Crazy Times Ahead

My busiest day of 2007 was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. While I doubt I will be able to beat the awesomely incredible Free Comic Book Day of this year, I certainly have high hopes. Lots of people out of work early. A long weekend ahead. The unadulterated need for reading material. The fact that its a pretty darn good week of new books will not hurt either.

We have worked hard to get all of the trades in some semblance of order and today will entail getting everything neat and tidy. I am really hoping to finish November strong and then just bull rush through December, setting all sorts of sales records for the store.

Weeeeee!

DC Troubles

So if the recent Lying in the Gutters story is correct, DC is falling into disarray. It is very disappointing to me. There was so much momentum behind its line right now. And it may all be for naught.

First is:

“The last issue of "Final Crisis" is further delayed as it is suffering from serious rewrites. It appears that DC Executive Editor Dan DiDio was unhappy with the way the story concluded and the implications for the DC Universe for a while and had ordered changes from a, naturally, rather unhappy Grant Morrison. Considering this is the way he wrote the pitch for the book.

As a result, creative teams working on a number of spinoff and affected books have also had to stop work while the “Final Crisis” ending is reworked.

Expect more lateness, more annoyance and less likelihood of Grant Morrison doing DCU work in the near future.”

DiDio has set the entire future of the DCU on this book. Remember when Countdown was the “spine” of the DCU and it got scoliosis and cracked a vertebrae. Now Final Crisis (“Heroes Die, Legends Live Forever”) is in disarray. And late. Very very late. We didn’t get an issue in September and it doesn’t look like we will get one in November, either. The first 3 issues were a jumbled mess of bits and pieces. “You need to have read Morrison’s stuff to understand it.” Well, that’s not good for the casual reader. What about the people who don’t like Morrison (and I can understand why)? They have been pushed away from this, DC’s big story setting up the future.

And now Morrison may be pissed and leaving the DCU. Well, that’s fine and dandy except for the fact that he has spent a long time carefully crafting Batman RIP. Is it now going to fall to just anyone to pick up the pieces and make a story out of it?

Also, if the end of Final Crisis didn’t fit in with the direction the DCU is going, does anyone know what’s going on? At least at Marvel, I have the feeling that they know where they are going for the next year. DC seems to be playing a month at a time. People were thinking that there was going to be a complete reboot of the DCU. Well, first, that would be a shame because of the great things going on in Batman, Superman and Green Lantern. Throwing all of that away would be silly. But on the other hand, is Final Crisis going to have any effect on the DCU? I don’t see how. Batman is dead (supposedly) but not in the pages of Final Crisis. Superman is heading to outer space with someone else taking over his titles (New Kryptonians, maybe?). Secret Invasion is a one day event and there apparently will be effects shown in the Marvel Universe. DC has shown no correlation between Final Crisis and anything going on in any other book.

The Second story is this:

“Morrison is not the only person having difficulties with DiDio's direction. I understand that James Robinson and Dan had a stand up argument that led to Robinson quitting the Superman books and the DCU in general.”

The Morrison Superman issues have been good. People really seem to like them. Why piss off yet another creator? Geoff Johns can’t write everything.

Overall, there just seems to be a lack of leadership, or vision, or something at DC right now and this is not the time for it. Get your act together DC. Comics are in the middle of a nice boom right now. Lets keep it going.

Happy November!

Yeah, I know I am a couple days late, but I am happy to be past the election. Random thoughts this morning:

A Marvel Digital Comics Online person recently referred to actual comics books as "dead tree editions" in comparison to the online versions. This was in a Comic Book Resources article and has clumsily been edited out, but it certainly shows Marvels direction and maybe some of their ambivalence to the Direct Market (ie Comic Book Stores). I'm sure that there has been a lot of research done to show that this is the wave of the future, and of course I am very biased, but I just don't see it. I don't see all of the people who currently buy comics suddenly switching to reading them on their computer or on a fancy handheld device. Some of the hip kids who have every gadget known to man, sure. And supposedly there are already tons of people illegally downloading them. So there is a market. But is it a viable market? Are those people reading for free suddenly going to start paying? Or maybe one will pay and then send them out to their friends anyway.

There aren't that many comic stores out there. Under 3000 according to the last thing I read. These stores have been out on the front line, taking the heat for Marvel's publishing woes. Late books and bad books get blamed on the stores. The customers know its not our fault, but they can't complain to Marvel. So how does Marvel thank the retailers for being there, ordering and promoting their products? They decide to cut us out of the loop and deal directly with the readers. I can understand their thinking, but not their understanding.

Back in the early 90s, Marvel decided to eliminate the middleman in the distribution area. Why pay some other companies (yes, there used to be more than one distributor) to get their books out to the stores. So Marvel went exclusive with Heroes World and it was a disaster and nearly killed the comic book business. Marvels bankruptcy was partially a result of this decision.

I understand their thinking of cutting out the middleman, but not theeir understanding of what all was involved and what the repurcsussions would be. I was getting ready to open my store at this time and had to setp back, not because of the potential distribution problem, but because I would be getting my product from 2 sources. At the time, discount was based on the total order amount. Cutting that by a third would decrease my discount from both distributors and I was not certain I could make it with the loss of money. Marvel didn't think it through completely for everyone involved. Maybe its my lawyer training to look at both sides of the issue.

Right now Marvel is looking at saving printing and shipping fees by eliminating that part of their business. And, sure, it looks great. "I can eliminate 25% of our publishing expenses." But you again have to look at the entirety of it. Are they going to make the same amount of money from just publishing online? They are still going to have the talent fees, editorial fee and everything else involved with putting out a comic, just not the printing expenses. But is the monthly subscription fee going to cover all of this? They are in a tough position right now. Their online thing won't take off until they put the books online at the same time as the new books hit the stores. But when they do this, they will lose the business in the stores. While I would still carry the books, I would make no effort to support the books. I'd order just enough to sell out quickly and I would be pushing everybody else. Why would I help support my biggest competitor? And presumably Marvel would stop publishing actual "dead tree editions" and go exclusively online. And then went the novelty of the online thing wears off, I doubt that the stores that are left would be very receptive of Marvel coming back.

People have been bemoaning the downfall of the Direct Market for years. "The should go to a Graphic Novel only format and get rid of monthly comics." "The bookstore model is the way to go." Well, last I looked, bookstores aren't doing too well right now. From a Grand Rapid Press Article in May: "Borders is in the midst of a turnaround plan aimed at returning the company to profitability after reporting two straight years of more than $150 million losses."

Now a large part of this is lost sales to online sellers like Amazon.com. And recently Marvel had an ad in every one of their books for an online discount service. Now I understand that full page advertisers are hard to come by rigth now and that defrays a part of their publishing costs, but it was a bit annoying having Marvel actively promote my competition is frustrating. It would be like the inside cover of every books saying "You could have bought this for less at Amazon.com" Or the back cover of every CD saying "You could have downloaded this for half of what you paid."

The other, very confusing part of it is this: Marvel sets the price for their books. I don't have a choice on what to sell the books for. Right on the cover. And now Marvel is trying to dictate that I sell their product for less than that. If they think the price is too high, they should lower it, not point my customers to someone who has no overhead and takes no stock position on their product and is simply an order taker.

More to come

More Numbers Stuff

Well, apparently September was an abberation and sales are back to where they were. Which is good and reassuring. I have heard some customers talking about having to cut back on their purchases, but I really didn't see much this month. Tracking sales is still really hard, only because I am still new and haven't seen any real trends. Well, except that November and December are really good for business.

Going back this year, January through April were pretty steady I had a 47% increase in sales from April to May. Then there was a 19% drop back down, but things stayed at this new higher plateau through August. September dropped back down to April numbers. That is why I am glad to see a 21% jump back up for October. Last year had a 31% jump from October to November and a 14% jump from November to December.

So, if things hold the way they went last year, I should do just fine.

Lots of good books still to come; the wrap up to Secret Invasion in December, Final Crisis still going, lots of Green Lantern goodenss coming as well.

On a side note, I haven't done many reviews on the site after there was a bruhaha about stores doing negative reviews of books they are trying to sell. And I kind of agree with internet on this one. There are lots of books I don't care for that sell well. Who am I to say what is good or bad. Plus this guy was reviewing books from his Marvel Preview books. So people were being told they were bad and not to buy them before they came out. Marvel no longer does the Preview books, so I don't get to see the books until you do. It will be a more level playing field.

So I will get to more reviews soon, but they will generally only be on books I feel positive towards or have hope that it is going somewhere.

Quick review. Incredible Hercules#122 made me laugh out loud.