|
| Tilting at Windmills v2 #10 |
By Brian Hibbs
This one was Matt Brady’s idea, so if you find it dull, blame him! I’ve already spent a column discussing cycle sheets, and the “deep background” aspects of ordering comics, so let’s take a look at how this applies to actually filling out an order form. This month we’ll take a walk through an actual issue of Previews while I show you what I’m thinking as I do an order form. For this exercise, I’ll be using the October ’04 issue (The one with the new Legion #1 on the cover.) This might be the most readable if you get a copy of that issue and follow along. Like I said before, cycle sheets provide the backbone of what retailers do – some people keep them on a paper-based system, some people have electronic Point-of-Sale systems to gather that information – but, no matter how you gather that data, it’s the most practical tool we have in our toolboxes. Let me stress, upfront, this is NOT how all retailers do this, or representative of their thinking processes and whatnot – this is how I do this. You’ll find that my numbers don’t match up to the national sales charts, though I daresay you’d be hard-pressed to find a retailer whose orders do match up to national. We are all lovely individual snowflakes! More or less, you “read” cycle sheets in terms of trends – is a book shrinking, growing or staying flat? Because we generally order comics one to four issues in advance of them arriving (depending on the publisher), every order that a retailer makes is inherently speculative. Even with cycle sheet data there’s a “crap shoot” aspect to ordering because the customers and their tastes today are, at best, indicators of what they’ll want a few months from now. I mentioned that orders are 1 to 4 months in advance – this inconsistency because different publishers offer differing systems and support. The idea is that we’re never really more than two issues in advance (It is currently October, and I am ordering December books), but there’s a few quirks in the system that doesn’t make that a rock-solid 2-issues-only. For example, Marvel offers a “Final Order Cut Off” system where your final orders aren’t actually due with Previews, but with a weekly e-mail approximately 3 weeks before a book is shipped. Thus, whatever order you place for Marvel through Previews is much more of a “first draft” (assuming you don’t screw up the weekly e-mail deadline, like I have a few times) Marvel is the only publisher that allows you to lower orders post-Previews. Every other publisher has your Previews order as a firm commitment. Except that this commitment only kinda flows one direction. See, Diamond allows publishers a certain amount of “buffer” in their shipping – while a book might be due to ship in, say, January, publishers actually have 30 days to actually ship their book before it is considered late. This means that a book scheduled for January could actually arrive to Diamond as late as March 2nd, and still be considered “on time”. And the calculations are based solely on when it arrives to Diamond – Diamond can take another 2-3 weeks to distribute the book out to the stores, so it is entirely possible for a “January” book to arrive in April and not actually be technically late. Even then, publishers can offer order reductions or returnablility within other generous windows. Thus, it is possible for solicitation to be months and months ahead of publication. For an example of the extremes this could fall to, until just a few months ago, we were ordering Spawn a full year in advance of publication! Sure, once they arrived, every issue of Spawn was 100% returnable, but if, say, you were opening a new store you wouldn’t receive a Previews-ordered issue of Spawn for an entire year! Wacky, huh? Anyway, I’m sure you’ve noticed that the last week of the month is always this sickly heavy shipping week – this is because of Diamond’s 30-day window for “on time” shipping. Since most creative people are procrastinators, most people read “the absolute last date you can deliver your book is x” as “The day I have to deliver my book is x” So, more small books ship in that last week because that’s when they have to, see? [If you’re a small publisher, the single best no-cost thing you could do for yourself to improve your chances of your book standing out on the racks is to ship it when no one else ships – generally the middle week of the month – and then make your deadline!]
There are basically five states that a book can have: The book is flat, rising, falling, or chasing, either up or down. The first three cases mean you have about the right inventory, while the latter two are way way too much, or too little. For example, we have Azarello and Lee’s Superman. We ordered less than half of the seventh issue as we did of the first because we’ve been chasing the numbers downwards. There’s not an issue in the batch where we haven’t had massive piles of leftovers. Conversely you’d have Superman/Batman where we’ve been chasing the numbers upward – ordering more each time, reordering lots and lots of copies, trying to find our ceiling. Your goal when ordering is to have exactly the “right” amount of product – you want to fill 100% of the demand there is without having any copies past that, because you’re buying non-returnable. You will never ever achieve this goal. You can get close, though. Finally, because of space limitations here (well, writing ones, this thing is 6600 words long!), I’m only going to cover the “front section” of Previews in this piece. That is, the four brokered publishers. If there is any demand, I’d be happy to do a “back section” one in a future column. Let us know if you’re interested. With all of that preamble done, let’s get to the actual Previews… The first item is Previews, itself. This title is one of the hardest things to order, really. Because unlike comics which at least have the possibility of life as a back issue, Previews is deader than dead once the ordering deadline has passed. In this case of this one book, you literally don’t want to have any copies leftover. My cycles say that I’ve sold as many as 18 copies and as low as 13. We average between 14 and 16 though, so I usually write down a 16. This almost certainly means that some months I’ve losing 2-3 sales on Previews, but it’s not worth trying to maximize sales when my average sale is under that ceiling. I skip ordering extra copies of Marvel Previews. Never had anyone ask for one separately, and it’s such a low-profit item I don’t see much point trying to build an audience for it. Let’s move on to Dark Horse. Concrete: Human Dilemma #1 is an interesting dilemma all by itself, as there hasn’t been a new issue of Concrete since 1998 (“Strange Armor”). I could dig out the previous cycle data from the binders we keep the oldest stuff in, but 6 years may as well be 600 years in real terms. Any data more than 6 months old is usually worthless to day-to-day ordering, but I try to keep the last 2 years as “live” just in case I need to take a big picture step-back. So I’m going to order this like it was brand new. My gut says 30, so that’s what I’ll write down, but if subs come in higher than 12 copies, I’ll be raising this quite readily. Conan #11 going with straight cycles here – trending down a little bit for us, but well within tolerance, and I go with 35. Small backtrack here. The first thing I do with my copy of Previews is to mark in all of the cycle numbers. I go straight through and put in any numbers I’m confident of. I do this without looking at the descriptions of the book, so “straight numbers” is the rule here. Then, as I go through and figure out numbers for books without cycles I give the descriptions a quick read to see if there’s any reason to majorly change the cycle number. In the case of most books, there isn’t, but every once in a while a new story arc or creative team you need to do big adjustments. The Incredibles #2 is a movie adaptation. These usually do really lousy, and it’s not done in CG, but in regular pen and ink, so I put down a token 1 copy. El Zombo Fantasma TP was funny stuff, but I still have copies of the mini-series (all three issues, in fact) left, so, again, a token 1 copy. Jingle Belle #2 I have cycle’s dating back to Oni’s run of the book, and they’re not encouraging. Never sold more than 3 copies. I go with 2 on this run. Again, as with all “token” orders, I’ll double check my sub numbers to see if I’m reading my customers wrong. We do a monthly newsletter with all of the new comics listed, so we can get pretty good feedback. Samurai Heaven & Earth #1 looks like a leftover CrossGen book, to be honest. It’s also a mini, which generally means if it has real merit it will be TPed, so I don’t want to have any excess stock. I write down 5, but if subs come in at 0 I might drop it to 3. Karas looks like a self-contained one-shot. That usually means low advertising/promotional support, and not a lot of demand. Also, it appears to be manga-style while not being Japanese. Not what the market is clamoring for. Token 1. On these token orders, I’ll be watching to see if they sell fast (before the end of the weekend), and I’ll try to reorder then. If it takes a week or two, I most likely will not reorder. There are thousands of comics vying for my rack space each month. Don Bluth Art of Animation Drawing TP is good for a token 1. “How To” books have their own section at Comix Experience, but they don’t turn very often. If I can move this copy within 3 months I’ll probably reorder it from there out as long as I can get it to turn twice a year. BPRD The Dead #2 might as well be BPRD issue #15 (and, actually, I wish it was), since the data is fresh enough, so I can order it without most of the concerns of an issue #2. I can also order the BPRD Plague of Frogs TP from cycles from the first 2 volumes. Still, it would have been nice had this been solicited as “Vol 3”, as this will cause problems down the line when using Diamond’s computer systems… I also have solid cycles for Goon #10 (wish they’d drop the “DH ED” from the official Diamond title), and Grendel Devil’s Reign #7. The Irregulars TP is an odd duck. It’s by two credentialed writers who I can say I’ve honestly never heard of, is related to Sherlock Holmes without having his name in the title, and only the cover art by Ben Templesmith is shown when the interior art is by someone named “Bong Dazo” whom I’ve never heard of. Were this 3 years ago when OGNs and TPs were less ubiquitous, I definitely would have ordered a token copy. But now? This is a $6 risk (at my cost) for me for something that appears will just be dropped onto the market with no fanfare. Also, it’s 6x9, and for $12.95, that’s about $2 more than the market generally wants to pay. So, I pass…. Megatoyko Vol 3, Blade of the Immortal #96, and Berserk V6 are all “subs only”. Previous for-the-rack copies went unbought, so now just preorders get them. And I write down “+3” on Ghost in the Shell 2 TP, and “+1” on Oh My Goddess v19. That will be over and above subs because I know those two will have long-term legs. I sell a half-dozen copies of the first Ghost in the Shell TP each year, but the sequel seemed less well received. I hope that doesn’t affect sales of v1. And Super Manga Blast #48 is at straight cycles or 4 copies. Oddly, I don’t seem to be able to regularly sell 1 rack copy of Shonen Jump… That leaves the Star Wars books, which all sell badly – highest order is a 3. They’re really not worth racking these days, and every month I contemplate cutting them. * * * And with that we’re into DC. First up we have the Bat-Books. These will be pain-in-the-asses to order, as we’re post-“War Games”, yet all of the recent data I have to order with is three months of “War Games” only. My instinct is to slash the numbers right back to where they were before the crossover, because this will be the second month of “post-“ and the “bounce” will probably have worn off. But I curse myself and add a copy or two to each (except Batman) just to try and be optimistic. What happened during “War Games”, at Comix Experience, was that Batman dropped from 36-40 to 25-28. Yet, at the same time books lower-tier titles like Batgirl fairly doubled from 9-11 to 18-20. But I don’t think those “new” readers will stick around – Batman’s been a “chasing down” book since Jim Lee left it, and the “big event” only seemed to drive more readers away. We sold 140 copies of Lee’s last issue, by the way. Detective #801 gets another 5 added to it because David Lapham is coming on as writer, and I do the same for Nightwing #100. With the Super-books, I call this latest revamp attempt a car-crash failure. Action and Adventures are back to where they were before this latest try (or: 16 measly copies), and Superman, as I mentioned, has been a desperate attempt to not get socked with 20+ unsold copies every issue. One I’ve failed, and I write in 60 copies to see if I am finally low enough this time. Superman / Batman tries to make up for someone blowing a deadline on the previous series by trying to power 2 issues out this month. Why they thought that was a good idea, I’ll never know. Isn’t it better to have a longer-term buffer in case some superstar artist decides to not produce on schedule? Maybe it is just me. Still, the book, lateness and all, has been on a steady rise and regular reorders so I place the highest orders for the series yet. 80 each. The DC Universe section is pretty much straight cycles with a few exceptions. Despite the fact that no one seems to want it, I keep ordering 7 copies of Bloodhound #6. I’ve never sold more than 5, but I like the book, in a low-tier kind of way. It’s not the kind of book that I’m going to try to hand-sell the fuck out of (sorry, I only have so many hours in a day, and scores of books to do it with), but I passively do what I can by ordering the 2 extra copies and hoping the Collective Comics Hivemind starts to pay attention to it. Fallen Angel #18 gets an order of 4 despite not selling more than 2 of the latest issue. Peter David’s really trying to promote this, and despite my end results, we have to work with creator’s who put out that much effort. Monolith #11, on the other hand, is out of rope. I’m going to move to straight subs because no one is buying it off the racks. No longer willing to risk the 1 rack copy as of issue #11. All of the other books are straight cycles, for which there’s not point of typing an individual description of each. The middle of the DCU is a fairly dull place to be though – unless you’re Geoff Johns or Kurt Busiek, you’re not doing more than 30-copies per issue here. Well, and Identity Crisis #7, of course, which started growing readers in the middle of the story, a real rarity. I order 90 copies there. I also bump JSA #68 by 6 copies for the Alex Ross cover. There are a number of non-cycle books in the “DCU”, including 2 trades, DC New Frontier Vol 1 (+6 on subs, would have been +12 or better had it been a one-volume TP) and JLA Another Nail, which I go +4 on. New Comics includes Deadshot #1 which looks cute, but nothing special from the 3 preview pages. I’ll put down 20 copies and check on subs. JLA Classified #2 is the first real “issue #2” challenge this order form. I ordered big on the first issue (80, as compared to 35 on “regular” JLA), but there’s going to be some drop off. How much? Dunno. 10 copies at least, maybe as many as 20. I go to 70 here, and cross my fingers. Still, feels like a safe bet. Legion of Super-Heroes #1 is also a real tricky order. There’s an awful lot of people who like the Legion, but there’s not that many people who buy it, y’know? Waid and Kitson have what sounds like an interesting take, but it also sounds so far afield from what people (think they) want from a Legion comic too. My biggest problem is that I think the Legion might be like Star Trek right now. I think they probably should have given it a year or two “off the market” to build up a little demand, to get people to be genuinely happy to see it again. To me it’s “Oh, a Legion #1 again? Have we passed the dozen mark yet?” So I scratch my head and stare out the window and write down “40” as if I know what I’m doing. If subs are higher than 16 I’ll bump that further, but I’m largely the cynic on this one. And I like the Legion! Solo #2 has the issue #2 problem, plus it is bimonthly, plus it focuses on a different artist each time, plus it is $5. On the other hand, editor Mark Chiarello seems to be able to get some of the best work from creators, and this is Corben here, So I put down 35, afraid I’m too high, but willing to take the chance anyway. Question #2 is also a Terrible 2, but one I have slightly less faith in. Let’s lop 20% off, and land at 16 copies. The Johnny DC books are pretty much straight cycles, but I order a couple of extra copies of most of them (1-3) because kids books don’t go “stale” as fast as regular comics. I only do 1 copy of Batman Jam Packed Action because of the $8 price point, and it is adaptations, rather than original stories. “Beyond the Universe” is a tricky section to order from because none of these things is quite like the others. The manga format Elfquest is a total dog, sadly. We used to sell half a dozen copies of the “Starblaze” versions of Elfquest, but, to a person, the people asking about Elfquest over the last year have seen the tiny B&W books and said “No thanks. Do you know where I can find the big color editions?” 1 token copy, but I don’t expect to sell it, really ever. Elric Making of a Sorcerer #2 is a Terrible 2, but #1 has already arrived and sold well, needing 2 reorders. I bump it a bit. I have no idea what to do with Toe Tags #3. I guess I’ll keep the 10 I ordered of #2. Space Ghost #2 is also a Terrible 2, and I have negative faith in it. I don’t think people want a “grim and gritty” Space Ghost. I drop that 10 of #1 to 7 for #2. I go subs-only on the $50 Thunder Agents Archives (I have way to many different archives in stock, and velocity has been slow on the earlier editions), while all of the 2000 AD, CMX and Humanoids volumes are-weak looking this month and come in at +1 on subs. This is, mind you, 1 copy for most of them. This is a product of too rapid expansion, though I welcome the better pricing on 2000 AD and Humanoids books. These’ll all definitely get added to permanent stock, but I won’t necessarily restock a sold out volume the week it sells out – I’m experimenting with rotating through the stock because while these are high quality books, there are a lot of them and they turn slowly. Wildstorm continues to surprise me with it’s transition towards a unique if not very well-focused brand. I mean, they used to be as “Image style” of a company as there was. It’s pretty amazing how much A-list (or, at least, A-Minus list) material they’re producing these days. I bump Astro City Dark Ages #1 up a big chunk from the last KBAC I ordered. One is because it is the start of a new regular run, and Two because it’s 1 of 12. This will be something that I will want to have stock on through the life of the series. I start with 80 copies. Authority Revolution #3 is one of those timing exceptions we discussed before. I still don’t have #1 in, so this is a totally blind order. I don’t think the sales on v2 (18-ish) are that relevant here. I drop my 28 on #2 to 25. Ex Machina #7 has been on a rapid rise, but I think it’s going to level off any time now. I put in the smidge-higher order of 40 and wait and see. Batman/Danger Girl is $5, and it is not J. Scott Campbell. Leinil Yu is a good artist, but I think I’ll go on the lower side of Batman 48 pagers and go with 12 copies. We did pretty poorly on “Viva Las Danger”, the last DG comic. Also, there’s a 50/50 variant here. This is an impact on the low/conservative order. If it had been a choice, I would have ordered 16 Campbell covers. That’s more commercial, to me. The Intimates #2 has flop written all over it. And it is a Terrible Two, so I cut the 8 to 6. Razor’s Edge Warblade #3 and Ocean #3 are also ordering before I have solid cycle data on #1. I cut the former by a copy or two, and keep the latter at its solid 60. We have a good sized audience for Warren Ellis here. I have Cycles for Global Frequency v2, Sleeper and Tom Strong, and go +1 on the Saga of Seven Suns SC and kick Wild Girl #2 down from 35 to 30. Not sure if Leah Moore gets any blowback from being her father’s daughter. Vertigo is mostly cycles, but I go +4 on Adventures of the Rifle Brigade, +1 on Barnum, +6 on the new printing of Blood, a Tale (been OP a long time), and +2 on the new Swamp Thing trade. Angel Town #2 is a Terrible 2, and I take my 30 to 28. Hellblazer All His Engines HC is my first real stop, pause and scratch my head book of the month. We sell about 40 copies of the monthly comic, and TPs range from +1 to +6 on subs. The 3 page preview looks fine, but OGN HCs are a really hard sell unless there is something special about them. I sold more than 100 copies of Sandman: Endless Nights in HC, after all, but on a Hellblazer OGN HC it is a different story. I’m going to use subs as my guide, but proportionately so. If I only get the 1 sub I think we’ll draw, then it will be +2. If I get a half a dozen, then +6-10. And then there is Trigger #1. It sounds interesting, I guess, but it also sounds like it’s too hard to sum up in a sentence, which is usually death for a book. I adore John Watkiss’ art, but I think I’m about the only one. I put down a very safe 30 and wait to see which direction I was wrong. DC Direct is mostly subs-only. Depending on how exactly the subs come in I may have to buy an “extra” inner or master case of the Hush Series 3 Action Figures to get enough Alfred’s to fill demand. If not, I may possibly order +1 on the Comissioner Gordon and Ras Al Ghul figures for the wall. Maybe. * * * Bringing us to Image. Astonishingly few of Image’s books ever really make it to cycle sheets – either they are minis (sometimes retroactively), or they come out so infrequently it isn’t worth tracking the data. Still, I fill in what I can and move along from that. Image is a weird-ass company. They don’t have a clear…. well, image any longer. I don’t know what Image is supposed to be, and so I think they end up as “jack of all trades, master of none”. Image doesn’t have a “customer” per se. DC and Marvel and Dark Horse all have (to varying degrees of success) fairly clear segments of customers that buy their various imprints. Image is more catch as catch can, and so they kind of appeal to no one. Now, because they’re a creative driven company, that can change in the flash of an eye – the right project at Image will do as well, if not better than anywhere else. But when I’m ordering brand new and untested ideas, and I don’t have a clear picture of who the audience is, I lowball my orders. While we often tease Marvel about this, Image is clearly the King of “Throw it at the wall and see what sticks”, but that makes a fiscally conservative comics retailer very skittish. To a large extent, I think an unknown creator with an unknown project is probably better served by “working their way up” to an Image book, rather than launching there. In my ideal mind’s eye, Image should be the company that Top Pros do their most “personal” work – stuff they don’t want to give up rights on, stuff that Marvel or DC wouldn’t print, because they’re risk averse. It should also be the “big leagues” for much of the “small press”, where they’re helping the cream rise further by putting it under the umbrella. But Image is only sometimes this, and when they’re not I largely react with token orders. Most Image books get initialed at 1, 2 or 3 copies. And I usually have to yank them from the rack, unsold at those levels. Amazing Joy Buzzards #1 is a decent example of this. It looks like an Oni book, maybe one from Slave Labor. As an Image book, I think the “I” works against it. People who are interested in this “flavor” of comics don’t even know to look at the “I”. The promo piece is nice enough I go with 3. Ascend GN by who? And who? Nice promo piece, but is that what the book looks like inside? Is it fully painted? Solicit never says. At $15, sorry, put me down for 1. Battle Hymn #1 No way to tell anything from this blurb and art. Token 2. Cholly and Flytrap #2: Still not 100% sure if this is just the old Epic series reissued? Believing it is, I stick with my 3 copies from #1. Desperado Primer scares me for 2 reasons. One, that piece of promo art
is like a decade old. One of the Detonator #2: Just sounds like an Image book, don’t it? It says it is monthly and ongoing, but my gut says “cancelled by #8”. I drop my 4 to 3. Flaming Carrot #1 I start at 25. Will check subs to see if this goes up to, say, 40. G-Man One Shot is cute and funny and charming and light, and that sadly sells like ass when it is $6. However, I like it, so I order 3, rather than the 1 a more sober person might. The Gift #9 has moved from being self-published to Image. The “big leagues” thing I was talking about. I move my previous 2 copies to 5 in a show of support. I will also be closely watching it to see if it needs more. Mighty Man #1 reprints a backup from Savage Dragon (which sells 4 copies) for… ulp? $8? Are you high? 1 copy ordered. Quixote Novel I am a comic book store, I sell comic books. I try not to sell novels that aren’t comics. Subs-only. I have cycles on the rest, so let’s jump to Tow Cow. Hunter Killer #0 is by Waid and Silvestri and it is only 25 cents. Thing is, and I don’t know why, it sounds and looks both generic and dated. I mean, I read that description and said, “Wait, you mean the Mark Waid who wrote Kingdom Come is going to spin The Authority? What the?!?!” As a full priced comic I might maybe go 8 copies. I’ll go 25 on the quarter cover price, more if there are any subs. Darkness / Superman #1 is, thankfully, not $4.99. I sell 4 copies of Darkness and 16 of the lower Super-books, so let’s call it 8 here? * * * And, finally, Marvel Marvel launches this month with Ultimates v2 #1. We peaked at a 4-week cycle of 85 copies of v1 #13, so I’m going to go with 100 here. Anytime I write that large of a number, I get scared, and Ultimates scares me more than anything else this month. Millar has been losing favor with a lot of readers lately, and it is often the highest profile books which get the sharpest backlash corrections. There’s also been a lot of expansion of the Ultimate brand recently, and we might be reaching a tipping point soon. Thankfully, my exposure on new Marvel books really is only limited to 1 issue, when FOC works correctly. Also, by ordering 100 copies, I’m only getting 90. the other 10 are the B&W “variant” interior editions. I’ll be damned if I order 111 copies so I can get the actual 100 I want, though. I really wish there was an “opt out” of this. Marvel’s Ultimate line continue with the “By the way, it’s a series of mini-series, and here’s the next one just a few weeks after then end of the first one” of Ultimate Secret #1. Probably Ultimate Nightmare will be offered as a TP on the next order form. UN sold out at 65 copies, so I’ll bump US to 70 for #1. I’ll be very prepared to slash #2 to 60, or below, however. The X-books have my largest single order this month in Astonishing X-Men #8, btw. I’m still desultorily chasing this book up. I suspect I’ll be FOCing this upwards once the also-offered-this-month TP of #1-6 (+15 on subs) comes out. X-Men Fantastic Four #1 is by Pat Lee. He’s supposedly hot or something, right? I’ll go with a just-under-FF of 20 copies, I think. There will be a TP by June if there is any demand, if history is our guide. That’s it for new titles in the X-family, but there are still 17 other books to order in the group! All nicely go by cycles with the caveat that piece-sales of the X-Books are dropping precipitously for us with the recent line expansions. I’m FOCing a large number of the X-titles downwards each week as I try to find the bottom of current sales. Further, the next best selling X-title (Uncanny) is well below half of Astonishing. And the numbers plummet after that. In the next month I think I will be selling only single digit copies of Rogue and Gambit. The Marvel Universe section is next with several hard choices to be made, because they are Terrible 2s. Thankfully, this problem is lessened because we have FOC and I can lower these (or raise them) if I need to. Well, first we have the Young Guns Sketchbook ‘04 to which I say “whatever”. This just feels like such arbitrary and artificial branding that I don’t feel much need to buy any copies. Subs only. New Avengers #2 So far sales have been strong but reaction has been cool. I sorta expect that we’ll get some quick sharp corrections here somewhere, but for the moment, since I can FOC, and since sales have been steady I’ll stick with 75. Captain Iron Man #2 is Ellis, and it does seem like the one superhero book he was born to write, doesn’t it? It might actually be a bleeding edge technology book for once. Still, I put 70 for #1, but I’m dropping to 60 on #2 – I think there might be too much Ellis work coming from Marvel in too short of a period and I shouldn’t put down my most optimistic number. Tales of Suspense Commemorative Edition also strikes me as a “What The?!?!” item. Reprinting last months Cap and Iron Man #1 in a two-fer. I mean, it is cute in a retro way, but who is the audience for this? This is Marvel planning a product because they don’t think they can meet the demand for the others, isn’t it? Doesn’t that seem a bit backwards? Shouldn’t they just print enough of the first issues to meet demand? Anyway, I’ll go subs-only, thanks. New Avengers #1 Director’s Cut If you really want it in a premier format, why wouldn’t you wait for the hardcover? Subs-only here too, with the note that I expect to get no subs despite a line on the subform. Avengers Earth’s Mightiest is biweekly (so we’re 2 issues behind with FOC), and we’re ordering 3 and 4 here. They’re also $3.50, ow. I drop my 20s to 18s. Then come the What If…? Books. This sounds sorta like a neat idea, but, fuck, they all come out in one week. That’s a nasty mistake. Why? Because I have to consider them as a set, with less attention paid to their individual merit because that is how the customers will view them. Plus they’re not even coming out in a “dead” week – Avengers and Iron Man #2 both ship then as well as Ultimate Secret #1. Yikes! If I had to order What if Jessica Jones had joined The Avengers? by Bendis and Gaydos as What if…? #1 of a new monthly series, I’d probably have ordered 70 copies. As part of 8 books in an already crowded Marvel week, during the last week of the month when every small publisher ships everything so as not to be late? No, 40 copies then. If subs come in high, I’ll re-evaluate that, but I don’t want to be caught with leftover stacks if this bombs. What if Karen Page Had Lived? could have been a 60 copy book, downgrading to 35. The rest seem mediocre, 15-20 copies each. Then we have New Thunderbolts #3 and Marvel Team-Up #3. Both are sans-cycles because of two issues being offered in the first month (this will be the first we can knowledgably FOC) I keep the 23 on Tbolts, and lower MTU to 13 from 15. Then we’re cycle sheets from there until Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Golden Age 2004 which is very much a subs+1 item. The Spider-Man
group really only brings us Spider-Man Marvel Age books are handled like the “Johnny DC” stuff – we sell very few copies of most of them, but still attempt to have a handful on the rack as “reader breeders”. It doesn’t really seem to work in any tangible, traceable way, but I’m happy to put $50 a month into maintaining a children’s section, y’know? Marvel Knights is mostly straight cycles with only Stoker’s Dracula #2 presenting a challenge. Black and white and bimonthly? 5, I think. Marvel Max gives us Punisher Red Xmas. We’re at 35 Punisher’s, so let’s do 20 here. It’s more expensive, and it’s not Garth, and that number could still go either way. I guess I should also mention that we’ve been consistently kicking our numbers up on Supreme Power – if reorder and trade availability had been in place, I suspect this could have been selling much much better. Like 40-50% better…. Then we get to the trade section, and you can see that Marvel do a lot (though they don’t do such a good job of keeping them in print) – problem is, really most of this work probably doesn’t deserve to be TPed, because there isn’t a ton of market demand for a lot of it. In fact, most Marvel trades are just getting token 1 and 2 copy orders where I’m praying they actually sell. Of the 18 that are offered this month, only 4 are really worth paying attention to. I already mentioned the Astonishing X-Men TP would be getting +15 to whatever subs turn out to be. I’ll also be ordering +6 on the What if…? Classic TP for the nostalgia factor. +4 on FF Visionaries: Byrne v3 for some of the same reasons, and +6 on Ultimate Fantastic Four v1 TP because all Ultimate books are currently doing well in trade. Everything else is +1 or 2. I especially don’t see an audience for the five different “Disassembled” Tie-in trades, with the possible exception of the Thor one. These were such transitory “Red Sky” stuff, I think making them backlist is a mistake. And that’s basically it for the front section of Previews. As you can see, it’s a lot of work sorting out all of this information and speculation to bring your comics to you. It’s just as hard in the back section, too, and we have to do this each and every month, without fail, or we go out of business. Hopefully, this gives you a sense of how a retailer might order, and of the myriad of things he takes into consideration in writing a monthly order. See you next month with something much shorter! ************************** Brian Hibbs has owned and operated Comix Experience in San Francisco since 1989. Feel free to e-mail him with any comments. You can purchase a collection of the first one hundred Tilting at Windmills (originally serialized in Comics Retailer magazine) from IDW Publishing. An index of Tilting at Windmills on Newsarama can be found right here.
|
(#126
– October 2004 – “My Monthly Dues”)
But,
as a general rule, you have to assume that you’re only gambling two
months in advance – in October, you’re ordering for December.
Copyright
2004, Newsarama.com, LLC
Privacy Policy
Terms of Use
Contact Us
|
