The Debut Switcheroo: Jeff Advocates Cthulhu Tales #10 for Entirely Self-Serving Reasons

Um. So, I wanted to talk about last week's Previews. More specifically, page 225:

CTHULHU TALES #12 by William Messner-Loebs, Jeff Lester, Jeremy Rock & Chee

Jeff Lester pens "Reunion Tour," what is probably our favorite Cthulhu Tale to date, a story melding rock and roll, age-old partnerships, unnameable beasts from the dimensions beyond time and space, and flight attendants! Also, William Messner-Loebs returns to Cthulhu Tales with a short story of chilling horror!

Honestly, as solicitation text for my comic book debut go, I couldn't be more fortunate...except for one tiny, nagging detail: my story isn't in Cthulhu Tales #12. It's been moved up to Cthulhu Tales #10.

And so, rather than an extended, perfectly planned and executed series of posts in which I woo you into purchasing my first story, I have to go with the last minute, flat-out shameless pitch: please purchase Cthulhu Tales #10, coming out in January. (You can use order code OCT083937.) Although it's long past the date for initial orders, if you go to your retailer, tell them you want a copy of the issue (and give 'em this code: OCT083937), they can proably still reserve you a front-row seat for my transition from "guy who talks too much on the Internet" to "guy whose characters hopefully don't talk too much on the printed page."

Here's the splash for the story (every time I try to bump the size a bit higher it breaks the page, so...):

From CE

I chose this panel because Chee, the artist, did such an amazing job with blacks, whites and particularly (what looks to my untrained eyes as) those grey washes, that the editors decided to run the story in black and white, and I hope you can at least see a little bit of that here.

This panel is also the closest I get to sounding like classic Lovecraft, so it may not be entirely representative of the story as a whole. The other stuff is a bit more like this:

So... you know. If you enjoy my writing on this site (as well as the humor stuff I've done over here), I think you'll dig this. You know your comics store better than mine, but most stores don't stock Cthulhu Tales in Avengers-sized quantities, so if you're interested, you might be better served by going to the retailer (with this code: OCT083937) and trying to get 'em to order a copy in advance from whatever amount over the initial orders Boom! printed.

Again: Cthulhu Tales #10. Order code OCT083937. Coming out in January.

Thank you. Apart from a brief notice the week the issue comes out, I promise not to do any additional shilling here.

(Oh, and speaking of last week's Previews, if you check out the IDW section, you'll see Hibbs has a second volume of Tilting At Windmills coming out. I'm hoping he'll talk here about that one sooner or later. We were amused we both had stuff in the same issue of Previews, though.)

Jeff Asks: Hey, Is Manga Dying?

Don't get me wrong--I'm not asking if, y'know, manga manga, that whole ginormous industry over in Japan is dying? Nor am I asking if, like, collections of Naruto or Bleach are sitting there rotting on the shelves.

But is the manga industry in America dying? I'm totally reluctant to ask such a question--not least because I'm totally in the dark about how something like, say, publication schedules in Japan can allow American publications to catch up (like with Sgt. Frog, I think) and all sorts of other mitigating factors.

It was one thing when the sixth volume of Yotsuba&! never shipped from ADV. And it was another thing when DMP announced it was cutting eleven publications from its monthly publication list and the fourth volume of Flower of Life would be coming out in May, 2009. Although frustrating, these events made a certain amount of sense to me because these were smaller fish in the manga pond, and maybe their ambitions had outstripped their ability.

Similarly, although incredibly pissed and frustrated that volume 13 of Beck Mongolian Chop Squad, originally promised for September 2008, is not listed for June 2009 on Amazon's website, I can similarly see how Tokyopop has been over-extended for some time now, and any number of short-sighted strategies are coming back to haunt it.

But, you know, where's that second hardcover of Tezuka's Black Jack? (For that matter, why did the first hardcover volume have an exclusive story but a non-updated table of contents?) Where's volumes 11 and 12 of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure from Viz, while Amazon still lists Vol. 13 as scheduled for release in April of 2009? Why are major publishers cutting huge corners, dropping titles from their publication schedule unannounced, if not because, you know, they have to?

I don't know. I guess I'm just pissed because if I had hopped on the scanlation train, I'd be long since finished with Beck by now.

So, what's the scoop? Is the great manga implosion happening? Or am I just pulling a big Chicken Little about the whole thing? As Hibbs would say: What do YOU think?

Speaking of Turkeys, Here's Abhay's FOURTH Blue Beetle Essay.

I. Starting in April 2008, the SAVAGE CRITIC website began to bring you a five-part series on the cancellation of BLUE BEETLE. It “technically” hadn’t “happened” yet. “Technically”, BLUE BEETLE was only canceled on November 12th, but...

It wasn't exactly difficult to predict.

And suddenly, last week: our little corner of the internet spasmed. Suddenly: I’m not alone. All sorts of people were asking themselves: “Why didn’t BLUE BEETLE succeed?” And their answers involved things being shoved into asses! I’m not alone, universe! I’m not alone!

So... This one’s going to be extra ramble-y. Sorry.

II.

Before the blog post which received some attention last week, the book’s author, John Rogers posted an earlier statement to his (actually, otherwise quite entertaining) blog, a sort of recap of his intent as the writer of BLUE BEETLE:

We wanted to establish a new superhero for younger readers, and add a different viewpoint to the DCU. Something you could give your 12 year old nephew to read without first forcing him to complete a degree in DC Continuity. A lot of people hated us, then some of them liked us, and then some of them loved us ... while a lot of people still hated us. Those people can go pound sand and collect Final Crisis variant covers.

Let’s begin by seeing if we should go pound sand and collect Final Crisis variant covers. Let’s pound out a single issue of the series, issue #16 of the BLUE BEETLE series. Just so we’re all on the same page as to what it was exactly that got cancelled.

Issue #16 is very near the end of the series (if not the technical final issue of publication). The series’ story concludes in issue 25; it just kept getting published past that point.

So: a rock crawled up young Jamie Reyes’s ass and turned him into the Blue Beetle. In issue #13, Blue Beetle learns that the rock was a device from an alien empire named The Reach. At first, the Reach pretend to be “good guys”, but the book abandons this idea within that issue and reveals that they’re evil immediately, rather than create or maintain any sort of suspense. However, the rest of the world is unaware that the Reach is evil, as the Reach has approached the governments of Earth promising aid & assistance.

A reader might expect this to be a source of tension & conflict in future issues. Nope, not at all: that reader should go pound sand and collect Final Crisis variant covers! Aliens invading Earth-- what’s the logical next thing to happen?

Eclipso opens us up. To the wonders of interpretive dance. FAME, I’M GOING TO LIVE FOREVER-- LIGHT UP THE SKY WITH MY NAME-- FAME! So, for the 12 year old nephews: who is Eclipso?

Dear Joss Whedon, Please go back in time and prevent your own existence, perhaps by seducing your own mother at the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance. Very truly yours, Me After Having Read BLUE BEETLE. P.s. Would Willow make out with me even though she turned all gay at the end? I hope so. XOXOXO.

Say: Who’s that talking and explaining all of this? It’s Blue Beetle’s brand-new romantic interest, Traci 13, introduced to BLUE BEETLE readers for the first time in issue #16.

Things I Don’t Know To This Day: (a) who this character is, (b) who created this character, (c) if this character is featured in any other DC comic, (d) what other characters she hangs out with, (e) who the “Croato—Uh, some detectives” are, and (f) what love feels like.

The issue begins with Eclipso fighting Traci 13, who is wielding the “stolen Staff of Arion”, a reference to a supporting character debuting in 1982 in the series WARLORD. This will be exciting for your 12-year old nephew, provided that your 12-year old nephew was born in 1970.

To help in the fight, Traci 13 recruits Blue Beetle. Together, they discover that Eclipso has strung up members of the Posse like the victims of the aliens in Aliens, using some kind of sadness-goo. Blue Beetle uses his powers to free them from the sadness-goo that’s holding them.

Blue Beetle, Traci 13 and Blue Beetle’s friend Paco then confront Eclipso. Paco saves the baby, and Traci 13 defeats Eclipso. The issue ends with Traci 13 and Blue Beetle holding each other, presumably to start making out once the comic fades to black. Despite the fact that Blue Beetle mentioned vomiting earlier in the issue. As soon as this comic is over, Traci 13 is going to shove her tongue into Blue Beetle’s vomit mouth, and taste the flavor of his upchuck. I think this will be a huge turn-on for your 12 year old nephew, in so far as he’s probably into some pretty weird-ass kinky shit that I’m not even hip to. You know: like, stuff involving boners, basically.

***

What was the story told by issue #16?

You could argue that the story of this issue is “Blue Beetle gets a girlfriend by being heroic.” But the problem with that interpretation: Blue Beetle never acts heroically once in the issue. Not once. The only thing he does the entire issue is defeat some sadness-goo. Which— hell-naw, if wiping away sadness-goo was enough to get you laid, I got a tube sock that’s Wilt Chamberlain. Furthermore, that interpretation ignores page 21. Page 21 needs to be shown in whole…

So, your 12 year old nephew is now supposed to understand that:

1) This is a reference to the DC character, the Elongated Man, a former Justice League member who dates back to 1960.

2) Traci 13 was apparently raised by the Elongated Man and his wife Sue Dibny.

3) Sue Dibny was murdered by Jean Loring, the Silver Age ex-wife of the Atom.

4) Jean Loring became Eclipso in some issue of something sometime, for some reason. I don’t know when or why myself, but that apparently happened.

This issue is all about the character of Traci 13 and her revenge on Jean Loring / Eclipso for the events of 2004’s IDENTITY CRISIS (which your 12 year old nephew would love since it’s wall-to-wall rape and dead pregnant women). HOW DID THIS COMIC EVER GET CANCELED???

***

Allow me to head off a counter-argument: I didn’t pick a bad issue from the run on purpose, to make my point. I picked an issue involving two ladies having a sexy catfight. I didn’t pick an issue to make BLUE BEETLE look bad-- this was the part of the B-movie montage where Kato Kaelin starts up a bonfire in the background, and Trishelle from Real World: Las Vegas takes off her top, and George Perez and I high-five. It’s all fucking downhill from #16.

***

Here’s the bigger problem--

Two words are never mentioned in the issue: THE REACH.

The bad guys for the entire series.

They’re never mentioned once. Three issues after their introduction.

In any competent work, The Reach would become the focus of what follows. The stakes would escalate, getting the audience to hate The Reach more and more until the book reached its emotional and thematic climax.

Instead:

Issue #15 is a fill-in issue involving a team-up between Blue Beetle and Superman.

Issue #17 involves Blue Beetle fighting Typhoon, the “Soul of the Storm”.

Issue #18 involves the Blue Beetle teaming up with the Teen Titans to fight Lobo.

Issue #19 minimally advances the La Dama subplot.

Issue #20 is a SINESTRO WARS cross-over that features The Reach, but only while it crosses over to another multi-title crossover I haven’t read, and have no intention of reading.

Issue #21 involves the Blue Beetle meeting the Spectre.

The book ignores its own bad guy until the finale, at which point we’re supposed to care about them again. The bad guys don’t spend the second act … being bad guys, doing evil things, antagonizing the hero, any of that.

They flat-out don’t even appear in the comic.

Dude!

III. The conclusion I draw from the foregoing:

BLUE BEETLE tried to be a simple story about a young boy learning to be a man and to find his place in the world by heroically facing insurmountable odds with the help of his friends and family.

But that isn’t the story they told. The story they told was: a new DC character introduces himself to other DC characters, and finds his place in the DCU.

The audience for that isn’t 12 year old nephews; it’s DC fans, for whom that story served no pressing need or desire or want. And also: BLUE BEETLE?

Look, it’s sort-of a rip-off of INVINCIBLE.

INVINCIBLE is a creator owned series created by Robert Kirkman and Cory Walker that launched in 2003, and is currently published by Image Comics. It’s about an optimistic teenager who gets superpowers and tries to juggle his exciting new life as a superhero, his teenage friends, and family, without losing his upbeat attitude. BLUE BEETLE, on the other hand, is about…

I was at a bookstore the other day; saw this quote by Stephen King in his book ON WRITING (haven’t read the book, but I thought it was a good quote): “People who decide to make a fortune writing like John Grisham or Tom Clancy produce nothing but pale imitations, by and large, because vocabulary is not the same thing as feeling and plot is light-years from the truth as it is understood by the mind and the heart.”

This was a series that didn’t offer anything to people that they couldn’t already get elsewhere, from a product with more acclaim, less baggage, easier to jump onto, more fun to jump onto, with more issues in the can, and … shit: how about a *twist*…? BLUE BEETLE doesn’t have anything resembling a twist anywhere in it; my theory is that a twist would be too upsetting, and the fanboy definition of The “Fun” Comic usually equates to nothing more than hyper-bland inoffensiveness, but… that’s a separate debate perhaps.

Even if you’re not willing to join me on the phrase “rip-off” – look, would you at least agree that BLUE BEETLE was second place? You don’t get points for being second place; comics don’t have a silver medal. Remember any vampire series in comics after 30 DAYS OF NIGHT? How many worthwhile crime comics have had to live in the shitty shadow of shitty-ass SIN CITY? How many other series about cat-people in wheelchairs fucking and sucking can you name besides OMAHA THE CAT DANCER?

The fact the 15,000 people who stuck with it liked it enough to say so on the Internet doesn't make a series "critically acclaimed." Bart Beaty isn't exactly working on a monograph, as far as I know. It just means 15,000 people live near a public library.

They didn’t have anything new to offer. That’s the sadness of comics. The cancellation is just gravity.

IV.

The cancellation isn’t the mystery here. The mystery is this: DC launches failed title after failed title. Off the top of my head, just in 90’s and 00’s: Young Heroes in Love, Damage, Power Company, Chase, Hawk & Dove, Suicide Squad, Major Bummer, Xero, Breach, Bloodhound, Manhunter, Doom Patrol, Primal Force, Lab Rats, Stars and STRIPE, Vext, Aztek, All-New Atom, Harley Quinn, Hourman, Martian Manhunter, and probably many more I don’t remember. Just for the DCU alone.

None of them ever, ever work.

There’s an Einstein quote President-Elect Obama (yay!) is fond of: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

The mystery is this: Why do they keep doing the same thing that doesn’t work, over and over again? The pertinent question isn’t why was Blue Beetle canceled. The pertinent question is: why did they publish it to begin with? What did they think would happen, in spite of the overwhelming weight of history and experience? Did they think they were doing anything differently from what had failed countless times before? Why would this cancellation be surprising to anyone anywhere?

Does it even look like a publishing scheme to you, or some kind of elaborate sleight-of-hand so Time-Warner-Keebler executives don't ask too many questions? When the executives come to check on how things are going, do you think there's someone at DC whose job it is to yell "They're coming! They're coming! Pretend you're working!"? It looks like an embezzling scheme.

With respect to the cancellation, as has been widely reported, author John Rogers angrily pointed the finger at DC’s publishing strategy, DC’s confused self-identity, “creepy” specialty shops, DC’s offices in Manhattan, DC’s gender confusion, the time DC fondled his balls at summer camp, DC’s gut-flopping fetish, etc. (And don’t forget the rest of us, still busy pounding our sand and collecting our Final Crisis variant covers.)

The standard Comic Creator “It’s Us vs. Them” finger-pointing... uhm: usually, it’s from people who work in comics, talking about series they still write…? Petty-Me found the whole thing extraordinarily strange: an author who didn’t actually write a comic anymore, angry that DC couldn’t find a way to continue to exploit the creative energies of young writers and artists in order to keep his abandoned creation alive, angry despite the fact sales straight-up cratered during his tenure on the title. The fact people quoted that without comment or question? A little strange.

“How dare DC not continue to suck the creativity of young talent to keep a series I created alive after I didn’t want to do anything with it? P.S. I was completely not in any way at fault for simply having written a comic that shed 35,000+ in sales while I was writing it. It’s time to go rogue on the Internet, maverick-style!”

And by young talent, Petty-Me is referring to folks who didn’t get handed their own DC ongoing series on near-zero comic-writing experience, just based on screenwriting credentials, a comic culture obsessed with Hollywood star-fucking, and well-connected friends, and then completely fail to deliver sales. The disinterest in nurturing native talent in favor of fly-by-night screenwriters is not something that’s wrong with comics at all!

But… But that’s all Petty-Me, and Petty-Me's a bit of an idiot sometimes, so... Let's try to find the deeper issues. V. I suppose it’s worth noting here the obvious truth that BLUE BEETLE succeeded by the only criteria that matters. It generated a parcel of IP that DC/Time-Warner-Keebler was able to exploit in a cross-media property. On a balance sheet, the rest—you, me, Grandma Midge-- we’re all minutiae.

Some fans question canceling the series once the character won the IP lottery. But: they have books they can sell curious Blue Beetle fans. They have four volumes of BLUE BEETLE trades that they can sell to all the new BLUE BEETLE fans of the world. All that argument amounts to is “they could have had five or six volumes instead of four.” Oh. Oh, well.

And what lucky new fans! Getting to read SINESTRO WAR or IDENTITY CRISIS tie-ins-- fun! Maybe the error wasn’t canceling the book; maybe the error was not insuring that those four books would be able to stand alone. I’ve heard the argument that you can understand the issues without knowing the specifics of the SINESTRO WAR crossover—but I personally think there’s a distance between comprehension and entertainment that argument doesn’t account for. For me, that SINESTRO issue especially was a huge turn off; you could perhaps understand the What of what happened, but not the Why. Reasonable minds could differ on that point, though.

VI.

My eyes glaze over anytime I hear the phrase “mid-list” though. I guess because I always flash on the same image anytime I hear it, the double-page splash from CRISIS OF INFINITE EARTHS #5:

In my head, I always hear “Why are you reading about Batman? Why aren’t you reading about that one speck instead? The little half-doodle George Perez made in the upper left-hand corner is a really great character. You should really read about the red speck next to the blue-green speck on the left hand cluster of specks. You have beautiful hair.”

It drives me a little crazy when people say “Fans don’t want new superheroes.” Because usually the people saying that? That’s not what they’re selling—— they’re just selling new specks. It’s less than surprising that there’s a ceiling on that enterprise.

But a mainstream comic market that’s as harsh as this one to new series. It’s … well, Jesus, it’s something, isn’t it?

Though: to an extent, it doesn’t make me entirely sad. You know, because I read good comics, too, and those are doing pretty decent lately…? I’ve got BERLIN 2: CITIZENS ON PATROL on the coffee table, waiting to be read. I finished the BOTTOMLESS BELLY BUTTON recently—— pleasant book. I’ll end the year reading POPEYE, maybe. It’s often hard not to look at comics and think that the good guys are winning. And if Marvel and DC can’t get their acts together, and end up with failure after failure, well: there is a part of me that takes a certain pleasure in that. I might be very slightly bummed that I don’t get to read THE ORDER anymore, but if Marvel never sustains a new series again? Well: isn’t that satisfying to the part of you that believes in karma? Marvel, DC, these aren’t companies that deserve any love. These were never people to root for.

But…

But the water’s edge isn’t BLUE BEETLE. It’s Image series, Vertigo series, alternative monthlies. It’s the serial format, paper-and-staples comic. It’s a whole era of comics which, however misbegotten, is the one I was raised with, have affection for, want to continue with, etc. Plus: people I hope good things for still work in that system. For a certain kind of creator, whose work falls outside the narrow confines of what’s considered “artistic”, for genre creators, that’s still an important industry for any number of reasons.

I don’t suppose I’m interested in offering any great solutions to the problem here; having no real-world expertise, doesn’t that become absurd quickly? It’s just too premature to say how digital delivery systems are going to play out, and beyond that, any fancy prognostication becomes silly quickly. Until… until you’re the weird guy in the comment section yelling “Why don’t they sell Batman in an anthology like SHONEN JUMP?? They can sell them like they sell SHONEN JUMP in Japan, at newsstands next to stops for the bullet train. Because this country is also riddled with newsstands and bullet trains. The Japanese have the right idea—they like art, they’re fond of underage girls and they hate pubic hair. Me, the Japanese and John Ruskin, we’re all on the same page. Join us on Team Ruskin, DC.” Which—you know, I shouldn’t speak ill of Team Ruskin: I have my own silly little predilections (stand-alone maxi-series, one-shots, CBZ files, ass-to-mouth, etc). But…

But let’s ask: when people talk about a book like BLUE BEETLE failing, isn’t that an inherently different conversation, just by virtue of being a DCU title? Is the BLUE BEETLE conversation nothing more than-- “Why won’t the guy who buys BATMAN, SUPERMAN, X-MEN, SPIDERMAN, etc. also buy this other book? Why aren’t the people we squeeze and squeeze and squeeze for money—why can’t we squeeze some out of them, for this other book instead?” Isn’t that a question with its answer built into it?

There’s an implied belief in all of this that the important metric in the comic transaction should be the quality of the product, instead of the purchaser’s affection for the characters. That superhero fans should read the best superhero comic instead of the one featuring the best superhero. Which—— it's probably a belief I subscribe to myself, or want to, but…

But look where that line of thinking leads: after 22 issues, I can’t tell you what Blue Beetle’s powers were. At all. I can’t tell you what he had to do with beetles. Holy shit, dude: I can’t even tell you why he calls himself THE BLUE BEETLE. The part where he gets his name? They didn’t fucking show it in the comic. Holy shit, y’all!

...?

If you think a superhero comic should have great writing, those decisions don’t seem like the end of the world. But if you think a superhero comic should have a great superhero in it, then I don’t think that decision and many, many others can be justified.

Blue Beetle? He’s just some lame dude in a suit of arbitrariness. Sure. I remember being a kid and tying a blanket around my neck, and saying “this blanket can do various arbitrary things as the situation and context demands; I look forward to getting beat up in grade school.” Sure, sure.

After Alan Moore and SWAMP THING, we say to ourselves, “There are no bad characters; all those characters are just waiting for the right team.” But comics aren’t long on Alan Moore’s, so maybe we should revise that to "There are oodles of bad characters, but sometimes one-in-a-million creators write those characters for the short period of time that they manage to get work done without DC pissing them off enough to quit the company forever.”

(Tangent: I’m loving the part of WATCHING THE WATCHMEN where Dave Gibbons says “Fortunately, there was a greater pressure on us—that of keeping to the publishing schedule. We had given our own timeline to DC (which incidentally, we met), but they had advanced the publication dates for, no doubt, sound business reasons.” Love that part! Neat book.)

VII.

Recent Tradition demands that anyone writing about BLUE BEETLE conclude by demanding that you, the reader, insert things into your own asshole. This is a tradition that I whole-heartedly support.

I recommend inserting the Tristan 2.

The Tristan 2 is waterproof and made of a silicone material, which it’s heat-resistant, nonstick, and easy to clean. According to the Tristan 2 literature, the Tristan 2 was “inspired by fans” who wanted a plug that was bigger, longer and thicker than the paltry Tristan 1. Much like the Wu-Tang, the Tristan 1 is for the babies. You’ll notice that it indeed has a longer neck than the typical teardrop-shaped plug; that means greater staying power.

However, I should note that the Tristan 2 website has the following warning: “This is obviously not a plug for butt beginners.” This is obviously a warning that should be heeded by all of you butt beginners out there. Leave the Tristan 2 to the butt journeymen. There’s no official butt-ocracy that will tell you when you can advance from butt acolyte to butt made-man, but… pretty soon, you too can butt paraphrase Darth “Lord” Vader, and say “Now, the butt student has become the butt master.” Very good.

Tilting v3 #7 is up

You can find it right here, if you haven't stumbled upon it already

-B

Tilting v3 #6 (#173) is up

Go read the newest TILTING AT WINDMILLS on CBR!

-B

Some burbling from Hibbs (old business)

I'm off the school hook this morning as Tzipora is taking Ben in, so hurray I can babble for a bit!

Some old business first, before I say anything about comics...

1) The Bendis/Kirkman debate thing. They're both right (as such things usually go) -- it is EXTREMELY difficult to solely do creator-owned material and make a proper living from it, but when it works, it works amazingly well.

In a way, there are two kinds of comics shops, which for the purpose of this conversation, I'll call "leaders" and "followers". Leaders are always on the make for new voices and new ideas, and are pretty active in trying to identify new talent and to support them. Followers aren't interested in a work (and/or creator) until AFTER it's already broken elsewhere, so their risk is minimal. Getting through those first few ugly months of sales (Bendis' three-issue drop) is nearly entirely a function of the Leaders. I've long suggested that the real trick is making through your first 9-18 releases (largely depending on both how good you are, as well as your production schedule), until the Followers figure out there's something going on there, and that's the point you can start to profit from your creator owned work.

Doing "mainstream" Marvel/DC work generally does very little for your creator-owned profile, with a couple of rare exceptions where your first "notices" are coming from the M/D work. Mark MIllar might be a fairly OK example of that -- prior to his M/D work, there was very little "head turning" indy work from him. Sure, he got a little attention for SAVIOUR, but that never lasted long enough (or finished the story, even) to make much of a real mark. It was through doing increasingly higher profile material at M/D that got eyes on him for creator-owned material. But it is a rare creator that can do that because what you bring with you are associations from your M/D work.

See, generally speaking, in today's market (pretty much from the 90s on) any "base" you build from M/D work comes from the characters first, and the creative voice second, unless there's something strikingly different about that voice. Not a lot of guys really have that special thing, or rare alignment of circumstances to make it all work.

What I always tell creators is to build their own brand, a brand of themselves, rather than hoping that the M/D brands will rub off upon them. Bendis, for example, became hotter than sin as a M/D guy, to the point where he's one of the prime architects of the Marvel U. His sales on POWERS, meanwhile, haven't had any appreciable bumps, relative to the book being published by Image -- at least not the kind you'd hope for when you can say "FROM THE WRITER OF SECRET INVASION!" (or whichever) on the cover, y'know? Either way, "his" brand is inextricably tied with Marvel's brand right now.

Very generally, when a creator makes a reputation from M/D books that is translatable to creator-owned work, it isn't from the Big Books, but from the Quirky stuff. The audience for Spider-Man and X-Men or whatever isn't portable to your creator-brand recognition. The audience for the books/characters that people have written off can be.

Dunno if this is making any sense, it's too early in the morning.

2) The MINX thing. One thing to consider is that the "teen" reader devouring all of that Manga really really seem to be attracted to series, rather than titles or creators -- what they appear to be looking for is something they can read for a good long time, that comes out on a fairly regular basis to fill that jones. One-off titles don't show any great evidence of being popular in that demo. While some of the Minx books did eventually develop (or at least start to develop) sequels, the line was positioned very much as stand-alone books.

Spurgeon mentioned that he thought some of the demise might have come from the spending they did at the launch, and not getting the return they wanted from that, but that doesn't really sound like a DC thing to me -- they're usually pretty good at the Long Game.

In the DM, Minx looked like it was doing pretty well, to me -- probably enough to carry the line for a good while longer, so I think it's fair to think the problem is the bookstores.

I don't KNOW if any of this is right, but here's my educated guess. In the DM DC offered some big incentives to get stores to stock the books, so I suspect they did the same in the bookstore market. Bookstores, however, are a returnable market. My guess is what happened is that they way front-loaded copies into the bookstore market, and that most of them came back. I suspect that the Minx books had decent sales, relative to similar work from say, Vertigo (the OGN line, I mean), but that the big returns coming back made it so that any profit there, as well as the profit from the DM, was wiped out. Further, Vertigo-style OGNs launch first as a $25 (ish) HC, followed by $15 (ish) PB -- Minx books were only $10. The smaller trim size would make them a little cheaper to print, but probably not 1/3 less.

Retailers, in any market, fear the Stench of Death from a line. Once you're on our "bad producer" list (be that from quality, or policy), it's really hard to get off of it. Sometimes that designation comes from PERCEPTION, rather than reality. That is to say, you might not be looking at the number of copies that you sold as much as the number you SENT BACK. "Oh," you think, using imaginary and made up numbers, "normally I return 5-10%, and I've been returning 30-40% here; wow this line has the Stench of Death, let's cut back my orders to be REALLY tight"

It doesn't matter so much that you sold a modest and sustainable number of copies -- you THINK the line is a flop. In the DM you can see this sometimes in stores that don't do cycle sheets, where they "eyeball" the rack for sales -- if you see too big of a stack left over, you THINK a book isn't selling, and tend to cut it below it's actual market value.

My guess (and purely a guess) is that the actual sales of the line were probably good enough to keep it going on its own, but that the perception of the line meant that it needed to be a "hit" in order to keep going, and that the initial wave of returns were too high because the expectations for line were oversold...

Frack, I've been writing for 90 minutes? Got to jet over to the store to open. Back with some actual reviews in a few hours (it's a small enough week for comics that I'm sure I'll have time to bat them out)

Be right back!!

-B

Retailing: You Fucking Asshole Cunts!

As everyone probably knows by now, the latest issue of ALL-STAR BATMAN had a unfortunate printing error where the black bars over numerous swear words printed too light, letting you see the swears underneath.

DC caught this only after the books were printed, in hand at Diamond, and already in the process of being distributed. They attempted to get the distribution ceased, but because of the mechanics of distribution, some copies (largely, but not exclusively, to those who get "early" delivery) made it to stores on the East Coast and Midwest and South. No one on the West Coast got any copies whatsoever.

Some percentage of stores who received these copies decided that, rather than destroy the copies, as DC comics asked (but could not, at least within the terms of their TOS, DEMAND -- there may be some other legal principle I am unaware of that they may have done so, I do not know), that they would sell them instead. Whether that percentage is 1% or 10% or 98% we have no way of knowing, though I imagine DC and Diamond will be able to come to a pretty fair estimation.

Some percentage of THAT group further decided, since we now have nationwide and international tools to sell material, to put these on the internet in places like eBay, and were therefore handed a free pile of fifty dollar bills.

I have to say that I think that the PEOPLE who bought those copies for, in some cases, over $100, are extremely foolish. A year for now, no one will care or remember, and you'll be lucky to get even $5 for them, but there you go.

This is going to be very costly for DC, in reprinting the book, and what I imagine is a few frenzied hours at Diamond as they tried to "unpull" as many copies as they could, but it has several pernicious effects on retailers as well. First off the "bad actors" (those who have no LEGAL reason to comply, decide they also have no MORAL one to do so) are all REWARDED for being such.

One such retailer is Mitch Cutler of St. Marks in New York. I'm not singling Mitch out because of any animus -- I actually quite like the man, and I shopped at his stores in the Summers as a teenager (My Mom lived across from Washington Square park) -- but because he was quoted in the New York Post:

"We've sold a lot," said store owner Mitch Cutler.

"We didn't destroy it because we couldn't know everyone would destroy it," Cutler said.

The comic is currently doing "Dark Knight"-like business on eBay, with copies selling for between $20 and $250.

Cutler was selling copies at his store for cover price, $2.99. "There's no need to inflate the price," he said. "It's wrong and evil and slimy."

The funny thing is that Mitch is trying to take the moral high ground, apparently thinking since he isn't hyper-inflating them he is the "good guy" in this.

The problem is that the "good actors" (that is, the ones who respect their trading partner's wishes, even though they have no compelling LEGAL reason to do so) then get screwed.

How?

1) Some percentage of customers, when faced with a store that has one of these, and one that does NOT have one of these will choose to take that week's custom to the "bad actor". Not JUST that issue, but, well, they're there already so why not pick up ALL of that week's comics? The stores that complied with DC's wishes are out of pocket not just on the mistake, but on a whole host of other comics. DM retailers, as always, buy non-returnable, so that's 100% out-of-pocket.

2) Some percentage of customers, when told either "Sorry, we never received it" or "Sorry, we've destroyed them as we were asked" will assume that the retailer is LYING, and will become angry. Angry customers are not good for business, either near- or long-term. Entire buying relationships can be disrupted over something like this, I've seen it happen many times before.

3) Our partners, both at the publishers and at Diamond, who many retailers have been working on for years, if not DECADES, in trying to make to-store distribution a little more sane, now have fresh ammunition to completely dismiss us. As one DC executive said on the CBIA this morning (and I paraphrase to stay within CBIA rules), "This is why we don't have street dates"

Well, fuck.

One of the most incredibly fucked up things about New Comics distribution is that we don't have a Street Date. Most stores in most places get Wednesday delivery, for Wednesday sale, wholly dependent on their shipping option. This means most stores are waiting around for a UPS truck, and that many stores are OPEN and full of customers clamoring for the comics while they're trying to count them in, pick and pull subs, merchandise the store, etc. This sucks, this really really really really sucks, and it's a huge waste of manpower and frustration levels. A massive pointless waste, with no upside.

It also means that if your shipping option FUCKS UP (rare, but not especially unique), and, say, loses your shipment, or delivers it 6 hours late, you're not 100% hosed on New Comics Day's sales.

A very small number of stores have Tuesday delivery -- most of these are chains who need the extra processing time to move product from a central hub to client stores. But due to a series of strange and unusual incidents in the Bay Area involving multiple distributors competing (pre-exclusives), many single-stores in the Area are "grandfathered in" for Tuesday shipments. I'm one of them.

I would never EVER EVER go back to Wednesday receipt. Seriously, I'd close my store rather than go back to that. It was hell, and I'm a decade older and a decade more out of shape, and shipment sizes in terms of line-items have done nothing but increase. I'm too old for that shit.

I've been a tireless advocate for Street Dates for, like, ever, and I think it would have nothing but benefit for the overwhelming majority of real comic book stores in running smooth and professional operations.

So, to Mitch Cutler, and every other retailer out that there that decided they should sell these copies of ALL-STAR BATMAN: Fuck You Very Much. Hurray, you've just pushed EVERY OTHER RETAILER IN THE COUNTRY back (at least) another five years! Great job! Thinking of yourself before the wishes of your partners or the rest of your industry ("We didn't destroy it because we couldn't know everyone would destroy it") means you've just painted EVERY OTHER RETAILER IN THE COUNTRY as an irresponsible fuckwit too. There's no doubt that any retailer who decided to mark those copies up is a far greater douchebag asshole, but you don't get any points for selling something you were asked not to for fucking cover price!

So thanks to you, one and all, who just had to go fuck it up for the rest of the retailers.

Cunts.

-B

Retailing: Cory's right

Cory Doctorow makes a really sensible suggestion right here, that I think every comics publisher should immediately implement.

This would have instant great benefits for me. I don't know about any other POS system, but MOBY has a space on the Individual Item display page (that shows me the sources I can buy a book from, ordering information, price, every transaction I've ever made on the item and so on and so forth) that displays the covers.

Currently, that image defaults to the item code on the Diamond website, though it can be edited to show another source. The problems are three there: 1) Diamond, of course, has to carry it, 2) You have to log on to Diamond's retailer site, which autologs you off after 30 minutes or so, and 3) Diamond is VERY liassez-faire about what size image the put in the standard path. Sometimes you get postage stamp sixed pics, othertimes the largest possible version where the window can only display the first quarter or so of it.

I use the feature ALL the time when people ask about something I don't have. Especially because, in comics there are TONS of "variant editions", and titles starting over with incredibly minute naming variations, and so on, so pinpoint THE thing someone wants to buy is really important.

An ISBN and UPC directory would be VERY helpful, and, besides the whole "having to rename the files" thing, is something that really COULD be implemented "tomorrow". It's just too simple and easy and smooth of an idea.

AND IT WILL HELP SELL MORE BOOKS.

It would also be of great use to me both as a blogger who is basically stupid when it comes to html -- I never ever have art in my posts because I'm pretty dumb about how to do it. This idea would make it trivial.

It would also be of HUGE use to me in putting together ONOMATOPOEIA, the store's print newsletter. CEO (as we call it) has to be out at the same time as PREVIEWS so that we have enough time to collect orders from people properly. But only a handful of publishers actually have publicly available art BEFORE PREVIEWS ships, which is when I need it the most. (Fantagraphics wins the prize here, they have a FTP site with art up, typically, 6 weeks before PREVIEWS ships -- that's a fantastic lead time)

ANyway, I think this is a stupidly good idea, and I urge any publisher reading this blog to immediately implement this idea (though we'd need to add UPCs for the comics)

-B

More of that retailing stuff...! Ahhhhh!

I was a little hesitant to post something else retailing related so soon, but we've had two reviews up in the last 2 days (and I'll be writing something tomorrow or Friday, I promise!), so I feel OK about mentioning this nice article by Richard Bruton of Forbidden Planet's blog where he discusses my last two TILTINGs. He has some kind words, and I always appreciate other retailers discussing the topics I bring up.

But there's a little bit of grousing behind the cut....

buuuuut... Dirk Deppey, dependably, uses the opportunity to misunderstand the Direct Market YET AGAIN.

Dirk starts by dismissing the idea of a "book glut" (which retailers are using in a specific way -- much like the "B&W glut" and the "speculation glut", including the understanding that such gluts tend to eventually self-correct, though they almost always take publishers and retailers with them before they do so), by likening DM stores to Generalist book stores.

Thing is, DM retailers are not Generalists -- they're specialists. Not terribly unlike Science Fiction bookstores, or Mystery bookstores, or going a smidge more afield, a Jazz-specialist record store, or an "midnight movie" or "international"-specialized video store. All of those things exist within San Francisco, and, yeah, when I go into one of them I pretty much expect them to have "everything" that I might want to buy within their specialization.

I don't expect a generalist like B&N or Borders to have more than a "token" amount of specialized genres. I mean, sure you expect to see Asimov and Heinlein in the Sci-fi section, but I wouldn't necessarily expect them to have, dunno, Neal Asher?

I'd expect that Borderlands, here in SF would have him though... or at least know what I was talking about in the first place, and where to point me if they didn't. That's the point of a specialist, really.

Borders carries SF, but they also carry mystery, romance, history, maps, comics, and a gajillion other things. The two cases aren't really that comparable, except maybe for the "Pop Culture"-style DM store, that aren't necessarily "comic book stores" per se.

Listen, we live in an environment where "Embarrassment of Riches" seems to describe it pretty darn well, so it's a funny thing to be talking about "too many books" -- but when a retailer says that, what they're actually talking about is "too many books that don't sell". I think we're ALL very excited (display issues aside) to have many many books that sell. We're less excited about books that don't sell and clog up the racks and make the rest of the store look bad.

As noted, this will eventually be self-correcting, as, presumably, more retailers start to get a handle on their inventory and start making decisions like I have (example: this month I didn't order just under half of the TPs that Marvel offered... not even a single copy. I just couldn't see the demand), but in the meantime, it's a lot of chaff to sort through to get to the wheat.

Then Dirk makes the pitch that we need returnability.

*sigh*

Look, we have returnability right now -- it's called "using a bookstore distributor". I've used one for years. Any "DM" retailer can use one at any time, there's no penalties upon us for doing so. Well, except for lower discounts, and paying shipping two ways and tying up money until the returns are available. Oh, and the 10% (of total purchases) limit on returns, too. But I've bought thousands of dollars of stock "returnable".

I haven't returned any of it, because shipping, administration and labor costs soak up any real savings you could have gotten, and leaves you with nothing; whereas buying non-returnable leaves you eating some books, but at least you still own them so you can discount them away.

Dirk suggests that ComicsPRO can "negotiate" for better returnable terms. There's two little problems there. First is: there are pretty significant limits on what a retailer organization CAN do, based on Federal Anti-Trust laws. Seriously, talking about numbers, discounts, any of that kind of stuff has to be done EXCEPTIONALLY carefully, when it can even be done in the first place, or you run the risk of getting your ass thrown in Federal prison. ComicsPRO has paid for excellent and in-depth counsel and has a comprehensive policy involving anti-trust issues, and this is not something that is at all trivial to do, even if there was desire among the membership for it.

The second little problem is that were we somehow able to "negotiate", say, a 5% better discount on returnable items, Diamond (or whoever we convinced to do so) IS LEGALLY OBLIGATED (cf: anti-trust law) to offer that same EXACT deal to all comers. Like Borders and B&N and Amazon.

There's a third problem too: Diamond is set up to NOT do returns. For them to have a REAL returns program would be a really fundamental change in the physical way that they do business, and it would be to NO GAIN FOR THEM. Because MOST of their business comes from the brokered publishers, they can't possibly make money processing orders, then processing returns, because they're not buying books, then reselling them as a traditional distributor does. The work based on a fee-structure. What THAT means is that if Marvel/DC/Dark Horse/Image agreed to returns that were "better" than the current deal, they'd have to pay TWICE: once to us (the "better deal"), and once to Diamond. I think it is pretty safe to say "not going to happen".

At the end of the day, I don't think returnability will do anything significant to increase sell-in -- because the problem isn't the books that are selling... those you just reorder; The problem is the ones that aren't selling. No amount of returnability would get me to order something that I can't discern an audience for. MS MARVEL v 3 HC doesn't look any more attractive if I can possibly return it when it doesn't sell. Nor does a $125 96 page KRAMER'S ERGOT, for that matter. Fuck, can you even imagine the hassles of trying to ship back a broadsheet-sized book if you don't keep the original box, and/or you don't have a shipping department? *shudder*

My favorite part is this bit: "It might even give shopowners an incentive to experiment with reaching out to those new customers that the Direct Market so clearly needs right now." Which doesn't even make sense on the face of it: YES, there are what any reasonable comics-loving person would probably call a "bad comics store" that is closed and insular and geared exclusively to culture and commerce that Dirk doesn't care for. Fuck, I don't care for it either! But, THOSE stores will never ever EVER "experiment" like that because all THEY care about is the lowest hanging fruit in their own mono-focus.

Stores that DON'T myopically mono-focus already have an "experiment" budget. I call it the Mercy Fuck, personally. I probably WILL buy a (1) copy of the 96 page $125 KRAMER's ERGOT because, like Kenny Penman suggests, it's a "Trophy Book", and it is expected that a store like mine would have a copy of that. I do not actually expect to sell one in anything like a reasonable time frame, but I'll order one, and if I were to sell it in a reasonable time frame, I'll order another and be excited!

At the end of the day, were I a publisher, I'd be looking at consignment rather than returnability as the solution for the more commercially marginal projects. No one is going to order what they honestly don't believe they can sell, EVEN IF they can return the unsold copies; they, however, might be willing to accept cost-upfront-free copies to establish that a market exists for that product. The difference is who pays when.

-B

Blogwar XXXVI: GAKKA WAKKA WAKKA

Like I said, with kindergarten drop off, I'm in to work HOURS before the store opens, so rather than working on the new order form (6 days left!), let's try this one more time...

(But, under the cut, 'cuz I know only a small percentage of people care about any of this)

What's funny is that if I knew how to link images (I always have to call Jeff to link them for me, that's how sad I am!), I probably would have picked the same piece as Dirk just did. Heh, that really sums our "conversations" quite well!

(Side note: according to the permalink, that's post #666 on the new journalista. Nicely satanic!)

Either way, I really like Dirk. He's provides an excellent service (seldom do I not follow at least 2 links that I'd've never found on my own), and while I increasingly disagree with the extremes of his perspective, it's a valuable perspective nonetheless. I say this up front because I was probably unnecessarily ad hominem yesterday, and I don't want anyone to think this is personal or something.

It's just that I believe that Dirk is arguing from his agenda (as he always does) (and, hell, as I always do), and mistaking some pretty basic things about how markets work in his pursuit of that agenda.

Here's the essence of my point, in one handy paragraph: For ANY goods, service, or product that is meant as a commercial enterprise, the producer of those goods, services or products has to identify their market, then bring those goods, services or products TO that market. If the "low-hanging fruit" of that market (the "motivated buyer") is not large enough to make your production of those goods, services or products profitable, then the PRODUCER needs to work to expand their share of that market.

What you don't get to do is BLAME THE MARKET for the failure to be profitable.

It's not the MARKET's fault your work doesn't sell; it is the producers.

This is true whether you're talking about the DM, or the bookstore market, or the internet market (represented, in this case, primarily by Amazon). Virgin comics were, in fact, available in all of those market spaces. As far as I am able to tell from extremely limited tools available to me, Virgin comics didn't succeed in ANY of those channels.

Because of this, I really do think it's goofy to blame any individual segment of the market for the success of a line. Dirk's argument seems to stem from this statement: "The Direct Market of comics shops served as the primary outlet for Virgin’s products in North America, and this virtually guaranteed the company poor sales figures from day one."

But this seems to me to be a faulty premise on the face of it -- I strongly suspect if you could get any Virgin execs on the phone none of them would at any point agree with the thought that the DM was the "primary outlet" for their books. In fact, it was clear from talking to Sharad back before launch that they had plans for distribution well beyond the DM, and the sense that I took from Virgin was that they didn't *actually* care about the DM in any appreciable way, other than us being the lowest hanging fruit.

Certainly the DM is the EASIEST channel to market to -- Diamond's got many mechanisms to talk directly and sales specifically to their client retailers, and since each and every DM store DOES use Diamond you don't have to worry about not reaching members of that channel. But at no point did it appear to me that that was the ONLY place they were trying to sell.

Dirk says "I would dispute this to the extent that I’ve never actually seen a Virgin TPB in a chain bookstore — and I keep a regular watch on the shelves of my local Borders and Barnes & Noble branches — so while I’m not privy to the company’s marketing tactics, it seems to me that either they never really had a proper mass-market strategy in place, or said strategy was so badly bungled that it effectively left the company at the mercy of the Direct Market by omission."

I think here that Dirk misunderstands how markets buy. Goods are offered to a retailer, retailer decides whether or not they believe they can sell them. Retailers are under no obligation to buy those products if they don't believe they can sell them. If Dirk doesn't see Virgin books at Borders and B&N, what I would assume is that the buyers for those companies looked at those products and decided they weren't worth giving floor space to because they couldn't see an audience for them.

Here's the thing, I think it would be just as valid to say "The bookstores served as the primary outlet for Virgin’s products in North America, and this virtually guaranteed the company poor sales figures from day one." I'm *positive* that Virgin saw their destiny in the mass market, but if the Mass doesn't want your product, it doesn't really matter what the fuck your "strategy" is in the first place, now does it?

My point was that there WAS some potential audience out there for this material, even if it's half-a-percent. BUT YOU HAVE TO TELL THAT AUDIENCE THAT IT IS THERE FOR THEM, REGARDLESS OF SALES CHANNEL.

Virgin never did that. I pointed them, pre-launch, to what could have been a model success story, the Indian-population-dense, and student-dense, and California-Eastern-Mysticism-dense Berkeley which happens to have one of the best comic shops in the world. And they never bothered to follow through on it.

OF COURSE they failed, but it's not because of the DM, and it's not because of bookstores, and it's not because of Amazon... it's because they were a bad publisher in that they never identified a market for their works, or did what it took to service those markets. And that is NOT any individual market's fault, that's the PUBLISHER's fault!

****

Other random notes on Dirk's 2nd piece:

Disney periodicals don't sell in the DM because they're $7, and don't have a rational publishing schedule (they skips months at a time, then come out one week after another; they ship everything in a single week, etc.)

In the Tilting Dirk linked to he misread this sentence: "FOC has pretty dramatically changed the way that comics retailers do business; in fact I'd suggest that it is one of the reasons that Marvel and DC are currently at or near 80% of the market in orders, because there's "less risk" in ordering their material in a FOC environment." That is entire DM, not Comix Experience. It is approximately 65% at Comix Experience, and Vertigo, and author focused sales (ie: Moore, Ellis, Moore, Ennis, etc,) is the bulk of that.

-B

Touched For The Very Last Time: Hibbs on Virgin's collapse

I'm still getting used to this whole "kindergarten" thing -- it isn't in my natural disposition to leave the house before 7:30 in the morning, really -- but it DOES give me a smidge more time before the store opens. What I SHOULD be doing right now is the new order form, but I've still got 7 days until it is late, so while I'm waiting for ONOMATOPOEIA to print on the photocopier, let me spout off a little, instead of doing "real" work!

(I COULD save this for a TILTING, but by then it will be "two weeks old")

So, anyway, Virgin Comics has shut down, seemingly suddenly and in the middle of the night. Much like everyone else, this doesn't really surprise me, but it might be worth exploring a little on the whys of it.

Unlike Dirk, I don't believe that the issue is the Direct Market. Dirk's argument basically goes like this: "DM retailers are big poopy heads. Neener-neener-neener!" This is largely Dirk's argument about every and anything involving comics, and it is kinda goofy, really, because it assumes that it is the RETAILER that is responsible for sales, and not, say, THE PUBLISHER.

When I went out to the Feb 2006 NY Comics Convention, on my short list of people to talk to was the new start-up of Virgin comics. They hadn't published any comics yet, but news was out that they were going to do it. "Self," I told myself, "maybe here's a real chance to expand the market with a company with big pockets known for aggressive and innovative marketing!" I'm not really down with "if you build it, they will come" -- you also have to TELL them about it. How would they KNOW to come otherwise?

I know some of you just come for the reviews, so I'll put the rest of this under the cut...

So, I sat down with Sharad and the marketing guy (funnily enough, at a Marvel cocktail party for retailers) and looked over their launch strategy (at that moment they were only talking about the Indian comics), and quickly saw that it probably wasn't going to work -- they planned to launch with not one, but FOUR different titles based on Indian myths. They were certainly gorgeous looking things -- some of these artists could REALLY draw -- but the problem was that they were working drastically against the public's belief-in-interest. It's not that Americans might not be interested in the Great Goddess Devi, or modern retellings of the Sanskrit epic cycle of Ramayan -- it's that they have no idea that they might be.

Well, no, even I don't believe that Americans (as a mass) ARE actually interested in any of that, but of the half of a percent that might be, you're going to have to actively tell them such things exist if you want to have a chance of them buying it.

This is where Dirk goes wrong -- he says that the problem was that the DM isn't going to reach a "broad cross-section of young American readers". This may or may not be true (I sure think I do a pretty job job of that), but I think it ignores two pretty salient points. 1) that a "broad cross-section of young American readers" aren't natively interested in Indian myth. Probably especially in a post 9/11 world. 2) they WERE available to that "broad cross-section of young American readers". These comics were sold in the Virgin megastores.

I made about 3 trips in a 9 month period after Virgin's launch to the Megastore in downtown San Francisco. As near as I was able to tell from looking at the stock, the Virgin comics didn't sell. Virgin's own stores, with that coveted audience of a "broad cross-section of young American readers" wasn't selling any significant copies of Virgin comic books.

As a retailer, I can see Baker & Taylor's inventory for their west coast warehouse. B&T is one of the major bookstore distributors. None of Virgin's "not yet published" titles has orders for even 50 copies, while in the tab that marks "30 day demand", only one of their 31 listed in-print TP/HCs has demand of over one (1) copy! (that would be the 7 copies demand for The Tall Tales of Vishnu Sharma, Panchatantra.

This tells me that the BOOKSTORES don't want these comics either.

I told Virgin that their best opportunity would either be from reaching college students, doing comparative religions or something, or to work with communities that had significant Indian populations. I strongly suggested (even writing down the contact info) that they look to Comic Relief in Berkeley for both -- if you can't sell these comics in Berkeley, they won't sell anywhere. I also called Rory to tell them I pointed Virgin in his direction, and he said he'd be really happy to work with them.

They never contacted him.

Picture this. You're a big strong corporation with a global brand. You're, dunno, off the top of my head, Kodak. Some bright and passionate light really really believes in comics, and wants to do a line of comics based around photography and photographers. You've managed to convince someone on the Board of Directors to fund this for a while, but you have a finite budget for promotion. Do you 1) Take out expensive ads in Wizard, Previews, trying to convince superhero-oriented customers to buy "Ansel Adams: The Wizard's Eye" and "Paparazzo Tales!" and whatever, or do you 2) tell people who are interested in photography and photographers that there are comics about their interests, and here's where you find them...?

I can't speak for any other retailer, but I'd love a thriving number of wide and diverse topics to be covered in comics. In Japan apparently comics about Mah-Jong sell very well, so there's no real reason that something equivalent couldn't happen here (Well, except that North America is something over 9.6 million sq km, while Japan is about 377k sq km, so it's really a lot harder to physically distribute niche products) -- heck, I thought that the Nascar comics sold really well at Nascar events (but really badly out here in San Francisco), so it clearly CAN be done.

But if you're going to do a series of comics about race car driving or photography or, yeah, even Indian Mythology, you're going to have to drive the customer TO the outlets where they're available. You're going to have to EDUCATE those potential customers the product even EXISTS.

That's pretty basic.

For myself, I thought the writing for Virgin was quickly on the wall -- pacting with B-list celebrities to use their name really is a plan that seldom works. Who really wants to buy a "Guy Ritchie" comics or a "Nic Cage" comic? That's no strike against them, but it's certainly nothing in their favor either, unless the base premise itself is strong (then the B-lister gains more from it than the publisher)

This also created a deep discordance in what the heck Virgin WAS -- were they about Indian comics, or about star-fucking, or what? You HAVE to have a clear identity in the market to use it in the best manner, and Virgin seemed to be too many different things, none of which were working very well.

Plus, once they partnered with Stan Lee's POW Entertainment, it was clear they didn't even know the right way to sell out. I mean, God love Stan Lee, he IS the man... but POW? As the kids say, "Roffle"

I suspect that Tom is in the right here -- they had too much (transcontinental!) overhead for their actual sales.

Meanwhile, I keep hoping that a well-funded operation will eventually come along and do things the right way.

I'll probably be hoping for the rest of my life.

-B

Tilting at Windmills v3 #4 is live

You can find the newest Tilting at Windmills up right here. Go, read, give Jonah hits.

-B

From The More Things Change Department...

Going through my stuff in preparation for my upcoming garage sale and came across this lovely number:

What amuses me about this issue of Comics Interview from 1987 isn't the boast that we'll be watching the Watchmen, but the corner claim about Alan Moore says farewell to comics "at least for now." No wonder Affable Al believes we live our lives over and over again!

The POS follies: Part 11b

For the dozen or so of you who care about such things, in our last installment I discussed taking some 1400 items off the racks when the POS system says "Hey, that doesn't sell!"

"But, Brian," some asked, "What are we going to do with 39 Avengers?!?" Er, no, wait, the question was about 1400 removed-from-stock books, same diff.

Well, we have a sale, I guess.

My wife gets invited to Nordstrom's "Customer appreciation sales" which is like a pre-sale sale for Nordstrom's "best" customers (she's not actually one of those, but my stepmother is, so...), and I thought it was a great idea to try and emulate.

So, we invited all of our subscribers (box customers, whatever you call them locally) to a private, pre-opening sale for two hours this morning. Half off the stock I wanted gone, and if you bought like 10 or more books, it could go up to 60% off.

The weather was deeply against us this morning -- SF has been ucky thick fogbound for the last 10 days or so, so when it was a GLORIOUS summer day today I knew we wouldn't have as many people as I would have liked. We only had about 20% of the people invited actually show up. Which, actually, is a good response rate, don't listen to my whining.

I was hoping for about 20% of this stock to go away during our two hour sale, and I think we got closer to 15%, so I can live with it.

That's still 85% left though!

I'm going to start filtering the remaining books into the Sale boxes over the next week or so (in fact, I think I'm going to temporarily remove the Starter Sets from the sales floor to accommodate the volume I want to put out at once), and I think I can get rid of another half of them within 60 days or so. The final, what is that, about a third, will trickle out over the next year or so. We're down to virtually nothing left of the "Let's not even count this in the first place, and remove it now" pruning I did BEFORE we put in the POS, so that seems like reasonable timing. And, because I'm using color coded labels, I'll know in a year what are the REAL dregs that should be donated away or even left on the curb for recycling, as need be.

It is NOT possible to deal in physical goods (retail or wholesale) and not have some spoilage and leftover and just plain unsalable junk. The key question is in MANAGING that junk.

I suddenly realized that I can get most of a column out of this, can't I, so I'll shut up there. In theory, expect to see more on this in TILTING on CBR on Friday...

Anyway, I'm hot and tired and sweaty, moving all of those boxes take a lot out of ya'! Off to the showers!

-B

Keeping the Con in Content Free: Jeff describes the geekiest thing he did in San Diego

Someone will one day write a post that will catch San Diego Comic-Con in all its current monstrousness--a long New Yorker-esque post filled with telling details. Hell, at the size it is now, maybe only a Moby Dick sized book will be able to catch it in all its wonder and peculiarity, filled with digressive chapters on the history of comic books, and conventions, and cosplay. Believe me, I want to write the fucking thing but can't figure out how.

Also, impossible as it seems, I want to try to avoid the six or so types of SDCC posts so prevalent this year (the "SDCC is too big" post; the "no, it's not" rejoinder post; the "here's my interaction with a celebrity" story and the "who cares about the celebrities" post (you can sometimes find these two just a few entries apart on the same blog); the "here are my pictures" post; the "this is the panel I was on" post; and the "here's the news I found exciting" post). I want to just cut straight to the chase: what was the nerdiest thing I did at San Diego? When I tell friends I went, this is usually what they want to know, although they approach the subject in a roundabout way. "Did you dress up as a jedi?" they'll ask. "Did you get your picture taken with a chick in a skimpy outfit?" they'll inquire. "Did you buy something you can wear when you play Dungeon Master?" "Did you wait in really long lines to see the cast of Stargate?" "Did you bathe?" (No, no, no, no, and not as much as I would've liked, frankly, but that's more the heat and humidity than any sort of hygiene mishap.)

The runners-up to the nerdiest thing I did?

**I took pictures of the cast of The Greatest American Hero. Unironic pictures.

**I was on a panel with awesome people. (See? I'm cheating already.)

**I paid so much money for that stupid FLCL Ultimate Edition DVD I'm scared to tell my wife. Although now that I look at the prices they're going for on Amazon, I kinda wish I had bought two.

**I gave unsolicited advice to a total stranger about the best way to play her Region 3 Battle Royale DVD.

**I coveted a Brother Voodoo lego figure that also glows in the dark. (That was before I saw these.)

**I stood in the line to meet Grant Morrison, and then ducked out at close to the last minute because I had nothing for him to say and nothing for him to sign.

**By contrast, I not only bought a mini comic from Nat Hernandez (Gilbert's daughter), I paid extra to have her do a sketch on the inside.

But the geekiest thing I did at San Diego? Is after the jump.

I played Golgo 13: The Arcade Game.

I first came across it on Thursday night. We were walking up Fourth Street to the DCOnline/SOE party at some bar that looked like it should've been called "Senor Roofie's:" nice, well-lit, but when you try to leave you realize how many freakin' stairs you have to climb and how far from the street you actually are. When Eli Roth gets around to filming the inevitable Hostel: Con Night, he should keep Senor Roofie's in mind.

Anyway, yeah, on the way there, I looked over as we were walking and saw:

in a darkened window.

Somehow, I did not manage to lose my shit. While my love for Golgo 13 is well documented on this site, I may not have confessed my shameless love for the Silent Scope arcade games, and the two month period I spent driving to a miniature golf course in Redwood City twice a week just to play Silent Scope 2: Dark Silhouette to the unconcealed amusement of the fifteen year olds behind the concession counter. I think I'd read about Namco's Golgo 13 sniper game long ago and assumed I'd never see or play it, or maybe it was the video game had visited me in my dreams, but there a strange twinning effect happened as I glanced over and saw it: I was both shocked and nonplussed, disappointed and sanguine. After all, I had seen it. All I had to do was find it again, come back and play it.

So, allow me to qualify my earlier statement: the geekiest thing I did in San Diego was leave the Con on the middle of the day Saturday, skipping innumerable panels and the chance to better pan for the bits of awesome in that seemingly endless convention floor, so I could go play Golgo 13: the arcade game.

All the nerd obeisance surrounding the Con had led me to believe I'd find the game in the window of some trendy tattoo shop with a "Welcome Comicon!" poster I hadn't noticed earlier right above it. Inside, the game would be nestled right next to copies of Drifting Classroom and a Betty Page lookalike behind the register whose arms would be tattooed with sleeves recounting, on the left, the entire Planet of the Apes film series, and, on the right, Logan's Run, modified to include tattooed adaptations of both Logan's World and Logan's Search.

Actually, the Golgo 13 arcade game was located in a combination liquor store/laundromat/hobo joint. Dudes in unwashed sweatshirts slouched by the hostess products, staring at the scowling counterman as he sold cigarettes and liquor. On the laundromat side, clothes tumbled like nervous acrobats while a man with a sunburned face and dirty feet adjusted two plastic chairs so he might transition from nodding off to dozing off. A Marvel Vs. Capcom console growled and burped its way through its attract mode, the screen faded nearly to the color of clouds. Not only was there no Betty Page lookalike, the counterman looked at my request for a few dollars in quarters with a perfect marriage of disgust and suspicion.

Although it looks just like Silent Scope, the Golgo 13 game runs on an entirely different dynamic. As I recall, Silent Scope has a monitor inside the rifle scope that synchs what you see on screen, only magnified, and as you pass the scope of your sniper rifle across the screen, the area coved by the scope magnifies as well. So you're able to scan terrain quickly and, actually, make some of the sniping shots without bothering to look through the scope.

By contrast, from what I could tell, G13: TAG has a genuine magnifying lens within its scope, and a monitor built into the rifle stock which reads when your shoulder is in place. When you're in position, the entire video game screen switches to a zoomed in version of the scene, but you need to look through the scope for further visual amplification.

What's awesome about this is nerds who groove on the whole science of sniping (says the guy pretending he doesn't have John Plaster's Ultimate Sniper on his bookshelf) can actually deal with issues of parallax and eye relief and looking at the location of the crescent to check whether you're positioned appropriately. What sucks about this is that if the lens is screwed, you're screwed: it's like playing Missle Command with a broken trackball.

Additional impediments to the enjoyment of G13:TAG include not a word of English to be found anywhere in or on the game, a baffling initial scene where you're shown where to point your rifle for it to zoom in on the scenario (which leads me to think Namco had originally designed the game to have two stages, one of which tested so badly all that remains is this vestigial sequence), and a distressingly aroused hobo who was very eager to turn my tender pas de deux with the video game into a tawdry menage a trois: "Yeah, dude, shoot, shoot, shoot!" He suddenly gurgled over my shoulder. "Blast that fucking diamond, bro! Do it! Do it!"

As Golgo 13 would say: "..."

One of the cool things about the game is each scenario is introduced by a quick bit of G 13 manga (presumably done by Saito and Co.) to set up what you need to do: gang boss needs executing; detonation trigger on skyscraper bomb needs to be shot off of a rooftop; perfect diamond (sigh) needs to shot and destroyed during the one moment of transfer between two safety deposit boxes. It's done in a panel by panel presentation and is such a keen little thing all its own--the first two-thirds of a Golgo 13 story compressed into seven or eight screens--I continued to put money in a busted video game just so I could see the different scenarios. There are something like 20 scenarios, but they're tiered so you have to try all of the first four before you can access the next four so I didn't see very many. So if there was a scenario where you snipe hobos so a middle-aged nerd can have a few minutes of rhapsodic interaction with a busted video game that hates him, I sadly wasn't able to access it.

It was definitely my geekiest moment, although it technically was more like forty-five (since the experience was disappointing in the first five but I hung out for another forty). And what's weird is, if it'd been awesome I'm not sure who I would've told. Tim Leong? Whoever was working the Viz booth? It's not like I saw any Golgo 13 cosplayers running around the floor. I pass it along to you, however, in the hopes that if you find yourself down San Diego way, anytime soon, and you're inordinately fond of Golgo 13, busted video games, and scary hobos, you'll be able to look it up for yourself.

Next: Content, I absolutely swear. Content!

What I did on my summer vacation: Jeff's content free post for 7/30.

San Diego Comic-Con was ineffably strange for me, to the point where I've got little choice but to throw my hands in the air and admit this is just a post mentioning I was there, I made it back alive, and, oh yeah, I strung a few stories for io9 while I was at it. (Dammit, thought I had six stories. Whoops.)

It was definitely a "sing for your supper" kind of gig, and working with Graeme, Annalee, Charlie (and Meredith!) was great fun, but wow. Eating, breathing, sleeping your job? Even if your job is writing about geek stuff? I dunno. I was lucky in that I just covered the overflow for the first two days--everyone else was running non-stop, working, like, eighteen hours a day for four days. (Wednesday was a more leisurely thirteen hour day.) It made me think that what we're looking down the barrel of is a future where (for the lucky ones) our work is our play, but the catch is you can never really stop playing. Maybe if I was doing it full-time I'd get used to the pace--stringing stories for io9 for the first time while at SDCC is probably like doing political reporting and your first gig is the Democratic National Convention--but as it was, it was a little bit like thinking you're going to be boogieboarding in the surf with friends and suddenly you're getting dragged by riptide face-first through the sand.

Anyway, once I can sort that experience out from SDCC (to the extent I can), I expect you'll hear more from me about San Diego. And I did come back fired up to write some stuff for you guys--that first annual volume of Love & Rockets, Bottomless Belly Button, and Chiggers all demand more attention than I think they've been getting.

Oh, and if you're David Oakes, drop me an email, will you? I can't find a current email for you to save my life.

More in the next week or so, I promise.

Retail Intelligence: The impact of the WATCHMEN trailer

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

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

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

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

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

-B

Douglas's tips for Comic-Con '08

For the next few days, I'll be strapped into my carriage of the log-flume that is Comic-Con. When I'm not moderating panels (see below), I'll be wandering all over the show floor. But if you asked me to show you "the good stuff," here's what I would probably take you to first, and what I would probably advise you to flip through. (And by "here" I mean under the cut.)

1335 - Dumbrella: Scott McCloud is signing the excellent Zot! anthology there Friday at 3--at the same time as the Lynda Barry spotlight panel. Aaugh. Dumbrella's also got Zot! T-shirts; if I didn't already own, like, 800 T-shirts, I'd buy one, and I might anyway.

1514/1515 - Comic Relief: I guarantee that they will have something great you've never heard of, which is both why I want to support them right now and why I'm sure I'll end up supporting them, if you see what I mean.

1528 - NBM: I really want to read Dirk Schweiger's Moresukine, a Westerner-in-Japan diary comic that I got a peek at a few months ago. Looks like he'll be signing at their booth, too.

1529 - Drawn & Quarterly/The Beguiling: Lynda Barry signing! Original art by Jason and Farel Dalrymple! Remember to go to the ATM before you get to the convention center! OK!

1716 - Fantagraphics: They've got Love & Rockets: New Stories #1, which I suspect is going to be the first thing I read back in my hotel room on Wednesday night, plus Jim Woodring's The Portable Frank, which I suspect is going to be a present for a bunch of my friends later this year. And, at long last, Michael Kupperman's Tales Designed to Thrizzle #4. And... the debut comic book by Natalia Hernandez, which I'm totally looking forward to seeing.

1732 - Buenaventura Press. Charles Burns' Permagel looks like it's going to be the luxury item of the show. 40 bucks for 32 pages, but you get bragging rights too.

1831 - CBLDF: They'll have Liberty Comics #1, a $4 book with new "Criminal" and "The Boys" stories, Darwyn Cooke, etc. They'll probably also have some of those gorgeous little original Larry Marder drawings of Beanworld characters.

1834 - Oni Press: Four words: SCOTT PILGRIM COLO(U)R SPECIAL.

2207 - Cooke, Stewart, Bullock - Cameron Stewart, David Bullock and Darwyn Cooke at the same table! All selling 48-page hardcover "pin-up illustration" books! They'll also have some (free) pins with Colleen Coover images of the Sentry. Colleen Coover pins of pretty much any kind are my idea of a good time.

2229 - Virgin Comics. Grant Morrison's MBX Sketchbook is the object of desire here. It's limited to 1000 copies; wonder how much they're asking for it?

5537 - Titan Publishing: Last year, they were selling their recent phone-book-size collections of old 2000 A.D. strips at substantially reduced prices. If they're doing that again, I'll be picking up a few volumes of Strontium Dog, and hoping for vol. 10 of Judge Dredd - The Complete Case Files. John Wagner's 30-years-and-counting run on "Dredd" is one of the most consistently interesting suites of superhero work I've read, and the later stuff is almost always better than the earlier stuff.

L7 - Octopus Pie: Meredith Gran will be selling the second collection of her fine web-comic about Brooklynites being Brooklynites.

S12 - Comic Foundry: Issue 3 is out. Hooray for Tim Leong and Laura Hudson.

somewhere in the IP Pavilion: Lightspeed Press--I always try to point people toward Carla Speed McNeil's Finder, one of my very favorite comics: a science fiction series that's really not much like anything else, and often tough to find outside of conventions where she's appearing. Start with the fourth volume, "Talisman."

AA-05 - Jim Woodring: Whatever he's selling, I'm buying.

AA-14 - Todd Klein: I imagine he'll be selling copies of his Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman collaborations.

BB-06 - Bill Sienkiewicz: I don't think I've seen him in an Artists' Alley situation before. If he's selling original art, it's certainly worth looking at.

CC-02 - Zander Cannon: I bought his "Master of Feng Shui" mini-comic at MoCCA and enjoyed it enormously.

GG-14 and thereabouts - Periscope Studio's Artists' Alley area, which always has some stuff worth picking up, and some exceptionally nice people.

I'll also probably be checking out a couple of the big new-comic dealer booths over in the low-numbered end of the hall, particularly for comics that don't tend to turn up in normal channels. In the last couple of years I've found a few of the special Marvel/AAFES co-published New Avengers comics, which are distributed more or less exclusively through military outlets but tend to turn up at San Diego. The latest one, Fireline, is apparently by Stuart Moore and Cliff Richards, and teams up Spider-Man and Iron Man with the National Guard's forest-fire fighting unit. And I'm wondering if anyone will have copies of glamourpuss #2.

Also: those 50-percent-off trade-paperback-remainder blowout people invariably have some stuff that's more than worthwhile for half the usual price. (I get all my Ultimate Marvel trade paperbacks there, and will be scouting out that Gerber/Mooney Omega the Unknown trade.)

While we're at it, I should plug my panels, since I'm moderating six of them and giving a lecture:

Thursday, 1-2 PM: The Future of the Pamphlet. With Carr D'Angelo, Joe Keatinge and Eric Shanower. Room 32AB.

Thursday, 6-7 PM: The Comics Blogosphere. With our very own Jeff Lester, David Brothers from 4thletter!, Laura Hudson from Myriad Issues, and Tim Robins from Mindless Ones. Room 32AB.

Friday, 11:30 AM-12:30 PM: I'm giving a short, polemical talk called "Against a Canon of Comics," as part of the Comics Arts Conference. Room 30A.

Friday, 5-6 PM: Teaching Comics. With Phil Jimenez, Matt Silady, James Sturm and Steve Lieber. Room 4.

Saturday, 11:30-12:30 PM: Image Comics/Tori Amos. With Tori herself, Rantz Hoseley, David Mack, Elizabeth Genco, Ted McKeever and Kelly Sue DeConnick. Room 6B.

Saturday, 2-3 PM: Lettering Roundtable. With Todd Klein, John Roshell, Tom Orzechowski and Jared K. Fletcher. Room 8.

Saturday, 4:30-5:30 PM: The Story of an Image. Kim Deitch, Jim Woodring, Jim Ottaviani and Kyle Baker will each discuss a single image from their work. Room 4.

Come say hi!

The POS Follies: The Return, Part 11

The new TILTING AT WINDMILLS is up right here.

[If you hit the link below for the label "POS", you'll get the whole series, too]

We're very nearly a year later on installing the POS system, and several conclusions about it are in the new TILTING.

We've been spending the last 2 (and probably next three) days going through each "Hasn't sold in a year" title to set it's Minimum Point (the place where it triggers a reorder) down to zero -- it's a pretty laborious task on 1400 items, but there you go. I've made a couple of suggestions on how to make it better to Mark & Ben & AJ at MOBY, and we're trading mails back and forth.

Once I clear off all the dead books from the racks, then I have to do the same process for the floppies. Thankfully that's mostly limited to 3 racks where my natural weekly pruning skills are probably not enough.

At a guess, and not killing myself to get it done, I'll have all of the stale merchandise removed from inventory, and never again automatically reorderable by 7/31, which is the "official" start of POS date.

After that, I'll be running weekly (probably) stale item reports, and it will only be, say 5 or so items a week we'll be looking to yank, which will be an easily manageable task. This one is a pain in the ass because of the scope, but then I'll be down to a lean-mean, retailing machine.

The FUNNY thing is that There's now about 10 books that were "On The List" that actually sold this week. I won't be restocking them, but not all "Dead" merchandise is creating equal, y'know?

Finally, just because I pulled out the entire database to look at a few things, here's a list of the 100 (well, OK, 114) Top Selling Books at Comix Experience over the last (roughly) last 11 and a half months, after the jump:

1 LOEG BLACK DOSSIER HC 2ND PTG (OCT078350)
2 WATCHMEN TP (FEB058406)
3 BUFFY SEASON 8 TP VOL 01 LONG WAY HOME
4 Y THE LAST MAN TP VOL 01 UNMANNED (OCT058020)
5 WALKING DEAD VOL 7 THE CALM BEFORE TP
6 SCOTT PILGRIM GN VOL 04 SCOTT PILGRIM GETS IT TOGETHER (JUN0
7 Y THE LAST MAN TP VOL 09 MOTHERLAND (FEB070362) (MR)
8 Y THE LAST MAN TP VOL 02 CYCLES (OCT058281) (MR)
9 100 BULLETS TP VOL 11 ONCE UPON A CRIME (MAY070233) (MR)
DMZ TP VOL 03 PUBLIC WORKS (JUN070267) (MR)
FABLES TP VOL 01 LEGENDS IN EXILE (APR058372)
12 EX MACHINA TP VOL 06 POWER DOWN (AUG070308) (MR)
Y THE LAST MAN TP VOL 10 WHYS AND WHEREFORES
14 LOEG VOL ONE TP (JUL068290)
LOEG VOL TWO TP (FEB058407)
16 HELLBOY VOL 07 THE TROLL WITCH & OTHERS TP
Y THE LAST MAN TP VOL 03 ONE SMALL STEP (MAR068027) (MR)
18 BATMAN YEAR ONE DELUXE SC (OCT060163)
FABLES TP VOL 02 ANIMAL FARM (MAR058123)
20 ALL STAR SUPERMAN HC VOL 01 (DEC060188)
SANDMAN TP VOL 01 PRELUDES & NOCTURNES (DEC058090)
V FOR VENDETTA TP (APR058272)
Y THE LAST MAN TP VOL 04 SAFEWORD (APR058056) (MR)
24 ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY HC #18 (SEP073597) (MR) (C: 0-1-0)
DMZ TP VOL 04 FRIENDLY FIRE (DEC070294) (MR)
FABLES TP VOL 10 THE GOOD PRINCE
POWERS TP VOL 10 COSMIC (MR)
Y THE LAST MAN TP VOL 08 KIMONO DRAGONS (AUG060299) (MR)
29 BUFFY SEASON 8 TP VOL 02 NO FUTURE FOR YOU
FABLES TP VOL 09 SONS OF EMPIRE (MAR070271) (MR)
WE 3 TP (APR050419) (MR)
Y THE LAST MAN TP VOL 06 GIRL ON GIRL (SEP050317) (MR)
33 BATMAN DARK KNIGHT RETURNS TP (DEC058055)
THE FART PARTY TP
Y THE LAST MAN TP VOL 05 RING OF TRUTH (MAY050306) (MR)
Y THE LAST MAN TP VOL 07 PAPER DOLLS (FEB060341) (MR)
37 BLACK HOLE COLLECTED SC
COMPLETE PERSEPOLIS TP
CRIMINAL TP VOL 02 LAWLESS (OCT072158) (MR)
DMZ TP VOL 01 ON THE GROUND (MAR060383) (MR)
POWERS TP VOL 11 SECRET IDENTITY
SANDMAN TP VOL 02 THE DOLLS HOUSE (APR058268)
SHORTCOMINGS HC
44 DMZ TP VOL 02 BODY OF A JOURNALIST (NOV060292) (MR)
FABLES TP VOL 08 WOLVES (SEP060313) (MR)
PREACHER TP VOL 01 GONE TO TEXAS NEW EDITION (MAR050489) (MR
ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE TP (DEC058019)
48 CRIMINAL TP VOL 01 COWARD (MR)
DC UNIVERSE THE STORIES OF ALAN MOORE (NOV050268) (MR)
WALKING DEAD TP VOL 08 MADE TO SUFFER
WORLD WAR Z ORAL HISTORY OF ZOMBIE WAR SC
52 CIVIL WAR TP
FABLES TP VOL 04 MARCH OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERS (OCT058021) (M
JACK OF FABLES TP VOL 02 JACK OF HEARTS (JUL070305) (MR)
JUDENHASS GN
PREACHER TP VOL 02 UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD NEW EDITION (M
PREACHER TP VOL 03 PROUD AMERICANS NEW EDITION (JUL068334) (
SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN TP VOL 02
WALKING DEAD VOL 2 TP MILES BEHIND US TP NEW PTG
60 DARK TOWER GUNSLINGER BORN PREM HC
EX MACHINA TP VOL 01 THE FIRST HUNDRED DAYS (SEP058036) (MR)
HELLBOY VOL 01 SEED OF DESTRUCTION TP
SAM & MAX SURFIN HIGHWAY TP (SEP073953)
64 EX MACHINA TP VOL 03 FACT V FICTION (JAN060357) (MR)
FABLES TP VOL 05 THE MEAN SEASONS (JAN050373) (MR)
HELLBOY TP VOL 08 DARKNESS CALLS
WANTED GN (NEW PTG)
68 ALAN MOORE THE COMPLETE WILDCATS TP (MAY070211)
BATMAN GRENDEL NEW PTG TP
BOYS TP VOL 02 GET SOME (DEC073541) (MR) (C: 0-0-2)
BPRD TP VOL 07 GARDEN OF SOULS
CHANCE IN HELL HC
EX MACHINA TP VOL 02 TAG (JUL050285) (MR)
EX MACHINA TP VOL 04 MARCH TO WAR (AUG060269) (MR)
JOSS WHEDONS FRAY FUTURE SLAYER TP
LAST MUSKETEER SC (OCT073506)
NEXTWAVE AGENTS OF HATE TP VOL 01 THIS IS WHAT THEY WANT
SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN VOL 1 TP
SIGNAL TO NOISE 2ND ED HC
WARREN ELLIS CROOKED LITTLE VEIN HC
81 ABSOLUTE SANDMAN HC VOL 02 (JUN070259) (MR)
ASTONISHING X-MEN TP VOL 03 TORN
CONFESSIONS OF A BLABBERMOUTH (JUN070258)
EX MACHINA TP VOL 05 SMOKE SMOKE (DEC060271) (MR)
FABLES 1001 NIGHTS OF SNOWFALL SC (DEC070297) (MR)
FILTH TP (MR)
FUN HOME TP
GOOD AS LILY (MAY070226)
JACK OF FABLES TP VOL 01 NEARLY GREAT ESCAPE (NOV060300) (MR
KINGDOM COME TP (NOV058067)
LIFE AND TIMES OF SCROOGE MCDUCK TP VOL 01 2ND PTG (FEB07823
LIVING AND THE DEAD GN
MAKING COMICS STORYTELLING SECRETS OF COMICS MANGA & GN SC (
PRIDE OF BAGHDAD SC (OCT070256) (MR)
PULPHOPE ART OF PAUL POPE SC (JUL062792) (MR)
SUPERMARKET TP
ULTIMATES 2 TP VOL 02 GRAND THEFT AMERICA
98 ASTONISHING X-MEN TP VOL 4 UNSTOPPABLE
BPRD TP VOL 01 HOLLOW EARTH & OTHER STORIES
BPRD TP VOL 08 KILLING GROUND
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER OMNIBUS TP VOL 01
CASTAWAYS SC
CHRONICLES OF WORMWOOD LAST ENEMY GN (AUG073417) (MR)
DOOM PATROL TP VOL 06 PLANET LOVE (OCT070251)
EMPOWERED VOL 02 TP
FABLES TP VOL 03 STORYBOOK LOVE (MAY068085) (MR)
HELLBOY VOL 02 WAKE THE DEVIL TP
HELLBOY VOL 06 STRANGE PLACES TP
INVISIBLES TP #1 SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION (SEP068118) (MR)
PREACHER TP VOL 04 ANCIENT HISTORY NEW EDITION (MAY050299) (
SANDMAN TP VOL 03 DREAM COUNTRY (JAN058148)
SUPERMAN RED SON TP (NOV058130)
THE ARRIVAL GN
TRANSMETROPOLITAN TP VOL 01 BACK ON THE STREET (JUN058246)

-B

On A Bird Singing In Its Sleep

We met at where the cable cars turn around on California at Market, Hibbs and Paul and Anina, Graeme and myself. As it turned out, we ended up talking and leaning against the small monument built there for Robert Frost, the poet who so famously wrote about roads not taken and miles to go before you sleep, and etc., etc. An hour earlier, I'd sat by myself behind the ferry building, staring at the Bay Bridge, and tried very hard to think about Rory Root being dead at fifty.

I've lived long enough to know I don't process death in anything like an efficient way: I've looked down at the dead bodies of close friends and death is still an abstraction to me, something I understand intermittently. It's like two thrashing sides of a severed power line that only occasionally touch and connect and when they do, I realize this thing that has haunted me through my life--the idea I shall end--is something that has happened to people I know and I'll never see them again. But mostly, the idea is too large for my simplistic worldview, and while I'm not happy with that, the experience of losing people close to me has forced me to accept it. I grieve when those wires connect and the realization comes through, and when they don't connect I think of that person just as someone I haven't seen in a while, out there about in the world, talking, laughing.

It seemed important, though, on that beautiful summer day to look at the Bay Bridge and think of Rory Root being dead, to try and measure and see if it was a weight against which I could judge the fairness and unfairness of things in the world. It seemed unfair, for example, that Rory could be dead on such an impossibly lovely day--a day where San Francisco weather had called in sick, and Texas weather had shown up to fill in, the clouds vertiginously high and the breeze as warm on one's neck as a lover's breath. It seemed outrageous to the point of blasphemy that Rory would not see this day. And because the wires weren't connecting, I thought about the outrageousness of all the people who had died who would never see a San Francisco day like this, and how I, out of some odd parsing of the lots, could, and could also sit on a bench and think about exactly that because for some reason I was still alive.

At the cable car turnaround, we went underground and caught BART over to Berkeley. Although the platform where we waited was cool and breezy, BART itself felt like someone stoked a fire under us with the intention of slow-roasting alive everyone inside. We sweated and swayed as the train wavered on the tracks like a heat mirage, and Graeme and Brian talked about what might happen with Dan Didio and DC.

As we came out into the pungent Berkeley afternoon, Graeme said to me, "You know, I never make it over to Berkeley as much as I should. And when I do, I can never decide if Berkeley is great or skeevy. Or both." The man with four teeth in his head and the piss-yellow beard went on to underscore Graeme's point by insisting we give him money. And the more I thought about what Graeme had said, the more I realized how much that point resonated with me. I didn't make it over to Berkeley as much I meant to, either, and it wasn't just the convenience of living in San Francisco, that roguishly charming impersonator of a world-class city. Something about Berkeley set me on edge, but I couldn't say what it was. So I thought about it as we moved up to the entrance of Comic Relief, where people stood out on the walk, talking and drinking and smoking. The memorial had begun at 5, the testimonial for Rory's at 6, and we had shown up a little after 7, to see all these people on the sidewalk, making pleasant small talk and shaking hands and hugging one another. Hibbs stepped up to immediate greetings. Graeme and I stood to the side of the doors, looked at everyone and then went in to hear people talk about Rory.

The store had trapped the heat of the day, as well as all the people inside, and it felt even hotter than the BART ride over. A woman wearing Rory attire (black hat, black t-shirt) with Scandinavian features stood behind the back issue counter and talked--not quite loudly enough--about Rory and his love of Swedish meatballs. I assumed at the time but never confirmed that it was Rory's sister, and this is something you should keep in mind about my recounting of this night: my mind still refuses to confirm or deny the identities I assigned to each person. I can't say for certain it was Bob Wayne who talked travel benefits with Anina Bennett, or Shaenon Garrity, heart-stoppingly elegant in a gorgeous green dress, who walked quickly out of Comic Relief with tears in her eyes. But my mind continues to tell me it must've been, there was no one else it could be. Mortality had rendered everyone at Rory's memorial important and mysterious and fragile and powerful, and I guess some part of me refuses to negate any part of that with something so trivial as knowledge. The very obvious (but no less true for that) analogy would be picking up a superhero comic for the first time, and trying to infer how all the colorful characters related by what they said to one another, how they reacted, and even with the occasional assistance of a blatant bit of introduction. Even people I knew seemed somehow strange and new, and so I can make no true claims for people's identity that night, not even my own: I wandered about, watchful and sweaty and silent, not quite sure I recognized myself.

While the people outdoors laughed and smoked, the people with the too-quiet voices continued to stand and speak about Rory (underneath a poster of The Inifinity Man, Jack Kirby's strangely impassive hero, the one who resembles an Aztec Warrior crossed with a '56 Chrysler) and all the things Rory loved: Swedish meatballs, military histories, his customers, comic books, bad puns, talking. "He loved, well, he loved just about everyone," one speaker said, and the way she said "everyone" caused a surprisingly fresh wound of anguish in my heart.

For a moment, those interior power lines snapped together before slicing apart and putting me outside myself again, making me again someone sweaty and uneasy and out of place. And yet I was filled for whatever reason with the hubris that if I got up and spoke, I could say what none of the speakers had yet to say. I could say something that could put everything in context, that could be notable for its candor but without cruelty, forthright and yet gentle.

Because this is the other thing I've learned about myself in seeing friends and family and casual acquaintances die over the years: I've come less and less to care about the love. It is well and fine, of course, and it is in fact very, very important for us to talk about how we love the person who is gone and how that person loved us. But for the most part, talking only about love and laughter and bravery and success renders the person who has passed as flat as a pop song. The older I get, what makes people alive for me is everything we usually don't talk about at a memorial--a person's failures, the prickly edges of their angers and resentments, the resonant tones of their shortcomings and pains. And this is what kept me from standing up and saying anything at Rory's service and what makes me feel uncomfortable and creepy as I sit here typing this, because one of the things that makes Rory Root most alive to me in my mind--both as he lived and now that he's dead--can be summed up in this question: why did someone so kind and loving and prominent in his field seem so lonely and in such terrible health?

Later, outside in the night, watching Joe Field hold his two daughters close and smile and nod, I saw a woman march determinedly through the crowd, her eyes on the ground in front of her. She was about Rory's age--fifty--and she clutched to her chest two hardcover books so throroughly marked with blue post-it notes they seemed feathered. Watching her pass, I finally figured out the discomfort I felt in Berkeley.

If you live in San Francisco, you deal with a lot of people who went to U.C. Berkeley. Frequently, they are people who seem to command a certain amount of money and prestige and seem entirely comfortable with it. And even if they don't take that path, they have both a knowledge and a network--whether they want it or not--that seems to keep them from, say, attending a political fundraiser without bumping into someone with whom they went to school.

But Berkeley is like a low-grade singularity--objects of sufficient speed can hurtle right by with only the most minor change in trajectory, but some objects get caught and swept in, and the last you see of them is right at the point of an event horizon from which they'll never return. These are the people who stick in your mind when you go to Berkeley, people who went there and never escaped, who found some passion that overwhelmed them, outweighed their trajectory. You see them dressed in second-hand clothes, clutching a rare edition of Goethe's letters in which they've made notes in three languages. You spot them sitting at cafes, one leg jiggling like a telegram key while they pick out their change with unwashed hands, calculating the cost of a refill. Their teeth are a mess. They have an impressively substantial mole or perhaps a single long white hair that juts from their eyebrows and sways in the corner of their vision.

I have no reason to fear these people. I don't even have any reason to pity them--who am I to say that their life, empty but for a dizzily powerful passion, is worse than mine? Isn't it just as likely that whatever wild passions and commitments they carry make their lives better, richer? But, with a childish superstition, I fear staying too long in Berkeley because there's not nearly enough distance between myself and those men and women, their tiny apartments stacked with sour-smelling books, as I would like. I fear staying in Berkeley because of the fear that I am them already, and just haven't realized it yet.

And so it is for me with Rory Root, a man I could not have loved so much if I did not in some way fear, a man who I could not have respected so much if at some level he did not make me ashamed. Because Rory was in such poor health the entire time I knew him it never failed to tap a tuning fork of dread in my heart. Rory was in such poor health that one of the things that shocked me about his passing was that I was shocked, and this I think is one of the real reasons why, unlike in so many other memorials and testimonies about the deceased, talking about all the many ways Rory loved and was loved by people is not only necessary but vital: Rory's love and knowledge and compassion and generosity transcended every way in which his poor health terrified me. To say talking with Rory moved me from fear to compassion is both cheesy and, fortunately, untrue: the generosity with which Rory spoke, and the gentle, cheerful knowingness with which Rory spoke, moved me from fear to something like religious awe. It can take the power of being born to them to make our love for our parents conquer the frustrations we might have with them in later life, or transcend the horror of the agony with which their old age might bring. For me, all it took with Rory was about ninety seconds of conversation. It is a tremendously old cliche (and annoyingly new-agey) but I can think of no other way to say it: Rory Root was a lifeforce, someone who conveyed to me so much of what it meant to be alive, almost entirely (but not entirely) for the better. My memories of him seem more vivid to me than they do of other people, as if they were shot with a larger lens on better film. And the love he brought to his life was so all-encompassing, I knew whether I stood outside the shop ignoring the testimonials, or pilfering a few too many oreo cookies for the ride home, or idly straightening the comics on the new comics rack--it was all too easy to imagine him encouraging me to do so.

It's funny. That night I asked Charles Brownstein if he had given a testimonial and he shook his head. "Let's face it, those things are almost always either therapy for the speaker or just self-aggrandizement," he said, to which I agreed emphatically and with relief. But having reread what I have written until now, I cannot say I've done any better and may have done far worse. And I'll be honest: I started with the idea of linking the singularity of Berkeley to the singularity which is the comic field, in the hopes of finding some clear link between Rory's loneliness and poor health and some facet of the comics field I figured I would nail down in the course of writing. (The hard-knock life of retailers who've been in the field since near the beginning, maybe.) But I've reached the end here, and not only do I still not know what it is, I doubt I could fairly make that conclusion. It is very easy and satisfying to take the single context in which one knows a person and suggest that context is the reason for everything about what they do and will do and have done. It is also, I suspect, usually wrong.

Robert Frost wrote a sonnet entitled "On A Bird Singing In Its Sleep," in which the poet meditates on a bird that sings in the night. One interpretation of the poem is that Frost at first draws a comparison between a bird and its song (and its seeming frailty) and human beings and the poetry we create (and our frailty), but by the end of the poem he rejects that comparison ("It could not have come down to us so far/ Through the interstices of things ajar/ On the long bead chain of repeated birth/ To be a bird while we are men on earth / If singing out sleep and dream that way/ Had made it much more easily a prey.")

And so I reject my initial half-hearted thesis, easy and satisfying though it might have been to make it. At one point during the night, Brian looked the length of Comic Relief to the far end where Todd Martinez, the store manager who Rory had made owner, rang up customers. And Brian said, "I really want to talk to Todd about his plans for running this place. I think the best way we can honor Rory is to make sure Comic Relief always stays open." Although he only said it around Charles Brownstein and myself, I have no doubt nearly every retailer who'd made an appearance that night, having traveled from many distant cities--Los Angeles, New York, Las Vegas, Missoula, among others--would've agreed with him.

And in fact, right before I left at around eleven or so, I saw Hibbs talking to Todd in the back by the coolers, flanked by Charles Brownstein and Larry Marder. Todd sat, exhausted, while Brian knelt next to him, and Charles and Larry flanked Todd's opposite side, their heads bowed. I wasn't fooled by the coolers, the sweat stains, the crenulated pans of aluminum and their cooling tides of barbecued beef: the positioning of the people was precisely that of a classical painting where the elders of a court advise a boyish new king on the kingdom he must run. The old king had passed, and now the new king held sway. And I saw in the postures of these men an imperative, a tradition, in which one can (I hope) find a solace that no bird singing in the night could ever begin to understand. Perhaps these traditions--these communities--can help all of us, by means large and small, as we make our way toward the dark destinations our hearts hold forth as inevitable.