Primate of the Moment

Can't really go wrong with Gorilla Man from Agents of Atlas.

This is one of those me being lazy posts because today was kinda long. And yes, there is such a thing as seeing too many comics in one day.

Books I Think You Need

It was kind of a meh week this week, wasn't it? I mean there was some decent new stuff and titles I expect to be regularly great, but all in all a smaller week and that is definitely reflected in overall store traffic and the girth(or lack of) of the subscription boxes.

The one thing I think might get overlooked though is the fantastic Brinkley Girls hardcover put out by Fantagraphics.

Edited by Trina Robbins, you would be doing yourself a favor by checking it out

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fantagraphics/sets/72157616739963996/

http://www.fantagraphics.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=The-Brinkley-Girls-The-Best-of-Nell-Brinkley-s-Cartoons-from-1913-1940---Previews-Pre-Order.html&Itemid=113

Curse you Fantagraphics, I'm trying to save money you bastards.

Primate of the Moment

Recommend Comics (like a boss)

I think the one thing I love the most about working comic retail is when someone comes up to you and just straight up asks for recommendations. It's not always fun, because sometimes people just don't really know what they want and they just keep shooting you down and waste your time. That might sound arrogant of me, because maybe I'm just not recommending the right thing to them.

No.

This is kinda my shtick.

I will find you the book you want.

And you will like it, dammit.

*ahem*

Because often times, if you straight up do not like what I recommend to you, I will let you bring it back for store credit. Because not everything clicks, and that's all cool. I always try to talk with the person though to get a good handle of what they like, what kind of books and movies they like, so ideally I can peg them down with a couple options.

In this case it was a couple who were just getting into comics. I talked a bit with them first to see what kind of genres interest them before I just shot into it. Only a couple specific requests, so I pretty much had free reign. And it was fun because they were open to suggestions but also guided me as we went along and gave me a better idea of if I was heading in the wrong direction or not.

So they ended up taking:

Criminal

Mother Come Home

Walking Dead

Batman Long Halloween

Umbrella Academy

Green Lantern Rebirth

Also, after talking with one of the guys down at Fantagraphics, we now have an additional pile of Love & Rockets FCBD books so I gave them one of those as well.

So here's to hoping they like their books, but they seemed pretty happy and excited to try new stuff.

That is a good pile o' readin' though, I need to crack open my Mother Come Home again. Can't recommend it enough if you haven't tried it out yet.

http://www.darkhorse.com/Books/12-798/Mother-Come-Home-TPB

Primate(s) of the Moment

Blazing Combat

Just finished reading and cannot recommend enough the new Fantagraphics release Blazing Combat

Check it out here.

First off, it's Archie Goodwin writing. The stories are great, even if you aren't into war comics. The real showcase for me though is the art. Check it:

Frank Frazetta

Alex Toth

Wally Wood

John Severin

Al Williamson

Russ Heath

Gene Colan

and more

via ICV

I've always loved Severin's work, but his pages in here make me want to run off and buy the original art. I'm fairly poor but have been thinking about who I would want to buy pages of if I could anytime soon, and he seriously just zoomed right into spot #1. Russ Heath is not too far behind.

Like 7 years back I had some money and made it a point to buy a few pages of art from artists I really love, mostly because I knew it would be some time before I could again. Ended up with A John Cassaday Planetary page and 2 Rags Morales pages from his Hourman run. There are many more I would love to get, but yeah, Severin jumps to the top after this book.

Best supervillain name or BEST supervillain name?

From a random chat:

MADASS

Discuss.

* Apologies, this post is pretty much for just one person

Primate of the Moment

THIS DUDE
*I really wanna give credit to where I found this, but I saved the pic a while back. So credit to whoever deserves it

Free Comic Book Day War Journal: Aftermath

So as you could guess from the last post, FCBD was horribly busy. Every FCBD has been great for us traffic and business wise, especially since we always add a little sale and usually have someone signing or have a bunch of stormtroopers on the sidewalk. Those guys do wonders for off the street traffic (and car accidents, but y'know, whatever).

This year, however, was just crazy. We opened 15 minutes before our usual time and were greeted with a slow trickle of customers. About another twenty minutes into that you could not walk across the store. So much humanity. Like a never ending wave of....humanity. Two of us behind the counter with two out on the floor, and the flow of customers at the register was non-stop. Every time I left the register to help on the floor, I was bombarded and helping virtually every person I came across.

We pretty much doubled up on our free comics this year and put in a bunch of overstock on top of it. Yeah, that lasted till about 3:00pm and I might be generous saying that. We did let people take a total of 8 books each, so we were expecting to run out fairly fast. I got on the phone to see if I could send people to other stores and found out that at least one of them had already been sending people down our way. By 3pm we actually had to refill the free books with extra inventory we just had on hand that we were expecting would become overstock anyway (CURSE YOU, TRINITY).

No one really complained though, because even when we were out of the FCBD kids books (Sonic, Archie, Owly, DC Kids, Melvin the Monster) I just started pulling some books from our kids spinner(Tiny Titans, Marvel Adventures) and passing those out. So while I am tempted to bump our quantities for next year, 4 hours worth of free inventory ain't bad, especially considering we were supporting the traffic of a few other stores as well towards the end there.

I can't help but be flabbergasted by people who come in at like 6pm expecting us to have a full compliment of the official FCBD books. Nobody bitched us out, but you could tell they were disappointed.

What's also interesting is that we didn't actually have the 501st Legion stormtroopers show up. They were supposed to but due to some sort of scheduling snafu only one guy showed up. We had an Imperial Officer greeting customers at the door, and I have to say that dude was a trooper. By himself, when all the customer were expecting Boba Fett and clonetroopers, and in the rain. This dude stuck it out for like 6 hours and was cheerful as hell and posing for pictures and making kids smile. If the Empire had more guys like Chuck, those dirty rebel scum wouldn't have had a chance.

That's the other thing. It was raining a lot, and traffic was horrible due to construction in numerous key spots. Yet with all these problems, we still had the best showing and best sales in the entire history of all our FCBDs.

Now all of that being said, I do plan to either throw myself down a flight of stairs or jump into traffic before next years event. Because seriously. Everyone was lucky I didn't pull out the death cannon within the first 5 minutes.

Anyone have any good FCBD stories or were you happy with the selection this year?
I'm always interested to hear peoples take on it.

Free Comic Book Day War Journal: Day Blargamarga

Blargar! Brigga bahuooo, dfaser dhdgjfkfgez

Guh

Free Comic Book Day War Journal: Day 1

Things on the agenda!

-Going through many boxes worth of back stock inventory so they are ready for the uber sale we are having.
Seriously, there were a lot of Batman, Superman, and X-Men we were missing in the bins. Price price price.

-Making room for the said boxes of back stock comics in the inventory.
eeehhhh totally made someone else do it, MANAGER POWER GO

-Coordinate work schedules (like a boss)

-Filing copies of Blackest Night into the subscription files of all customers signed up for Green Lantern, GL Corp, or Blackest Night. Not everyone can come in this Sat, so we ordered double what we were planning so GL fans wouldn't miss out.

-Someones sweeping and cleaning tonight anyways, but tomorrow morning probably gonna give it a double over if time permits.

-Getting people hyped up for the 501st Legion showing up

Really, not much else but to tidy up a bit more and hope the weather holds.

Curses

So I've been pretty lax in updating recently, and when I have its been quick posts with just pics or videos usually.

I'm hoping to write a larger item on Free Comic Book Day, so maybe I'll get a pre-game write-up tomorrow and then after Saturday report on the horrible horrible, er, I mean happy fun time free comics yay

Free Comics Book Day is good for many reasons, chief among them the promotion of new comics to new readers, all the kids coming in and trying out comics for the first time in many cases, and exposure for new titles that otherwise might have a hard time reaching an audience in the current industry (YAY ATOMIC ROBO).

But last year, I had at least 4 people poke me in the chest because I was wearing the FCBD shirt asking "What's that?!?!" And I mean sharp poke in the heart. By the 2nd person I was ready to start ripping off appendages, but there were far too many witnesses. And it's always great when people complain about the selection of free comics. Even though we have every single one available on hand. Oh, but you wanted that $35 hardcover book for free? Because the poster outside on the window says Free Comics, but doesn't specify which ones, so you thought it would be cute to push your luck? Go outside, take a sharp right, and go get hit by a bus. The human race no longer has need for you. Gtfo.

Free Comics Book Day is an awesome day. But it is a long tiring day, full of as many idiots as it is great people. So I won't lie through my teeth and say I'm looking forward to it. I hope many people leave happy with many free comics. And I hope I don't have to kill any of them as well.

So that cheery bit being said, this is where I get lazy and just post pictures and a video for you.

First, is an artist feature for Marciotakara. Check out http://www.marciotakara.com/ and http://marciotakara.deviantart.com/

And second, I never get tired of forcing people to watch this: