I'm glad BURN NOTICE is finally back on the air. There's nothing to watch during the summer. Of course, it sucks that it's not on until 10 since there's nothing else on before it.
Then again, I've got a bunch of other stuff to watch, so I guess I can't complain too much. Summer gives me a chance to catch up on my backlog of movies and TV. Of course, because I'm apparently completely brain damaged, I will instead re-watch things that I've already seen and complain that there's nothing on.
Does anybody know why comics came out a day late this week? The 4th was last week, so why should that have had any effect on this week's arrivals?
I had to laugh about all of the news stories about the new iPhones not being able to be activated, and people upgrading the software on their old phones bricking the phones. What happened to, "it just works"? HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
I caught the trailer for QUARANTINE, which is the remake of [REC]. Wow. They just give the entire movie away in the trailer. Including the ending, which is the end of the trailer. So, no need to see the movie, I guess. (I enjoyed the original.)
Then again, I've got a bunch of other stuff to watch, so I guess I can't complain too much. Summer gives me a chance to catch up on my backlog of movies and TV. Of course, because I'm apparently completely brain damaged, I will instead re-watch things that I've already seen and complain that there's nothing on.
Does anybody know why comics came out a day late this week? The 4th was last week, so why should that have had any effect on this week's arrivals?
I had to laugh about all of the news stories about the new iPhones not being able to be activated, and people upgrading the software on their old phones bricking the phones. What happened to, "it just works"? HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
I caught the trailer for QUARANTINE, which is the remake of [REC]. Wow. They just give the entire movie away in the trailer. Including the ending, which is the end of the trailer. So, no need to see the movie, I guess. (I enjoyed the original.)
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7 comments:
diamond blows. hard. and anytime there is a holiday, they use it as an excuse to delay the shipment. so the 4th was the reason it didn't show up til a day late. we only got 2 of the 3 boxes we were to get. basically all the trades and hardcovers i had the guy special order got lost. needless to say, i was rather pissed on Thursday. my local guy looked like he was going to cry. he'd just got off the phone with them for like the 3rd time that day before the order came. they're always fucking stuff up. lately they've been bending our comics to shit when they get here.
I just don't get why a holiday at the end of the previous business week should've had any effect on this week's shipping. It's not like most stores were going to be closed for the holiday. Maybe it was always that way, and I'm just forgetting.
As for the troubles your local shop have with Diamond, I guess that's what happens when you're the only game in town. You can get away with more shit.
I remember back when I used to work at a comic shop ('93-'97). When I first started, Diamond didn't even ship things. You had to drive to their nearest distribution center to pick up the books early early early on Wednesday mornings. In the case of the store I worked at, it was on the other side of the state. I only went along once. It was kinda cool to check it out. That's back when Capitol was still a distributor. Then they folded, or got bought out by Diamond. I honestly can't remember. Then they started delivering, which was much much better. (Although towards the end they changed when the books shipped and I'll complain about that in a bit.)
The last bit of competition Diamond had was back when Marvel pulled out on them and decided to distribute on their own via Heroes World. What a nightmare that was. Luckily that didn't last very long at all.
Towards the end of my tenure, Diamond would ship the stuff. The problem was it'd arrive at like 3 or 4 in the morning. So somebody had to be at the store before that and wait around until they showed up. I got stuck being that guy. It was always me and one of the two shop owners. Luckily, it was the owner that I got along with better. We worked pretty well together and usually got the job done as quickly as possible.
It was never rotated unless the boss called out. (I think I might've called out on one Wednesday if that.) If the boss didn't show up, then I'd have to be the one with somebody else to handle it all. I suppose I got stuck with it because I was pretty much given all the shit jobs in the store. (The other boss didn't seem to like me very much.) In fact, despite being there the longest, I was always the guy that was given the shit work to do, while everybody else sat around playing Magic or whatever. (I guess not getting into that game was a bad idea. I probably could've gotten away with playing games all day and shooting the shit with the bosses instead of doing more work than anybody else.) Plus it sort of irritated me that despite having the most experience that I never given one of the three locations to manage. I don't know if I would've taken it, or wanted the responsibility. I just found it very telling that I was never even asked, despite busting my ass for years at that place. So what I learned working there was that all hard work gets you is more hard work. (I liked everybody that I worked with for the most part, except for one boss, and even then, it wasn't until the end that I started to think he was a bit of a jerk.)
Anyway, after waiting around in the dead of night from like 1-2am on, eventually the truck would arrive. I had to help unload the truck, check all the stuff in, go through the computer to double-check everything, fulfill subscriptions, put everything out on the shelves, and then make signs (by hand) for things that they wanted spotlighted that week. After all that, then I'd have to lug all of the mess and trash out to the dumpster, clean the store, open, and then do my regular job while trying to resist the urge to kill until about 3 or 4 that afternoon (after having been up all night). By that point I hated Wednesdays and comic books in general. Losing that job due to the industry taking a real dive in profitability in the late 90's was a relief. It took a few years before I started reading again.
Still, I had some good times at the store, and like I said before, I got along with mostly everybody. So sometimes I do miss it a bit. But then I remember all the bad shit, and I miss it a lot less. (Had I thought of running a blog back then, it would've made a good read. But alas, I didn't think that up until about a year after I was let go. By then I had all new things to complain about!)
heh you wrote your next post it looks like. pretty interesting read though for a comic nerd. i read the mile high blog a while ago about how diamond became a monopoly and the guy seemed to thing that a lot of it was his and his wife's fault, when their distro folded it left diamond with a majority.
it's funny, it never fails where i go, the stores always hate diamond. the place near me gets like 1500 a month, so it's tiny and i can see diamond not giving a shit about them. but last time i was in wilkes-barre i went to essential comics out there, and was talking to their owner and he was complaining about diamond too. he said they order over 100k a month, and still get shortages, missing items, and all the rest of that shit. same with new dimensions in butler/pittsburgh and bells in grove city. they all order well over 10k and complain about terrible service and getting orders cut. basically diamond has you over the barrel and can decide whether to use lube of not when raping you.
never knew you worked in a comic store. probably should have gotten into magic back then though. i hate the game and never got into it, but the cards from back then are worth a shitton. my guy payed for his building by selling some of his old magic cards on ebay. he's been playing since the beginning and he said his collection is worth over $100k.
http://www.milehighcomics.com/tales/cbg131.html
Ah, I dunno if this is full-post worthy really. Plus it's already posted via the comments!
I'm sure all of the complaints about Diamond are valid. Again, it's a monopoly, where else are the retailers going to go? As a reader you have the option of waiting for the trade and getting it through a bookstore or Amazon (or "illegally" downloading scans), but the retailers have no where else to go. Bookstores, unless something has drastically changed, don't go through Diamond. Let's not forget that Diamond and the direct market essentially killed off newsstand distribution. Which means less and less new readers, which is why sales are only a fraction of what they were twenty years ago. It used to be kids would get their comics and places like 7-11s and drugstores. Direct sales shops were really supplemental and relied more on specialty items and back issues. You'll still see a few comics at a grocery store and in some bookstores, but really the market for the casual reader is all but gone. It had already started heading that way when I worked in the biz.
Anyway, I guess my memory is pretty good. I thought I might've forgotten or misremembered some things. But that article is pretty much how I remember all of the stuff with Diamond, Capital, and Heroes World, and how Diamond became what is essentially a monopoly. The one thing about that article that I sort of disagree with is that he tends to overstate his importance to the outcome of that whole situation. From the way he worded his article, he makes it sound like he's the only retailer that was consulted on the Heroes World situation. I don't recall it like that at all. Yeah, he's one of the larger US retailers and has been for a long time, but I'm pretty sure they consulted with quite a few retailers.
As for that thing in the article about DC prohibiting retailers from selling stuff to one another, I don't know if that's new or what. I remember other dealers coming into the store all the time looking for stuff that they got shorted on. If we had it and didn't desperately need it, they'd buy it at a discount. Again this is anywhere from eleven to fourteen years ago. Things might've changed since then. I'm sure, even if this is a new thing, that dealers do it anyway. How would anybody really know if they did?
It's not surprising that you didn't know I worked in a comic shop. I rarely mention it. I recall being embarrassed about it when I'd meet girls and they asked where I worked. I used to just say that I worked at a bookstore. Then they'd keep probing with more and more questions and the truth about my low-paying, socially unacceptably geeky job would come out. I loved comics when I started though. Plus I was working in the store as a way of getting my foot in the door to other parts of the business and making a little (very little) money. I really wanted to get into penciling (as well as inking and writing, but mostly penciling), so I figured what better job? I did get to show my stuff to a few pros who came in for signing and most said I was ready for work, but I never did anything aside from a one or two small press things that I hope nobody ever digs up.
I will say that most of the industry pros I met were pretty cool. Jeph Loeb, who's writing is hit or miss with me, used to stop in every so often. I think he had family in the area. He was a nice guy. I remember him telling us about the AGE OF APOCALYPSE stuff a few months before that was solicited. It's funny to me to see his name in the credits of LOST and HEROES. One of our regulars was Paul Jenkins, although I don't recall ever meeting him. He shopped at one of our other locations. I'd bag up his subscriptions for transport to the other location. (That's right, those same subscriptions that I had to deal with every week in the wee hours of the morning were the new inventory for three full-sized comic stores. No wonder I hated my job at the end.) At the time he was mostly doing Vertigo stuff. There were a bunch of other guys, but those were the two that sprang to mind.
I hated hated hated MAGIC and the people that played it. They'd buy a pack and then start playing at the counter and get pissy when you'd ask them to move so you could ring somebody else up. Plus, like I said in my previous comment, the rest of the staff (everybody but me) played and would play all day while I got stuck doing all the work because I wasn't in their little club. One of my friends used to play with some of his other friends and I'd just roll my eyes when he'd talk about it.
yeah when i got into comics was the early 90's, and back then kmart had a huge section of comics. during age of apocalypse i remember going to wal-mart and getting the issues, as well as a newsstand when i was on vacation with my family in NJ. i started out casual, then got hardcore in the late 90's, got out of comics around 2001-2002 (after Smith's DD run and my 3rd knights Punisher series subscription ran out, around issue 16 i think). i was out of them for about 4 years, until a place opened near my house. my brother plays magic, and i'd have to drive him there all the time, eventually picked up a punisher max issue, and that got me back into it.
as far as illegally getting comics, i HATE reading them on a monitor. i tired it for a while, to catch up on some series i was going to read (Punisher, American Virgin, Scalped, Boys)
with diamond, then the new cap came out, i know the guy near me ordered 5 copies. he got 0. the ordered 3 alex ross signed ones, and got 1. also ordered 2 cgc 9.8's and got 0. i managed to snag the only signed issue, which i was happy about, but my brother who reads cap every month was livid about it. they never failed to mail us 6 countdowns a week though. i think he has about 300 of those in longboxes. haha. also, as far as trading between dealers, it happens all the time at my place. he makes a trip to butler and grove city each month to unload some stuff and get other stuff back in stock. they probably look down on it, but there's not much they can do about it i'm sure.
i'd say the major issue with getting new readers though is how messed up everything is now. i don't think a person could pick up a single issue of any main stream marvel or dc book and just enjoy it. i stay far away from dc anymore and their 52/countdown/final crisis crap. with marvel, i'm rather confused from civil war/WWH/house of m/ect. secret invasion i woln't touch with a 10 ft pole, besides the new deadpool series that has a tie in. the x books, which i loved when i got out of comics, and confusing as fuck now. i have no clue about m or their last 3 x crossovers, and i tried picking up some of that stuff and it made no sense at all.
i stick mainly with vertigo(100 bullets, scalped, house of mystery, and NORTHLANDERS, which is amazing), max (Punisher, Foolkiller, Terror Inc), icon (Kick Ass), Dynamite (Boys, Superpowers), and Avatar (anything by Ellis, Ennis, or Moore.) i pick up a few main universe books, but only ones like Tbolts or where i think the issue may be worth something.
if you're still interested in penciling, submit some work to avatar, dynamite, image... any of the bigger indys. they may be interested. plus if you could get on at avatar, you could work with some legends. i know on the avatar site they have a section about submitting material.
I started reading comics in the late 70s. I was pretty consistent from the until about late '96, when I was still working at the comics store and burnt out. (Then I got let go from that job in early '97 because they couldn't afford me anymore.)
I personally like scans. I have no problem with reading them on a monitor. Plus I like the idea that you can find a few hundred issues of a series on DVD-R rather than having scores of boxes that take up tons of room.
I read a lot of stuff, lots of non-superhero things. I'm dropping more and more of the mainstream Marvel and DC (especially the DC) all the time. I'm probably getting less than half of their stuff that I used to.
As far as penciling goes, I haven't drawn in years. I'm pretty much over that whole thing. That's what I wanted to do as far back as I could remember right through to my early 20s. Then I just got fed up with comics in general. The fact that I even started reading them again is surprising to me.
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