with what to say and how to say it. Or how to respond, sometimes. Death is weird.

Heh, so I'm standing outside (AND NOT SMOKING A CIGARETTE, mind, so that's good)(though I got offered many from people who know me as a smoker, which is also nice, if no longer practical), and some girl walks by and asks "Wow, what's going on here?" and I tell her that it's a memorial for the owner of the store, and that he was a great man, and that there are people from all over the country here to pay their respects, and she smiles, and says quite innocently, "Wow! Sounds cool!" She didn't MEAN any harm, nor did I take any, but isn't that like exactly the wrong thing to say?

Berkeley, y'know?

I ended up leaving just before midnight (If I don't get on BART by then, I turn into a pumpkin... though I really timed my train right, I waited for less than 5 minutes, so was back in The City waiting for my Muni bus in under a half-hour... and that's WITH the transfer at McArthur), and I think I was among the last people who wasn't a CR employee, or past CR employee.

I left it to them, as it should be. (though I sorta pity whoever opened Sunday, heh)

I'll miss the big guy, and I didn't want to say goodbye, but this was an alright way to do so, if we have to.

Rory would have adored the party and all of the people and that they were all happy; but he would have been embarrassed as heck that they were actually SAYING all of the wonderful things they did.

-B

TIlting at Windmills v3 #2 (#168)

The new Tilting at Windmills is live here

Always interested in your thoughts.

-B

A Titan Passes: RIP Rory Root

I feel like I've just been punched in the chest.

Rory Root, owner of Comic Relief in Berkeley, and a tremendously great friend of mine, just passed away following a brief coma after surgery for a ruptured hernia this weekend.

Rory and I had a lot of shared paths in comics retailing -- we both worked at the Best of Two Worlds chain in the Bay Area. He managed the Berkeley store, and I managed the SF one, before we each opened our own stores, he two years ahead of my own.

Rory was a confidant, a friend, a mentor, and always always ALWAYS, whether I wanted it or not, a sounding board.

There's many a time when the phone would ring after midnight. Nope, not an emergency or anything, just Rory wanting to gab about something relating to comics or retailing. He'd call so often and so late at times that Tzipora half-suspected I was having an affair. "Nope, just Rory calling," I say, and she'd roll over to sleep contented at that.

If Rory had a fault, it was that he was a talkaholic. Man, could the man talk! This is coming from, you understand, a veteran talker myself -- but Rory had me beat six ways to Sunday. The man never met a tangent he didn't like, never had a topic he couldn't opine upon. But it was all good -- because his gabbiness was tempered by wisdom and knowledge. The man (usually!) knew exactly wherefore he was speaking of, and on the few occasions he didn't, he was possessed of enough awareness to ask the questions that would make him MORE knowledgeable.

Comic Relief, once upon a time, had a second store in San Francisco, about eight blocks away from mine. He hadn't opened it on purpose, in fact, he was there to help out a friend who had gotten locked into a bad lease due to the actions of another. At no point we were enemies, however -- he used to call me "Mr. Macy", and I'd call him "Mr. Gimble" like we were out of A MIRACLE ON THIRTY-FOURTH ST., sending customers freely back and forth between the stores, knowing that making sure people got the book they want was infinitely more important than any kind of rivalry. When CR went in, sales actually INCREASED because there were now two excellent comics shops within walking distance of one another.

There are other retailers in my City who could have learned the lessons of camaraderie that Rory and I taught each other over those two or so years. I know Rory thought so too -- he told me so many times.

Rory was a generous man -- generous with his time and his attention, perhaps maybe generous to a fault because I can think of many people over the decades who took advantage of his trust and generosity, but it never made him bitter.

But there are few retailers, publishers or creators who spent any amount of time with the man and didn't walk away learning a dozen things about how comics work the way they do, and what things that could be done to make things better. It is the loss of that generosity of his knowledge (and it was truly encyclopedic and broad) that is going to be the loss that the comics industry is going to face over the next years. If only we had a few dozen Rory Roots, we could have utterly transformed the entire industry.

I've said more than a few times that Comic Relief was the best comic book store that I've ever been in in my life, and through his many illnesses over the last few years, he thought long and hard about making sure the store will outlast him. He told me on many different occasions that the store will fall to long-time manager Todd Martinez, and I really think it could not be in better hands. Todd's a very good guy, and I'm sure that the store will continue to thrive under his hands.

I owe Rory a lot, personally, professionally. He was always there for me with encouraging words, solid advice, and a wicked bad case of loving puns; I hope I was even half the friend to him that he was to me.

People used to mistake us for each other all of the time. I mean, not really, but in the sense that "they're two overweight bearded long-hair retailers from the Bay Area, who are deeply passionate about comics; so I've got a 50/50 chance of guessing right since I can't see his nametag clearly"

Here's how I most know I'm going to miss the big guy: if it was anyone else I was writing this for, I'd be calling Rory right now and reading it to him over the phone, and asking "what am I leaving out?" and he'd give me six great ideas of things that I really should have said.

Well, I don't have him now, and I'm sure I'm leaving out six things I really should have said, but I know this much: I'm going to really really miss my friend Rory Root.

May he rest in peace.

-B

Tilting v3 #1!

OK, so it's actually #168, but it has a new home, over at Comic Book Resources, and I bet you that Jonah would like it if everyone would click through that link so he doesn't start thinking, "Oh my god, what have I done"

I also now have my own forum there (god, was that a foolish thing to ask for?), and I see the first message there says I'm a gay icon, and I should team up with Dazzler.

I think I'll answer that one when I've had a little sleep!

-B

Why I love Free Comic Book Day

The OVERWHELMING majority of people coming in are incredibly fuckin' cool -- they're not greedy, they only take stuff the actual want (as opposed to it being free), they're excited and HAPPY, and most of them actually purchase something as well, without any prompting whatsoever.

So so many kids coming in with their families -- and that's thirty-TWO flavors of awesome!

Sure, there's always a couple of greedy dicks (check around the net, you'll find at least one or two blogging their dickishness), or people who just don't "get" the idea of FCBD, but they're the clear minority.

We had a GREAT day of sales (about 160% of Wednesday, w00t!), made tons and tons of people happy, and did it, best yet, with literally no promotion other than putting a sign in the window.

Joe Field of Flying Colors Comics in Concord should be Sainted -- I swear the event gets better each year!

-B

Count this!

Haven't done a proper comic book "review" in a really long time, and despite being swamped with getting ONOMATOPOEIA done this week, and having to make a serious dent in the new order form, I thought I'd jump back in here for a minute.

I'm reasonably sure that better writers than myself will tackle the complexities and joys that were COUNTDOWN (I'm especially waiting for Chris Eckert's deconstruction -- Downcounting, when he wrote it, was WONDERFUL), but in the meantime you can deal with my bleating.

DC has had a pretty bad last two years. Their editorial vision has been, in my humble opinion, horrifically broken, and, more importantly, completely and utterly out of touch of the interests of the audience. What successes they've had have seemed to this observer to either be completely accidental (SINESTRO CORPS) or actively worked against (the end of 52, and the multiverse, etc)

I've been selling comics in my own store for nineteen years now, and we've always been a "DC store" -- selling more DC comics than Marvel comics. This makes us a rare and unique creature in comics retailing, as far as I can tell from speaking with my brethren and reading the sales charts.

And right now in 2008, we're selling more Marvel comic books than DC. If it weren't for DC's superlative backlist program, and the strength of Vertigo titles in that format like Y and FABLES and DMZ, it would be a total and complete rout.

Marvel, to be sure, has been on a strong run with the of-the-Zeitgeist CIVIL WAR, but it is clear to me watching our sales figures and listening to my customers that an equal measure of this switch has been DC completely and utterly bobbling the ball.

The first real signs, for me, was "One Year Later", which was about as unmanaged and poorly fitting of an idea as anything I can think of. Virtually every DCU book took a sharp downwards spike in the wake of OYL, as the readership didn't understand what was going on in the books they followed, and given no real incentive to pick up new ones.

That could have been managed had it not been for COUNTDOWN, "the spine of the DC Universe" -- a spine that virtually no one enjoyed, and that had what seemed to be a billion-jillion awful tie ins and crossovers and "spin outs" all predicated on branding and ideas that no one (not even, it seems) the creators were especially enthused by.

COUNTDOWN finishes this week with COUNTDOWN #1. The original plan was that COUNTDOWN would finish with a #0, but that #0 has been repositioned as "DC UNIVERSE #0", leading to the silliness of "1 and counting" in this week's COUNTDOWN, when it isn't any such thing...

DC's previous weekly, 52, wasn't amazing through all points, but it least it had narrative character arcs that actually lead to somewhere meaningful for most of the involved characters -- virtually each character went through some form of character growth during the series and ended up in a different place and head-space than they were at the beginning.

Not so with COUNTDOWN. Let's look at it:

HOLLY & HARLEY: I guess they're girfriends now (? Was that what we were supposed to get from the end?), which really seems out of character for Holly at least -- why isn't she looking for Selina? I guess technically this is a change, though a very hamfisted and out of character one.

MARY MARVEL: Started off evil, ended up evil, didn't learn a thing. Heck, Black Adam showed more character growth in COUNTDOWN, and he was on, what, 4 pages?

PIED PIPER & TRICKSTER: Well one is dead, while the other magically isn't. PP decides to "be on the side of the angels" -- but he already was until the editorially-mandated death of Bart Allen.

JASON TODD: Still a psychotic fuckhole, didn't even keep the "Red Robin" costume. Sheesh.

The "CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN" (that is, Donna Troy, Kyle Rayner, and Ray Palmer) are all left not even an inch different than they started (Ray is mopey, though), and given a new "mission" that will last about as long as Donna stayed a Darkstar, if that long. Said mission barely makes sense anyway -- any one Monitor has been pretty clearly shown to be stronger than any 10 superheroes combined, what on earth could these three (and that bug-girl from the Olsen storyline) (?!?!?! WTF is she doing there?) possibly hope to do anything against the monitors? And, anyway, even if they COULD (which they can't), just exactly how are they going to transverse the multiverse in order to do so, without that Monitor helping them constantly? Wha?

JIMMY OLSEN: Started a schlub, ended a schlub, didn't even get his story. As the "everyman" of the story, he fought gods (*rolls eyes*

JACK KIRBY: Pretty much shat upon. The Fourth World is annihilated, to no real good end, the final prophecy is rewritten to serve a lousy story. OMAC is reborn with the mohawk, but in a way and method completely the opposite of what Kirby did, and not for what sounds like any good story reason. Kamandi also seemingly re/unwritten.

And all this for $152.49 -- 51 times $2.99.

At the end of the day, COUNTDOWN was an complete mess, going nowhere, doing nothing, and not even doing it well. Utter CRAP.

In a lot of ways, DC's future really depends upon FINAL CRISIS -- it's got to be REALLY good in order to draw people back to the DCU. And while Grant Morrison and JG Jones would sound like the people up for the job, if anyone is, the rumor columns are suggesting that it isn't going to ship on time (and the buzz around the freelancers is that project is already compromised)

I don't have a ton of faith in TRINITY at this point either -- our preorders for 52 while it was running were around 35-40 buyers; preorders on COUNTDOWN dropped down to about 14 bodies. Currently TRINITY is sitting at NINE people signed up for it, despite a pretty a-list creative team on it.

Plot should flow from character; characterization should not be dictated by plot. DC *has* to learn this and learn this very quickly if they don't want to lose more market share and customer interest.

What did YOU think?

-B

Why I sometimes think about going to a high point with a sniper rifle....

THis is like pissing in the wind -- after all, it is WIZARD I'm talking about, but I'm flipping through WIZARD #200 (Gold) [since there are more than one magazine that is "WIZARD #200", OFMG where's-the-rifle, where's-the-rifle, where's-the-rifle!], and I get to the "50 events that rocked comics 1991-2008" article, and I-swear-to-god-that-I-am-not-making-this-up, but #3 is, with no irony whatsoever, in let me remind you, WIZ-fuckin-ARD magazine:

************ THE BOOM MARKET IMPLODES (1994-1996)

Publishers had plenty of reasons to smile in the early 1990s. Misguided collectors were snapping up record numbers of variant covers, egged on by hyperbolic story stunts; non-sport trading cards were disappearing from shelves; superstar artists would fart out tripe and watch bank accounts swell. And, just like that, it was over: the speculators who had driven companies to over-market gimmickry realized that nothing with a circulation in the millions would ever have long-term value. They had essentially siphoned the industry, leaving dealers with stale back stock, ardent fans holding grudges for being gouged and iconic label Marvel declaring bankruptcy. It was, in short, a paper holocaust that put the Brazilian Rain Forest to shame. ***********

Missing is the sentence that says "Oh, and by the way, a lot of that was actually our fault, oops, sorry!"

I mean, this is the company that, as recently as last year allegedly capitalized on insider information and was Selling CAPTAIN AMERICA #25 on day-of-release for like $30, WITH ads for it on Marvel's own site.

Words fail me, can I say?

By the way? The #2 story? "The Death of Superman", while #1 was "Image Comics Launches".

I know they said that irony was dead, but jinkies, at Wizard entertainment, IRONY IS DEAD...

-B

Happy Birthday, CE!

Ugh, I've come down with some sort of horrible cold (thanks, Ben!), and I'm sitting here shivering barely able to put two words together, and trying desperately to not nod off at the counter until Carissa comes in in an hour, so I'm going to push off the return of Around the Store until tomorrow (I hope?)

But I did want to note that today is the 19th anniversary of Comix Experience!

Not the state I want to be in for it, but you take what you can get....

OK, back to nodding off...

-B

Comix Experience Top Sellers in EW

Page 65 of this week's ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY (the SNL cover)

Neat!

-B

Don't Tug

It's February 29th, Leap Year Day, which can only mean one thing: It's Superman's birthday! Superman is, of course, 70 years old this year (ACTION #1 had an June, 1938 cover date, so that would have shipped in April, I think), but sometime in the 1970s it was decided that he was a Leap Year baby.

I asked Mark Waid if there was a citation in the comic books to this, and he replied: "I know it was in one of E. Nelson Bridwell's/Mort Weisinger's letter columns, a jokey answer about how Superman could have been an adult in 1938 and still look so young. Nelson 'cemented' the date in the 1976 Super DC Calendar from Warner Books."

I had a memory of reading a comic story, and Kurt Busiek says that SUPERMAN #249 deals with the birthday, but I don't have a copy of that to look up the details.

The Time Magazine article on Superman's 50th anniversary (3/14/88) also cites that as his birthday, but all of the links I found to that article 404ed.

Either way, mathematically, that kind of can't be right -- '38 wasn't a leap year, '36 and '40 were, but if we were to go with the earlier date, then Superman would be 18 today (kinda)

Either way, I love the idea of it, even if there's very little canon or facts to back it up, so Happy Birthday Superman!

-B

Moving the Goalposts

For the handful of you interested in the back-and-forth over the BookScan issue, I want to point you to Heidi's post, as well as Dirk's first and second sallies.

For those of you only here for the reviews, you can stop reading now. In fact, I'd really urge you to!

If I have edited this properly, it continues after the jump:

For whatever it is worth, I agree nearly 100% with Heidi: my biases are both obvious, (and directly stated in the original piece!) -- I believe in the Direct Market (as a concept, if not, necessarily, in the specific individual on-the-ground iteration) to be a far superior method of selling comics for the simple reason that a specialist, with a specialist's passion, is more likely to be able to do a superlative job in selling a specialty product than a generalist. That would seem to me to be fairly self-evident.

(Does this mean that ALL DM stores are going to be better than selling comics than ALL bookstores? No, of course not -- there are always going to be ends of the curve in either model which out/under-perform their opposite number)

I want to believe that I've been very specific and very exacting both about my biases, as well as the usefulness of the specific numbers. Certainly I went into great detail about how the numbers could be wrong and what they do and do not measure; part of the problem may be that on the internet (and who knows, maybe in life, in general, but we can track it on the internet...) people see what they want to see.

Look, I like me some "art comics", when a new EIGHTBALL or OPTIC NERVE comes out, its usually a Top 10 book for Comix Experience, but the fandom/internet meme/hope of "if only we get into the bookstores, then they'll all suddenly buy everything I think is good" really doesn't seem to be the case. I wanted to believe it too!

But let's stay on target when we look at retail sales -- let's not conflate them with other channels, let's not take anecdote as fact, and let's try not to move the Goalposts in the middle of the game.

By way of example, I point to Dirk's latest, where all of a sudden he's pointing to prose books; what does that have to do with anything? It should be pretty obvious that the math involved for both the publisher and especially the creator is very very different between prose and comics; the breakeven point for one is certainly very different from the other. I should know, I have a prose book in print, and I was involved in setting the print run, and the costs thereof; and I've got a pretty good idea of the physical printing costs of comics, and one is a fraction of the other.

Here's what I said (that Dirk is even quoting directly!):

“Art Comics”, with the exception of a tiny handful of “anointed” books, do not appear to be selling in the bookstore environment. Remember that BookScan includes Amazon, and all major internet retailers as well.

It further seems to me that with approximately 7500 BookScan reporting venues, this indicates that most book stores aren’t even bothering to stock “Art comics” in the first place.

And this seems to be a fairly unassailable fact in relationship to what BookScan reports -- with ~7500 venues (including the majority of the internet sales picture) if you're moving under 4400 copies that means that you're either not being stocked in the first place OR that the audience there isn't especially interested in that material OR both. For the record, I strongly suspect the answer is actually #1, that IF that material was stocked and supported and racked it would probably sell better.

The Elephant in the Room, to me, is Amazon -- Amazon is "bias neutral" in my opinion; that is that each book "displayed" at Amazon is basically equivalent to each other, and that "finding" a book on their "shelves" is a trivial matter, not influenced by physical "racking" decisions. It seems to me that if there was a deep, wide-spread market crying out for "art comics" material that Amazon would be capturing those sales in a pretty significant fashion, as Amazon is "the world's largest comics store". Yet THEY DON'T APPEAR TO BE capturing these sales in any significant fashion.

I have no problem with differing conclusions about the data -- in fact, I specifically asked for it -- but, please, let's not move the goalposts by suddenly claiming that "Oh well, a small publishing house doesn't NEED to sell as many copies", as if that were even slightly relevant to matter at hand. NO ONE said anything about whether the material is PROFITABLE or not, just that it doesn't appear to be selling in significant quantities in the bookstore environment, as far as that environment can be tracked (with all of the caveats and weaknesses of the numbers inherent in that tracking), relative to other comics material. Given the extant data, that appears to be true. If there's OTHER data to show otherwise, I'm sure that everyone would be happy to see that, but since we can't, we can only analyze what we have.

There's a larger issue here, and it is one that Robert Scott has brought up several times -- without marketing and advertising and general publisher support, it is very difficult for any material of any stripe or style or form or content to find its audience without direct intervention by the sellers of the book, be they DM or "bookstores". But that's almost certainly a topic for another day.

This will, hopefully, be my last comment on this (until it is time to write about the '08 numbers)!

-B

PS: to ADD: BONE is now "art comix"?! Buh-wha--?!?

Tilting at Windmills v2 #9: BookScan 2007

The latest Tilting at Windmills is up on Newsarama. Yeesh, more than 11k words!! Matt decided to not post the file with the actual numbers, so foo on that.

Any commentary, feel free below.

Some actual reviews coming later this afternoon...

-B

Saying Kaddish: The Passing of Steve Gerber.

It's been said by much smarter men than myself (Jules Feiffer and Gerard Jones being but two) that Judaism is perhaps the real secret identity at the heart of the superhero experience--one doesn't have to look much farther than Lieber and Kurtzberg, who built Marvel comics under the pen names of Lee and Kirby, to make a case for it. Of all the many things I've thought about Steve Gerber--and believe me, I've thought about him a lot since learning of his passing earlier today--what sticks with me is that Gerber was the hero without the mask, the guy brave enough to forego the secret identity. I grew up in whiter-than-white Humboldt County and even I could tell that Gerber was Jewish: his stories were always of outsiders (outsiders even by Marvel's standards) and usually focused on defiant, frequently angry, guys who viewed with both bemusement and amusement the world surrounding them. By the time I got to high school and started reading Malamud (a little), Bellow (embarrassingly less), and Roth (a whole shitload), I could see how Gerber and his work belonged as much to their tradition--that of the soulful shit-stirrer--as to Stan's patented mix of soap opera and winking carnival barker.

The term "patented" is almost more than cliched hyperbole, by the way. What makes eulogizing Gerber difficult--and it will be even more difficult when other writers of his generation pass on--is that his most substantial work was done while stylistically imitating someone else. Every writer passing through Marvel in the '70s had to write in Stan's house style and now that styles and mainstream tastes have finally progressed, I find it's a bit of tough sell to convince younger readers--and more than occasionally myself--that there's good writing buried underneath all the labored rhetoric, and the expository diatribes and the "Dear God, no!" melodramas, and those last panel captions that read, "And somewhere, in the distance, comes the gentle weeping...of a clown."

One of Gerber's achievements--and I'm not sure if someone who doesn't know the period can really appreciate what a strange achievement it is--was to develop his own voice while immersed within that of another: within the Stanisms were the Gerberisms, the things you found only in Gerber's work, that held their own spell, bdspoke their own worldview. Cults popped up regularly in Gerber's work; so did supporting characters who would get fed up and leave the story; plots would expand out and then suddenly collapse in. The rich tapesty of the multiverse would unfold but always in the periphery: in the Florida everglades, in the park on a quiet day, over the Cuyahoga River burning at midnight. And at these places, you'd find an angry but decent guy--Richard Rory or Jack Norris or Howard the Duck--aware of his relative powerlessness, frustrated and bitterly amused at that powerlessness. As I said, I recognized that guy in Bellow's Tommy Wilhelm, in Roth's Portnoy and Zuckerman. (With Wilhelm, the recognition was semi-literal: when I read Seize the Day for the first time, my mental picture of Tommy Wilhelm was Colan's interpretation of Howard the Duck as a human man.)

Another Gerberism was the keystone for the idea of superhero as Jewish myth: Superman. At Marvel, Gerber created Wundarr the Aquarian, the superhero who is rocketed to Earth from a dying planet--except Wundarr arrives on Earth full-grown, with the intelligence of a child. With Mary Skrenes, Gerber created Omega The Unknown, a character that riffs equally on Superman and Captain Marvel--Omega is a hero come to Earth with a strange bond to a boy orphan. Later, Gerber went on to do several offbeat Superman projects. My favorite was the final issue of DC Presents where Gerber packed his entire pitch for Superman into one baffling Hail Mary: an insane Mr. Mxyzptlk destroys Argo City such that Metropolis is layered with a fine mist of kryptonite, and Superman, his power reduced, must live in pain and discomfort whenever he's Clark Kent, treading over the kryptonite impacted sidewalks of the city.

In fact, at the heart of Gerber's best work is Superman and Clark Kent: the powerlessness lurking in the heart of the powerful and, equally as important, the power lurking in the heart of the powerless. (After all, it's usually Rory and Norris and Howard who are the tipping point in the battle between good and evil.) Such paradoxes transcended the two scoops of ego gratification and bathetic male self-pity served up in the work of Stan Lee and most of his successors. While far from immune to such weaknesses (Gerber's worst work is like reading Harlan Ellison at his most histrionic), the duality of power-in-powerlessness and powerlessness-in-power which Gerber returned to thematically was a genuine belief in the world, founded on the way he saw it work: cults and corporations collapsed under their own weight; the little guy, though screwed, could still wrest victory from the jaws of defeat if he just kept at it.

I could type another ten thousand words and not get at the power of these and other achievements. (I didn't even start in on that awesome Daredevil storyline where the villain is an intelligent malevolent baboon whose pheromones make every woman his slave and who slugs it out with our hero on the roof of the White House, to say nothing of Starhawk, the first transgender superhero, Angarr The Screamer, the showgirl and the ostrich, KISS, Doctor Bong, etc., etc.) But what I should say is, Steve Gerber kept at it. He kept at it after Cat Yronwode (I believe) wrote an editorial about how his work no longer moved her; he kept at it after Jim Shooter cruelly (and inelegantly) mocked him in the first issue of Secret Wars II; he kept at it after Nevada was unceremoniously dumped, after Hard Time was canceled, after Marvel published Lethem's Omega The Unknown miniseries over Gerber's initial objections. Steve Gerber kept at it six days before he died, working in the middle of the night working on his current assignment, Doctor Fate. I'd like to believe in an afterlife, and Steve Gerber is there, keeping at it, seeing his stories end the way he wanted them to, when he wanted them to. If such an afterlife exists, it would be a world Gerber never spent much time considering, a world he never made--which would bring him, I hope, both bemusement and amusement, even if it meant he was finally the angry outsider no longer. Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted, extolled and honored, adored and lauded be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, beyond all the blessings and hymns, praises and consolations that are ever spoken in the world; and say, Amen.

How Returnability Works; Or: Why the DM is often a better system

I knew I said I was done with the debate, but since this has come up many many many times in the last week, and I answered this for one of the comments threads below, I figured maybe I should put this up where everyone can see it. A lot of armchair pundits who are not involved in the production or sales of comics have been saying a lot of fairly nutty things about how the real problem is the non-returnable system that the direct market operates within. Poppycock!

I wouldn't trade 5-10 points of discount on EVERYTHING to absorb publisher misbehavior on one occasional thing.

Think of it this way: I buy 10 copies of of Publisher X's new book non-returnable for 50% off a $10 cover price. $100 retail, my cost is $5 per book, $50 total, my profit is $50.

Returnable, at 40% off, my cost is $6 per book, $60 total, my profit $40 -- only 80% of the non-returnable. I've given away 20% of my profit for the CHANCE that I might not sell as many copies.

Basically, I'm betting against my ability to judge my market for how something will sell, AND PAYING FOR THAT PRIVILEGE. Yikes.

OK, let's say I only sell 9 of those 10 copies because the publisher presold it at a con.

In a non-returnable purchase, my profit is now $45 -- note that this is STILL a LARGER profit than had I sold ALL 10 copies under the "returnable" discount.

In the returnable purchase, my profit is now $34 -- 75% of what it was in non-returnable, a SMALLER relative percentage than it was when I sold 10 of 10, even though I'm theoretically dealing returnable in order to save money (!)

Here's the other really important bit: RETURNABILITY ISN'T "FREE".

I *still* have to pay for the incoming shipping charges. I certainly have to pay for the manpower in actually processing the returns, not just counting and tracking them, but in boxing them up, taking the bus to the post office, etc. Then I have to pay the shipping costs BACK too. (Plus I HAVE to pay for insurance and tracking, because if I don't, and the books get lost in the mail, I'm TOTALLY boned)

I've just paid TWICE to ship a product, and I have NOTHING (except loss of opportunity costs! I had to PAY for it in the meantime, and returns aren't credited overnight in any case) to show for it.

Finally, for whatever it is worth, "returnability" is only for a small portion of your orders -- up to 20% max, so its certainly nothing like a universal panacea.

Also: many things aren't offered competitively through returnable channels. LOST GIRLS went to the bookstore market at least 6 weeks after the DM (they got nothing but 2nd printings, if I recall correctly?), and BONE ONE was NEVER offered (initially) through anything but Diamond.

Seriously, the DM certainly has several major flaws, there is no doubt, but if you have any idea of what you're doing, trading discount for returnability is nearly always a catastrophically stupid idea for single store operation. If you're a chain, there's an economy of scale which can make the math a lot better, but for the Owner/Operator model the math on returns just doesn't work if you have ANY idea of how to order.

There are most certainly times to order via returnable channels -- there are some publishers where the discounts are equal in both channels, some where they're actually higher direct, sometimes non-returnable won't have a book in stock, and a lower discount on a sale is better than a higher discount on no sale, and so on, and so forth; but as a general rule, the money is better than the possibility of returns.

Hope that helps some of you better understand for the market works (though, that's a pretty qwik & shallow explanation of all of the math and variables and moving parts involved, so don't write up your business plan based on it!)

-B

(who swears the next time he posts, it will be to review something)

Retail weekend Fun III

Well, its Monday, but it's a long holiday weekend! (for the banks at least?)

First off, if you haven't followed along, here's a few updates: Heidi MacDonald at The Beat discusses the general topic, and there's also Tom Spurgeon's response to my last post.

With any luck (ha!) this will be my last word on the topic...

First, Tom. Ultimately, I don't think I disagree tremendously with any of his six summarized observations. So, hooray for that. I've even willing to admit that, in hindsight, maybe the paper isn't quite meaty enough. There's been a lot of internal discussion this weekend in ComicsPRO about how to solve this the next time out, so we'll see what happens. There were a lot of eyes on this (9 Board members, 7 members of the PP committee, plus the whole membership during a month-long voting process) and no one pointed a couple things out until after it had gone out. Sometimes this happens when you live with something too long, you can't see the things you're NOT saying, because you take them utterly for granted.

Tom says: Brian says they can't provide better support without naming individual publishers. This is insane. Let's make one up: "176 of 180 ComicsPro members report at least one lost sale of a pre-ordered book in 2007 due to convention sales." That's support with a number in it and nobody is named.

I believe, and its entirely possible I am wrong, but I believe that kind of a statement would be just as dismissed as being empty and meaningless of a figure. But noted, for next time.

Tom also offers three examples of "selling in advance of your primary sales force"; I'd argue that none of those are selling whatsoever -- they're giving material away in order to generate more business in the long run (in the first two examples), or to "focus group" (as it were) the material to make it BETTER for the "final version".

If publishers were GIVING AWAY comics at conventions, I don't think there'd be a position paper except possibly one that said "Here's how to do it better". The reason I think this is because we've been talking about, as an organization, a response to the BOOM! situation, and the strongest faction of discussion has been pretty clear that we can never stop comics going out over the internet, NOR SHOULD WE BOTHER TO TRY because there are some TREMENDOUS promotional benefits that can occur. But that we can issue guidelines to the way it can be done so no one is stepping on anyone else's toes and that ALL partners are selling as many comics as they can.

(This is why the rhetorical handwavings over "yeah, how do they feel about Advance Review Copies, huh?!?!" and stuff like that that commenters other than Tom have made are pretty much besides the point -- we're talking about the SALE of goods, and how we don't think that our suppliers should be competing with us in that manner)

So, yes, there's one fatal flaw in the position paper as presented and it is missing the "unless they inform us beforehand" sentence. That SHOULD have been there, and I'll mea culpa on that one. Again, I thought that was implied, and I'll fall on the sword for not spelling it out explicitly.

Because yes, this problem goes away with Tom's "transparency".

But here's the thing, and I'll stand behind it 100%, in the decade or so that I've been discussing this with publishers, not one, not a SINGLE ONE, has shown any interest in that transparency, because they're afraid its going to lower their overall sales.

What I would suggest, and feel free to disagree with me, but it seems to me that IF publishers are concerned about that, then it naturally follows that they ARE having an impact on the sell-through at retail, and that they KNOW it.

Meanwhile, over at The Beat, Heidi offers this:

In a dollars and sense world, there is a HUGE difference between $1 and $1000. If costing Brian Hibbs $1 makes Top Shelf $20K, then you need to just suck it up, man. The health of an ENTIRE INDUSTRY is the question here — put it the other way. Would Brian Hibbs donate $1 to keep Top Shelf, Cartoon Books or Fantagraphics alive?

Not that that is actually the point, but, yeah, when FBI and Top Shelf came to us with "please please buy stuff from us, we're on the brink of going out of business" we OF COURSE stepped up and bought a bunch of stuff that we didn't actually need in order to try and help keep them solvent.

I think Heidi is a little hyperbolic in "the health of the ENTIRE INDUSTRY is in question" statement (history shows us that publishers come and go with great regularity), but it's a fair question, really -- should I give up $1 for TS to make $20k?

The answer might in fact be "Yes", but it has to be an INFORMED transaction, and one made with CONSENT. When we're not informed of the situation, or given a chance to deal with it, until it is "too late", that's why we're upset about this.

This doesn't have ANYthing to do with "increased competition" or Amazon or libraries or the internet or the dominance of the superhero publishers via Diamond, or Diamond's often disgraceful treatment of non-brokered publishers, or any of the other smokescreens pundits are throwing out there.

I'm going to try one more time to explain this as simply as I can: Retailers buy non-returnable, non-adjustable from most publishers (via Diamond). Retailers are presented with titles to buy that are presented to us as "new". For retailers "new" means that it hasn't been released before, to any channel. OBVIOUSLY, the vagaries of distribution mean that some times copies will arrive in one place before another -- sometimes we get it first, sometimes another channel gets it first. No retailer is crying foul over NATURAL AND UNINTENDED distribution vagaries. What we're objecting to is when publishers take specific, conscious, actions DESIGNED to get books to cons before we could POSSIBLY have them in order to sell them first.

That's it, full stop.

If the printer screws up, and you HAPPEN to have copies in your hand for the show before it makes it through distribution, NO FOUL.

If you're selling material at a show that we have actual equivalent access to, NO FOUL.

If you inform us AT THE POINT OF SOLICITATION that you're going to sell in advance of us, NO FOUL.

Where we screwed up was in not include five words: "...unless they inform us beforehand", and I can see that now. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that.

As some one mentioned in one of the 20 gajillion threads I've read the last 72 hours (and I've forgot which one it was) effectively we're asking for common street dates, and FOR MANUFACTURERS to not break those street dates (knowingly)

That's pretty much it, and I think this is a pretty much a no-brainer of an idea that is eminently reasonable.

(Someone will ask, I am sure, "Well, why didn't you ASK for 'street dates'?", and that's because that's a MUCH more difficult issue, one that will require Diamond to be involved, and is probably 2-3 years from even possible implementation, in my opinion of the politics of this business. Lets get most of our vendors on a FOC system first before we even THINK to open THAT particular can o' worms)

Ultimately, as I said, I don't care if any given retailer loses $1 or $1000, but do you know why that is? Because it isn't necessarily about the individual store's individual loss -- it's about the AGGREGATE harm to the industry this practice brings. Its not even about the individual publishers' individual actions, its about the aggregate harm that this does to the market. $50 here and $5 there and $500 there starts to add up.

Further, I don't think "buzz" comes from being-on-sale-first *in and of itself*. I think Top Shelf would have sold exactly the same # of LOST GIRLS as they did, and had exactly and precisely the same amount of "buzz" and being "the book of the show" and everything else, had LOST GIRLS been in stores that same Wednesday. I'll go so far as to say I'm absolutely positive that LOST GIRLS would have had the same national buzz, and sold the same # of copies at the con even had the book debuted a week before in the stores.

And here's the thing, I further think that if TS had done that (ie, printed the book 2-3 weeks earlier to ahve it in-store and at-con the same day), not only would they have sold the SAME # of copies, had the SAME Big Book of the Con Buzz, but they'd have saved themselves the $10 a book or whatever stupid amount it actually was to airfreight the books in.

Heidi, though not in that blog entry, on CBIA instead, made a point that the problem on the publisher side is often "last minute-itis" -- as long as the book goes to press at the LAST POSSIBLE SECOND to go to the printer to be able to airfreight rush job the book to a show, it's "on time", and I suspect she's mostly right. If the "deadline in their head" was "in stores no later than the week of [the show]", rather than "The week of [the show], so we can pay the airfreight in" that, I think, would make all of the problem go away.

I want to make it really clear: I'm absolutely in favor of comics being in as many venues as they possibly can be -- that includes on the internet, via mail order, in mass market stores, on newstands, at conventions, sold in roaming ice cream trucks, whatever you please. More venues, more exposure, more widespread acceptance really can't be anything but good for the dedicated specialist.

I just don't want to be undercut by my own supplier before I even have a chance to sell their goods.

As always, I'm always interested in your thoughts.

-B

Retail Weekend Fun II: Electric Boogaloo!

Right, now for a response to Tom. Again, his original commentary is here, and my response and his as well is here. Normally, I wouldn't turn something into a BLOGWAR! but Tom doesn't have messaging on The Comics Reporter, and I find his "letter column" kinda problematic (I actually hadn't even noticed the post and response until early today, to be honest), so I thought putting it somewhere when there's relatively open comments might be a good idea.

(Sorry if you feel end-runned, Tom?)

I'm going to try to do as little of quoting and counter-quoting that I can, just because it is messy and too internetty for me, but I might have to resort to it at some point.

More or less going from top to bottom, I guess we should talk about "evidence".

Tom seems to think that we need to attach some kind of specific numbers to this. I'm just trying to figure out both the how and the why of it.

In terms of the how, I don't see how we can do it without specifically singly out individual publishers. And I don't see how we do that in a public position paper without looking, frankly, like assholes. Further, it's not like we keep revenge logs where we write all our wrongs down. I can tell you that I am down (not "done" like I originally wrote, sheesh) a couple of hundred dollars in retail sales each year in the aggregate, of stuff I know. How specific do you want me to be? I had three different customers tell me that, sorry, they weren't going to buy LOST GIRLS from me (two of them preordered) because they bought it in San Diego. There, harm done. I lost at least two copies of BONE ONE EDITION, same thing. A copy of BLANKETS. Those are the ones where I clearly and specifically in detail remember the exchange with the customer, because those are big expensive books. There's half a dozen other ones each and every year, but I usually just file most of them in the *sigh* portion of my mental hard-drive; I don't recall the details, because life's too short.

I guess we could poll the membership and aggregate some numbers, but then I get to the Why? portion of it. Singling out specific vendors is only going to make them more defensive, I think, and I'm unconvinced that ComicsPRO has a large enough membership yet to even begin to present the full picture -- any specific number member stores can show is going to be under-reported by some significant factor just from that. And under-reporting a problem is much worse that not reporting it at all in a negotiation, in my opinion.

I'm telling you, specific examples above, that I've been done harm. I also believe that there's other harm done where customers didn't specifically tell me that they bought it at a show, but of course I can't prove that. OTHER retailers also will happily tell you about books here and books there they've been impacted by. What I'm not getting is why people (not just Tom) are questioning us on this. Harm has been done, maybe not massively towering masses of it, but here's a group of diverse retailers saying "We're harmed by this practice, please knock it off", it isn't just taken as read that we have been so?

See, cuz I think when you ask "how much harm", it seems like that opens up "well that's not 'enough'". What if we can only "show" within ComicsPRO membership, 20 copies of LOST GIRLS that didn't get sold when they were expected to. Is that "enough"? What if its only 10? What if it is only my 3?

For me, markets need Hippocratic Oaths too -- First thing do no harm. Selling in advance of your primary sales force being able to do so seems foolish. Can you think of any other business where that would be considered acceptable?

I guess maybe the question is that Tom doesn't see this as "harm", which OK, fair enough I guess, but when a customer comes to me and says "I am not going to take my preordered copy of this book, because it was at San Diego first", I don't see how else it can be taken?

Tom says "Also, to flip it around, are you saying that the publisher should sell $4000 fewer copies of Lost Girls overall to people not served by good comic shops because a couple of your customers may prefer to buy it from them directly?" and I think this is where some of the disconnect is coming from.

The issue is selling the book before it is released to the market -- people not served by good comic shops are STILL going to buy the book at the con, whether it was released AT the show or not, BECAUSE IT IS NEW TO THEM, whether, I repeat for emphasis, it was released AT the show or not! Every single one of those dollars will still be spent, there's no possible loss there.

In addition Tom asks "Have you ever been denied the chance to buy books at a con at a direct-order discount? Have you ever been lied to about a book being made available at a con?"

For the first, well kinda yeah -- Chris Staros flatly refused selling me any copies of LOST GIRLS direct, he insisted that all orders go through Diamond because he wanted to make sure that their orders there were as large as possible. Which means we were locked into that distribution channel.

For the second, the end of SWEENEY TODD pops into mind "No, no one ever lied/said she took poison/never said that she died". So, no, no one ever LIED as such -- but they've certainly committed sins of omission over the years where they didn't tell us they WERE. Which to me is, in effect, if not strictly taxonomically so, is the same thing. If you present a product to me as "new", I have (what I feel to be) a reasonable expectation that means that all channels will be getting it at effectively the same time. If that isn't the case, that's where we have a problem.

Tom goes on, perhaps baitingly to ask "Wait: so some stores aren't hit by this practice? Which ones? Why? Why if you have this information isn't it a part of your position paper?"

What I was trying to indicate is that not all stores are at all times impacted by every potential example equally -- MY customers are extremely likely to attend WonderCon and APE, fairly likely to attend SDCC, occasionally attend Mocca or SPX or NYCC, virtually never attend Wizard World: Anywhere. The specific and individual level of harm and concern varies for me individually with the individual show and the individual books that debut there.

Then there are stores who, say, aren't in the continental USA, or who only take preorders with prepaid credit cards, or whatever other reasoning there may be. Maybe they are in rural nowhere and were considering order 1 copy of [whatever], but read the boilerplate and decide not to, and so on.

What I do know is that over the last, sheesh, decade or more I've been speaking to publishers about this, note one has been interested in putting "this item may ship sooner to other venues before Diamond can deliver it" boilerplate on books they're intended to debut at a show.

Sorry, I'm getting really quotey here at the end. Tom: "I don't get this at all; are retailers really less amenable to being transparent about their sales practices because it might cost them a few sales and more amenable to eliminating that sales practice altogether and all of those sales? That makes no sense. Which publishers have you spoken to that indicated this?"

I think Tom means "publishers" for that first "retailers"? If not, I don't understand the question, if so then... I guess so? My sense of this issue, as always pursuing it as an individual, was that publisher reps (and pick one -- Top Shelf, D&Q, FBI, Cartoon books, and so on, all the "egregious ones", the ones where *I* see my personal impact from) was that I've always and uniformly dismissed because my concerns were unique as a snowflake to me and my individual business, so no, they weren't going to do a thing about it on the chance that it could hurt them elsewhere in an already perilous market.

But here's the thing that gores my orb, and probably doesn't touch yours: the Polite Unique Snowflake Brushoff that I got from Top Shelf was precisely the same kind of Polite Unique Snowflake Brushoff I got from Marvel over the late and missolicited titles. That's why we've got ComicsPRO, and that's why I believe in jointly issuing this kind of Position Paper is a really good thing. We may all be Unique Snowflakes, but a whole lot of us have common cause and common concern.

Sorry, here's where I'm the most internetty -- quoting myself first, then Tom now

(Also: allowing after-the-fact adjustments on orders generally delays books even further)

I wasn't talking about that.

Sure, but you can't withdraw the mechanical elements of distribution from the timeline. Allowing order adjusts is at least a month-long process from announcement to collection of changes, so doing so is almost always going to make a book ship later and not sooner.

I'm nearly done here, promise! Tom: However, my sympathy ends when it comes to advocating a system where people can't pursue whatever commercial means they wish, particularly when they're more than happy to reap the whirlwind when it comes to the results. I've never seen a publisher beat his chest in public that it isn't fair that you shouldn't adjust your orders to whatever you think is the likelihood you'll sell something.

First off, I can't personally recall any situation where a book has been made order adjustable after point-of-solicitation because of convention sales. I may be wrong, but I can't recall one. Further, publishers who aren't brokered are virtually never allowed to be made adjustable in anything like a meaningful timeline -- numbers are firm once you enter it into the ordering program and press "send", that's it, no tapbacks.

That's probably not important, really, because the first sentence is the one that kills me. Tom we're most emphatically NOT advocating a system where people pursue whichever commercial means they wish -- what we're saying is that the gun of the starter pistol should be going off at the same time for all and any channels. I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with Top Shelf selling LOST GIRLS at a con. I have every problem with them selling it weeks before me, however, to my group of customers who are naturally the earliest of early adopters, on hard non-returnable non-adjustable orders. If they started selling LOST GIRLS at a Wednesday night Preview Night, and the book had been in stock at stores that same Wednesday, then game on, that's absolutely fine -- the playing field is level. We're sure as heck not advocating the limiting of anyone's potential venues, just asking them to watch their timing so there aren't intra-channel conflicts!

Finally, finally, we end this reply with Tom's final paragraph:

(In fact, here's a question: if you guys are all in agreement on this, and the position breaks down so cleanly like you say, why hasn't there been economic consequence? It's been years. No publisher I know has complained that they've been punished by stores even one little bit, and if you're losing orders, why the hell wouldn't you make adjustments? Are we supposed to believe you're just all really nice? Slow to react? Didn't realize it was happening? What?)

I think its pretty difficult for retailers to determine which books will be affected by which publishers -- the attendance line up for shows changes and moves too quickly, and it isn't like retailers have any easy central source to figure out who is where on what days specifically selling what.

It is often also hard to determine exactly and precisely which books will be impacted, nor specifically by how much. That's because that publishers who do this are usually the ones with... fluid scheduling and release dates. Short of purposefully underordering every title scheduled to ship from February to September on the off hand chance that I catch the one they're going to screw me on... man that don't make no sense.

From my point of view as a retailer, I'm trying to maximize sales, not minimize them, so forecasting to worst-case-scenarios isn't a really smart thing to do if you're trying to make a profit.

Right, I think I'm typed out about now, and I'm sure you're all sick of hearing my voice, so I'll leave it there.

Everyone is welcome to chime in with their two cents of opinion....

-B

Retail Weekend Fun

Lots of retailer-driven conversation this weekend, and we'll get to the main show in a second, but I realized I forgot to post a link to the newest TILTING AT WINDMILLS on Newsarama. This month I dissect a Dan DiDio quote about branding and COUNTDOWN, as well as talk about the move to an "annual" format for LOVE & ROCKETS. If you have anything you want to chat about that piece, but don't want to dive into the morass that is Newsarama's Board feel free to use the commenting section below!

On Friday, ComicsPRO released the newest Position Paper on Pre-sales at Conventions. Oddly, you wouldn't know from the actual news sites, I've yet to see anything turn up on them as of yet.

I'd also strongly suggest that people go and read the comments on Johanna's piece about the paper, as I think there's a lot of pretty high-level quality commenting going on by many retailers there.

There's also Tom Spurgeon's thoughts here, as well as my reply to Tom, and his reply to that over here. We'll get back to that in a little while.

Finally, there's a plethora of commentary by Alan David Doane.

So, go read all that and come back.

I'm going to start with that last one, because ADD and I... well I don't know, we generally don't get along, I guess? He's famous for saying "Die, Direct Market, Die!", and as a participant in the Direct Market I oddly take offense to that!

Some of Johanna's comments also fall under the "Well, a lot of comic shops suck; so screw them!" defense (though Johanna, at least, tends to be much more deeply nuanced and also tends to be at least concerned with the changing and/or increasing demographic of READERS who, say, don't want to drive xx miles to a quality comics shop, or would rather buy on-line for a variety of reasons, etc.), so let's start off there.

OH, and lest it be misconstrued, I am, as always, speaking as an individual here, not as a representative of ComicsPRO or its Board.

ComicsPRO is an organization of Direct Market retailers who are trying to make things better for ALL retailers. I have and will probably always stipulate that many stores stink on ice, but I don't see any real relevance in that in terms of a ComicsPRO position paper.

Why?

BECAUSE COMICSPRO MEMBERS ARE NOT THE "PROBLEM" STORES.

(Well, or at least insofar as I know of their individual operations through anecdote and conduct -- I've certainly not personally visited more than a quarter of the membership, at most)

ComicsPRO is, by and large, "the best and the brightest" retailers. The smart ones, the passionate ones, the forward-thinking ones. The ones who outreach to their communities, the ones who get nominated for Eisners, the ones who strongly support as wide a range of material as they can. They're the early-adopters, they're the knowledgeable fonts, they're the communicable-passion carriers who work god-damn hard to move comics forward.

So any argument or debate that is predicated on a "DM stores are lousy, so why should we support stores that don't support us?" is, I think, shredded on contact with ComicsPRO membership -- these stores are NOT lousy, and these stores DO support you.

ADD's suggested position paper (his last link above) is pretty laughable in consideration of ComicsPRO's membership. I'm reasonably sure that virtually 100% of the membership would meet virtually 100% of ADD's requirements. And the ones that don't are actually a matter of ADD's preferences or misunderstandings rather than actual signs of professionalism.

Here, I hadn't intended to do this, but since I have that window open, let's discuss a few of those points.

Professional comic book stores do not favor one genre or sub-genre over another.

Professional comic book stores recognize that all comics are comics, no matter what country they originate from, or what format they are published in.

I might (just barely) support language that said "Professional comic book stores recognize that all comics are comics, no matter what country they originate from, or what format or genre they are published in", but as written this couldn't possibly be something that ComicsPRO could possibly endorse.

Why? Well, let's put it this way, would the American Bookseller Association release a policy that said that Mystery- or Science-Fiction-focused bookstores couldn't be considered "professional" bookstores because of their mono-focus? OF COURSE NOT. In exactly the same way, and for exactly the same reasons, ComicsPRO can't and wouldn't say "you can't focus on action/adventure genres" -- in exactly the same way we can't and wouldn't say "you can't just focus on manga" (as a small handful of stores in America are doing)

Like ADD, I personally and individually want to see stores offering me the kinds of comics I enjoy as a reader -- be that PERSEPOLIS or GREEN LANTERN or BONE or EXIT WOUNDS or FART PARTY or whatever; but unlike ADD, I know for a fact that business owners have every right to make the decisions they want as to THEIR vision of THEIR stores. Some retailers are in conservative communities, some retailers are running pop-culture stores, not comics-as-literature stores, and some retailers are simply following the trends of what their actual customers are actually buying, and weighing their stores appropriately. Who the fuck am I to tell them they're wrong or right?

Taken literally, ADD's first point would mean that a manga cafe like New York's Atom Cafe wouldn't be considered professional, and couldn't join ComicsPRO. (They haven't, but of course they COULD)

If what you want to say is that "Professional comic book stores are quick and willing to take reasonable special order requests" then that might be something that could hold up -- but you simply can't insist that a Mystery bookstore sell cookbooks to be considered professional.

I'm totally sympathetic to what ADD's intention here is -- he wants more stores that a family of four can walk into and walk out with something for each person, but that's not something that can be "legislated" or codified in a way that won't exclude some one you didn't intend, or, for that matter, that would stand up to anti-trust scrutiny.

And frankly, I'm not sure that there aren't quality professional retail stores that ALAN (and I!) wouldn't shop in but that DO satisfy THEIR customers in that all-four-walk-out-happy, just maybe not all four with a comic.

Moving forward, Alan offers this one:

Professional comic book stores recognize the transition from periodical pamphlet comics to more appealing and enduring graphic novels, and accommodate the readership’s clear preference for comics with a spine and a complete story.

Much like the above, I think you'll find that many many stores are not experiencing this. Stores that are not, in any way, "unprofessional"

I'm a book-oriented store, I've championed comic BOOKS nearly my entire professional life (Man, it was me and Rory Root and Bill Liebowitz in that LA conference room nearly 20 years ago now that helped convince the DC that, yes, there was a tremendous potential in their backlist. It was maybe 20 titles deep back then?) so you don't have to sell me on the concept, kiddo -- but the periodical is still a VERY viable format, and one that if you even just glance at ICv2's reports is pretty clear is still on a multi-year growth curve.

Books are TOO, but like the above, there's absolutely no way we can (or should) legislate what or how people stock or in what balance.

As I say, I run a comic BOOK store, I prefer selling trades to periodicals, and that's where our focus and energy is, but periodicals still sell VERY well, and, increasingly to the very "civilian" customers that ADD makes sweeping pronouncements about. DARK TOWER, BUFFY SEASON 8 are great examples -- those sold like MONSTERS, largely outside of the "Wednesday regulars", and people seemed to LIKE the serialization (they kept coming back, after all). For us, at least, the collections of these comics are doing well, but we sold at least 5x on BUFFY #1 than we did of v1 TP, and DARK TOWER is probably run 7x or so.

This is the last one, ADD says:

Professional comic book stores actively seek to buy from a variety of distributors, not relying on one monopolistic distributor for the entirety of their business, and not settling for receiving books “whenever Diamond ships them,” but rather, as soon as they are available, in order to better serve their customers.

Heh. OK, first, you're not going to get a ComicsPRO position paper that will specifically call out one vendor or supplier by name. Besides being beyond tacky, and needlessly confrontational (and more on that later), there are federal anti-trust issues that would absolutely forbid that. Jinkies!

Second off, regular readers will know that I have my fair share of complaints with the way Diamond conducts business, but one thing that Diamond usually does pretty well is moving items from point A to point B accurately and quickly.

In terms of exactly what moves when, these are largely questions of point of printing and point of receipt and timely notification of solicitation. There's plenty of plenty of stuff that comes faster via Diamond than it does from B&T, or even direct from the publisher.

But speed alone isn't the sole consideration here -- there's also cost. There's a lot of calculation that needs to be made in terms of shipping costs, manpower, and discounts when looking at what is the "right" source to buy from. For example, I buy most of my "New" Fantagraphics books from Diamond, UNLESS it's a book that I'm ordering 10 or more, then I'd go to B&T, UNLESS its 20 or more, then I'd probably go direct to FBI. It's all a matter of discount and shipping costs -- buying that book from FBI means I have to pay shipping on it, whereas B&T has $1 freight. With B&T, the increase in effective discount is about a half-percent better on 10 or more copies over Diamond, otherwise Diamond is the cheapest source. Diamond's also the SOLE distribution source for much of FBI's periodicals. If you buy a book NEW from FBI direct, you get a much better discount, but if its shipping from the printer, the freight costs tend to eat all of your profit because they're sending a single title. If you wait for it to ship from the FBI warehouse along with reorders, you're often adding a week or two to the process.

And so on and so forth.

On the other hand, I buy virtually none of my FBI backlist from Diamond -- that either goes direct, or formerly through Cold Cut, and some through B&T if I need something right away. Diamond's my tertiary source because of their reorder fee, and often lackluster stocking commitment.

The decision of WHERE to source a book is very much an INDIVIDUAL BUSINESS decision, and has more factors than ADD seems to want to allow for. And I'm not so sure that speed of delivery alone is the right metric to judge for a profit-focused/needed small business.

Otherwise, I wholly agree with ADD's other points -- being clean, organized, well lit, open on time, and so forth. But there's a big part of me that feels that's like issuing a position paper stating that we feel that water is wet, and the sky looks blue, and that fire can burn. There are pretty much already zero-point conclusions for ComicsPRO's membership.

Months ago there was a bit of discussion about having a professional standards paper, but no one stepped forward with a first draft, so I think it went into limbo. But I'll tell you what, I'll post a link to that discussion (and this one) in the ComicsPRO message board, and we'll see if we can find any advocate for putting out a Standards paper. Again, water is wet, but it certainly can't hurt...

I have a little more to say, because I want to comment on Tom's comments, but let's save your attention span and put that into a separate post. See you in an hour or two, I hope....

-B

Douglas raises a toast to 2008

I recently put together a list of some of the graphic novels/squarebound comics coming out in 2008 that sound potentially interesting to me, but I figured it might be helpful or interesting for other people too. Please note that this list is incomplete, and that there are a lot of publishers whose release schedules I don't have; if I left something off, that's not an indication that I'm not looking forward to it. (And if I've gotten something wrong, please write or comment and correct me.) Also note that I've only included books whose release dates have been announced somewhere--in most cases Amazon, sometimes Read Yourself Raw or elsewhere--to within a month. (So Kramers Ergot 7, one of the forthcoming books I'm most excited about, isn't here, and neither are R. Crumb's Book of Genesis, Freckled Face, Bony Knees, and Other Things Known About Annah, Artichoke Tales, the new edition of Art Spiegelman's Breakdowns, etc. For all I know, they're not even coming out in 2008.) Finally, these dates are likely to be wrong: if you walk into your local comics store on that date expecting a copy of the book in question, be prepared to be stared at. Man, is this going to be a good year for comics.

Jan.--Bill Mauldin: Willie & Joe: The WWII Years (Fantagraphics)

Jan. 15--Robert Kirkman et al: The Walking Dead vol. 8 (Image)

Jan. 16--Morrison/Case et al.: Doom Patrol vol. 6: Planet Love (Vertigo)

Jan. 31--Ellen Forney: Lust (Fantagraphics) Jason: The Last Musketeer (Fantagraphics)

Feb.--Guy Delisle: Albert and the Others (Drawn & Quarterly) Philippe Dupuy: Haunted (Drawn & Quarterly) Harold Gray: The Complete Little Orphan Annie vol. 1 (IDW) Fred Hembeck: The Nearly Complete Essential Hembeck Archive Omnibus (Image)

Feb. 27--Elektra by Frank Miller Omnibus HC (Marvel) Showcase Presents: Superman Family Volume 2 (DC)

Mar.-- Drawn & Quarterly Showcase vol. 5 (D&Q)--the presence of T. Edward Bak in this one sold me on it

Mar. 3--Tom Spurgeon/Jacob Covey: Comics As Art: We Told You So (Fantagraphics)--this is probably an appropriate place to note that I really miss the Comics Reporter and hope it's back online very shortly

Mar. 4--Ron Regé Jr: Against Pain (Drawn & Quarterly)

Mar. 12--Steve Gerber et al.: Howard the Duck Omnibus HC (Marvel)

Mar. 18-- David Hajdu: The Ten-Cent Plague (FSG)--not comics, but a book about the Great Comics Scare of the '60s

Mar. 30--Joost Swarte: Modern Swarte (Fantagraphics)

April--Jaime Hernandez: The Education of Hopey Glass (Fantagraphics) Ray Fenwick: Hall of Best Knowledge (Fantagraphics)

April 1--Gary Panter (PictureBox)--a massive 700-page career retrospective Ariel Schrag: Awkward and Definition (Touchstone) Joann Sfar: The Rabbi's Cat 2 (Pantheon)

April 7--Jules Feiffer: The Explainers (Fantagraphics)

April 8--Morrison/Millar/Champagne: JLA Presents Aztek - The Ultimate Man (DC)

April 15--Fraction/Moon: Casanova vol. 2 (Image)

April 25--Peter Bagge: Apocalypse Nerd (Dark Horse)

April 29--Jessica Abel/Gabriel Soria/Warren Pleece: Life Sucks (First Second) Peter Blegvad: Leviathan (Overlook)--a new paperback edition of one of my favorite books

May: Tony Millionaire: Billy Hazelnuts and the Crazy Bird (Fantagraphics) Jack Kirby's O.M.A.C. (DC) The Legion of Super-Heroes: 1,050 Years of the Future (DC) Absolute Sandman Vol. 3 (Vertigo)

May 5--Thomas Ott: The Number 73304-23-4153-6-96-8 (Fantagraphics)

May 6--Will Eisner et al.: The Spirit Archives vol. 24 (DC)

May 13--Lynda Barry: What It Is (Drawn & Quarterly)

May 21--Greg Pak/John Romita Jr.: World War Hulk (Marvel)

May 30--Tony Millionaire: Billy Hazelnuts and the Crazy Bird (Fantagraphics)

June: Gilbert Hernandez: The Troublemakers (Fantagraphics) Blake Bell: Strange & Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko (Fantagraphics) Dash Shaw: The Bottomless Belly Button (Fantagraphics) Los Bros Hernandez: Amor Y Cohetes (Fantagraphics) Jason: Pocket Full of Rain and Other Stories (Fantagraphics) Frank Miller/Jim Lee: All Star Batman vol. 1 (DC) Brian Wood/Becky Cloonan: Demo (DC) Brian K. Vaughan/Pia Guerra: Y: the Last Man vol. 10 (DC) Alan Moore/Kevin O'Neill: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier Absolute Edition (ABC/WildStorm)

June 1--Ben Jones/Frank Santoro: Cold Heat (PictureBox)

June 10--Jessica Abel & Matt Madden: Drawing Words & Writing Pictures (First Second)

June 17--Hope Larson: Chiggers (Ginee Seo Books)

June 24--Neil Gaiman/P. Craig Russell: Coraline (HarperCollins)

June 25--Noel Sickles: Scorchy Smith and the Art of Noel Sickles (IDW)

July--Carla Speed McNeil: Finder: Voice (Lightspeed Press) Jerry Moriarty: The Complete Jack Survives (Buenaventura Press)

July 1--Scott McCloud: Zot! The Complete Black and White Stories 1987-1991 (Harper Paperbacks)

July 25--Milton Caniff: The Complete Terry & the Pirates vol. 4 (IDW) Alex Robinson: 2 Cool 2 Be 4Gotten (Top Shelf) William Messner-Loebs: Journey Vol. 1 (IDW)--424 pages' worth!

August--George Herriman: Krazy & Ignatz 1943-1944 (Fantagraphics) Grant Morrison/Frank Quitely: All Star Superman vol. 2 (DC) Will Eisner et al.: The Spirit Archives vol. 25 (DC)

Aug. 5--Grant Morrison et al.: JLA Deluxe Vol. 1 (DC) Frank King: Walt & Skeezix 1927-1928 (Drawn & Quarterly)

Sep. 23--Osamu Tezuka: Black Jack, vol. 1 (Vertical)

Oct. 14--David Hahn: All-Nighter (Vertigo)

Oct. 31--Gary Panter: Dal Tokyo (Fantagraphics)

Comix Experience Top Selling comics 2007

Same as the last list, except this time we're talking comics. Like the previous, this is actually from August on, and missing the last 4 hours of sales for the the year...

People like Joss Whedon!!!

Rank Title Issue # 1 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 6 2 Dollar Book 3 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 7 4 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 8 5 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 9 6 ASTONISHING X-MEN 22 7 ALL STAR SUPERMAN 9 8 ASTONISHING X-MEN 23 9 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 5 10 Quarter Book - Single 11 Quarter Book - 10 for a Buck 12 WORLD WAR HULK 4 WORLD WAR HULK 3 14 JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA 12 15 ANGEL AFTER THE FALL 1 16 DARK TOWER GUNSLINGER BORN 7 17 NEW AVENGERS 35 JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA 8 BRAVE AND THE BOLD 6 20 NEW AVENGERS 34 NEW AVENGERS 33 BATMAN 667 23 JLA WEDDING SPECIAL #1 1 ALL STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN THE BOY WONDER 7 25 X-MEN MESSIAH COMPLEX ONE SHOT THOR 2 HELLBOY DARKNESS CALLS 5 28 JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA 14 29 WORLD WAR HULK 5 BATMAN 668 31 NEW AVENGERS 36 BATMAN 669 33 NEW AVENGERS ILLUMINATI 5 BOYS 9 35 ALL STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN THE BOY WONDER 8 36 BATMAN 670 37 THOR 3 38 JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA 10 HELLBOY DARKNESS CALLS 6 40 ULTIMATES 3 GATEFOLD HEROES VAR 1 NEW AVENGERS ILLUMINATI 4 DAREDEVIL WRAPAROUND 100 BRAVE AND THE BOLD 7 44 BOYS 10 45 NEW AVENGERS 37 JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA 9 GREEN LANTERN 22 CAPTAIN AMERICA 29 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 544 50 COUNTDOWN 37 51 UNCANNY X-MEN 492 THOR 4 RUNAWAYS 28 ALL NEW BOOSTER GOLD 2 55 X-FACTOR 25 UNCANNY X-MEN 490 UNCANNY X-MEN 489 MIGHTY AVENGERS 5 LOBSTER JOHNSON THE IRON PROMETHEUS 2 LOBSTER JOHNSON THE IRON PROMETHEUS 1 INCREDIBLE HULK 109 GREEN LANTERN 24 DAREDEVIL 99 COUNTDOWN 38 ANGEL AFTER THE FALL 2 ALL NEW BOOSTER GOLD 1 67 GREEN LANTERN 23 CAPTAIN AMERICA 30 BLACK SUMMER 3 70 X-MEN 202 INCREDIBLE HULK 110 COUNTDOWN 39 BOYS 11 74 THUNDERBOLTS 116 FABLES 65 DAREDEVIL 101 CAPTAIN AMERICA 31 BPRD KILLING GROUND 1 79 X-MEN 205 ULTIMATE POWER 8 FLASH 231 FABLES 64 CAPTAIN AMERICA 32 BOYS 12 85 Y THE LAST MAN 58 X-MEN 203 ULTIMATE POWER 7 88 UNCANNY X-MEN 491 SPIRIT 9 IMMORTAL IRON FIST 9 FABLES 66 CRIMINAL 8 COUNTDOWN 36 BATMAN 671 ASTRO CITY THE DARK AGE BOOK TWO #4 8 96 Y THE LAST MAN 59 UNCANNY X-MEN 493 LOBSTER JOHNSON THE IRON PROMETHEUS 3 JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA 11 JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA 15 IMMORTAL IRON FIST 10 DAREDEVIL 102 CASANOVA 8 BLACK SUMMER WRAP CVR 2

What did YOU buy of this list?

-B

Comix Experience Top Selling Books 2007

Hurray for the POS system, I can "effortlessly" extract this information (well, it took 10 minutes to reformat it, and add the ranking numbers)! And, well, it isn't all of 2007 -- it is only from when we installed the POS... therefore from August onwards.

And, I'm cheating a little -- there's still four hours left in our shopping year, so some of these COULD adjust upwards a tiny smidge...

Still, this is what it looks like (lets hope that blogger doesn't gut the formatting....):

Rank Title 1 LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN THE BLACK DOSSIER HC 2 WALKING DEAD VOL 07 THE CALM BEFORE TP 3 SCOTT PILGRIM VOL 04 SCOTT PILGRIM GETS IT TOGETHER GN 4 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER LONG WAY HOME TP 5 100 BULLETS VOL 11 ONCE UPON A CRIME TP 6 WATCHMEN TP 7 FAFHRD AND THE GRAY MOUSER TP SERENITY TP 9 DMZ VOL 3 PUBLIC WORKS TP 10 EX MACHINA VOL 6 POWER DOWN TP 11 POWERS VOL 10 COSMIC TP Y THE LAST MAN VOL 1 UNMANNED TP 13 WALKING DEAD VOL 1 DAYS GONE BYE TP 14 FELL VOL 1 FERAL CITY TP WARREN ELLIS CRECY GN 16 HELLBOY VOL 07 THE TROLL WITCH & OTHERS TP Y THE LAST MAN VOL 9 MOTHERLAND TP 18 BATMAN YEAR ONE DELUXE SC FABLES VOL 1 LEGENDS IN EXILE TP FABLES VOL 8 WOLVES TP FABLES VOL 9 SONS OF EMPIRE TP 22 AMERICAN BORN CHINESE SC CONFESSIONS OF A BLABBERMOUTH LOEG VOL TWO TP SANDMAN VOL 1 PRELUDES & NOCTURNES TP V FOR VENDETTA TP 27 ABSOLUTE SANDMAN VOL 2 HC DMZ VOL 1 ON THE GROUND TP DMZ VOL 2 BODY OF A JOURNALIST TP FABLES VOL 2 ANIMAL FARM TP GOOD AS LILY LOEG VOL ONE TP SANDMAN VOL 2 THE DOLLS HOUSE TP 34 30 DAYS OF NIGHT TP MOVIE PTG ALAN MOORE THE COMPLETE WILDCATS TP ALL STAR SUPERMAN VOL 1 HC BATMAN DARK KNIGHT RETURNS TP CHANCE IN HELL HC CRIMINAL VOL 1 COWARD TP DR THIRTEEN ARCHITECTURE AND MORALITY TP JACK OF FABLES VOL 2 JACK OF HEARTS TP R CRUMBS HEROES OF BLUES JAZZ & COUNTRY WITH CD HC SHORTCOMINGS HC WALKING DEAD VOL 6 SORROWFUL LIFE TP WARREN ELLIS CROOKED LITTLE VEIN HC ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE TP 47 ASTONISHING X-MEN VOL 3 TORN TP BOYS TP VOL 01 EMPOWERED VOL 02 TP JOSS WHEDONS FRAY FUTURE SLAYER TP PREACHER VOL 1 GONE TO TEXAS TP NEW EDITION 52 CHRONICLES OF WORMWOOD LAST ENEMY GN DARK TOWER GUNSLINGER BORN PREM HC DC UNIVERSE THE STORIES OF ALAN MOORE FUN HOME TP GHOST IN THE SHELL 1.5 TP GOON CHINATOWN HC HELLBLAZER THE GIFT TP HEROES HC ALEX ROSS COVER I KILLED ADOLF HITLER GN JLA ULTRAMARINE CORPS TP JUSTICE VOL 3 HC LIFE AND TIMES OF SCROOGE MCDUCK TP VOL 01 2ND PTG PULPHOPE ART OF PAUL POPE SC ULTIMATES 2 VOL 2 GRAND THEFT AMERICA TP WE 3 TP WORLD WAR Z ORAL HISTORY OF ZOMBIE WAR SC Y THE LAST MAN VOL 2 CYCLES TP 69 ARMY @ LOVE VOL 1 THE HOT ZONE CLUB TP ASTONISHING X-MEN VOL 1 GIFTED TP BATMAN SUPERMAN SAGA OF THE SUPER SONS TP BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER OMNIBUS TP VOL 01 CRIMINAL TP VOL 02 LAWLESS EXIT WOUNDS HC GIRL GENIUS VOL 06 SC GOODBYE CHUNKY RICE PANTHEON ED HARD BOILED TP (NEW PRTG) I AM GOING TO BE SMALL GN NEXTWAVE AGENTS OF HATE VOL 1 THIS IS WHAT THEY WANT TP PREACHER VOL 2 UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD TP NEW EDITION PREACHER VOL 3 PROUD AMERICANS TP NEW EDITION PREACHER VOL 4 ANCIENT HISTORY TP NEW EDITION SUMMER BLONDE TP TALES OF THE VAMPIRES TP TEZUKAS BUDDHA VOL 01 SC TRANSMETROPOLITAN VOL 1 BACK ON THE STREET TP WALKING DEAD VOL 2 TP MILES BEHIND US TP NEW PTG WALKING DEAD VOL 3 SAFETY BEHIND BARS TP NEW PTG WALKING DEAD VOL 4 HEARTS DESIRE TP Y THE LAST MAN VOL 3 ONE SMALL STEP TP Y THE LAST MAN VOL 8 KIMONO DRAGONS TP 92 30 DAYS OF NIGHT DARK DAYS TP NEW PTG 52 VOL 1 TP 52 VOL 2 TP 52 VOL 3 TP 52 VOL 4 TP BLANKETS GN (NEW PTG) BTVS TALES OF THE SLAYERS TP CIVIL WAR TP DC THE NEW FRONTIER VOL 2 TP EX MACHINA VOL 2 TAG TP EX MACHINA VOL 5 SMOKE SMOKE TP FABLES VOL 7 ARABIAN NIGHTS AND DAYS TP FILTH TP FLIGHT VOL 01 GN FLIGHT VOL 04 GN HELLBOY VOL 01 SEED OF DESTRUCTION TP HELLBOY VOL 06 STRANGE PLACES TP HEROES OF THE NEGRO LEAGUES HC IMMORTAL IRON FIST VOL 1 TP INCREDIBLE CHANGE BOTS GN JACK KIRBYS FOURTH WORLD OMNIBUS VOL 03 HC JACK KIRBYS FOURTH WORLD OMNIBUS VOL 2 HC MARVEL ZOMBIES HC PATH OF THE ASSASSIN VOL 07 TP QUESTION ZEN AND VIOLENCE VOL 1 TP READING COMICS AND WHAT THEY MEAN HC RUNAWAYS VOL 6 PARENTAL GUIDANCE DIGEST TP RUNAWAYS VOL 7 LIVE FAST DIGEST TP SANDMAN VOL 3 DREAM COUNTRY TP SUPERMAN THE BOTTLE CITY OF KANDOR TP SUPERMARKET TP TOP 10 THE FORTY NINERS SC USAGI YOJIMBO VOL 21 MOTHER OF MOUTAINS TP WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS GN Y THE LAST MAN VOL 4 SAFEWORD TP

How many of these have YOU read?

-B