Month: October 2006

eBay policy on pre-orders detrimental to comics retailers

eBay announced last week that it’s clamping down on pre-order sales on Playstations 3s and Nintendo Wii consoles. Last year, when the Xbox 360 came out, numerous eBay buyers were hurt when they tried to buy consoles through such auctions, only to suffer when sellers couldn’t deliver the product.

This is a responsible move on eBay’s part. No video game reseller can guarantee you a Wii or PS3 at this time. You can pre-order a console from a retailer, but because supply issues are never resolved at a console launch, the retailer can’t guarantee it will be allocated the number of pre-orders it took. And most of the pre-order sales on eBay are actually individuals who made a pre-order at a retailer anyway, so they can’t guarantee the sale. It’s too disruptive a business for eBay, and they outlaw such business with this policy.

"The seller must guarantee that the item will be available for shipping within 30 days from the date of purchase (i.e., the day the listing ends or the date the item is purchased from a store front listing)."

However, since this policy is uniform across the eBay site, I suspect a lot of comics retailers are about to run into trouble with this policy.

There are a number of listings each month on eBay for pre-sales of comics merchandise. Here’s one as an example. This is for Marve Masterworks Avengers volume 6. Marvel is listing the shipping date as December 13, 2006. The auction expires October 19, well before the 30 days that eBay mandates for such auctions. Technically, this auction is not in compliance with eBay’s policy on pre-sale transactions.

But there’s a big difference between this listing and a listing for a console that hasn’t shipped. The retailer is utilizing the Direct Market to secure the Avengers book. He’ll place an order, and Marvel will fulfill it through Diamond Distribution. In fact, Marvel will create as many books as needed to fulfill the needs of Diamond’s retailer customers. Unless the retailer makes an error with his Diamond order or Marvel unexpectedly allocates the Masterwork (and I don’t think they’ve ever allocated such an item), the retailer will easily fulfill this order when the book comes out. And this retailer has done this transaction many times in the past; he’s got a 99.0% positive feedback rating on nearly fourteen thousand transactions. (I’m not endorsing the retailer at all; I’m just rattling off his eBay numbers. I picked this transaction solely because it’s the first one I found.)

Clearly, this sort of transaction shouldn’t be treated in the same way a console pre-order is. But the polciy doesn’t distinguish between the two; it treats both the same, and I suspect at some point comics retailers are going to be punished for the sins of the video game industry.

Interesting post at Blog@Newsarama about Civil War

This post tries to wrap up all the loose ends in Civil War to explain the behaviours of Tony Stark and Reed Richards. Nice piece.

I haven’t forgotten 35/30, but it’s been ambushed by, of all things, Essential Luke Cage 1 and what might be the funniest Doctor Doom story EVER. More tonight.

35 Books in 30 Days 9-15: The Big Pile That Hasn’t Been Read 1

So back when I started 35/30, I vowed to write something on all the books in the pile, read or not. With about a week to go, the pile’s huge, and I’m going to take a stab at the unread pile.

Truthfully, this is a tough month. There’s a lot of books on the unread pile. Part of that is because a lot of the books are part of series I’m a little behind on, but this is still a lot of books. I’ve been sidetracked because I’m reading the full Captain America Masterworks series, and they’re three dense volumes. But I still never thought I’d have this high of a number of unread books at the end of the month.

On the other hand, I’m going to end up with a double-digit amount of full reviews, with The Great Catsby, Lost Girls, Absolute Kingdom Come, Jokes and the Unconscious, and the two Masterworks books to go. I’ll take that for a first month of blogging. I hope you will too.

So here we go:

Concrete Vol 6 Stranger Armor TP
Buy Concrete at Amazon.com!This is a small digest reprint of Paul Chadwick’s Concrete origin story. I prefer the oversized format for Chadwick’s art, like we saw in the short stories collections in the 90s, but the digests do have a nice bonus. The “big” stories such as Strange Armor are presented along with short stories printed around the same time, so you get to see the big picture. This is a fantastic series, and it’s highly recommended.

Daredevil Vol 1 HC (New Printing)
“New Printing” stands for “the first edition has a significant production error and missed an issue”. The first edition had a page that was missing word balloons and didn’t print issue 12 (a fill-in with art by Rob Haynes). The book fixes the error and reprints Daredevil v2 1-14. This book established the Marvel Knights imprint, featured a nice story by movie guy Kevin Smith, and had some fantastic art by Joe Quesada. It would have been a nicer book if Marvel had offered an exchange program for those of us stuck with the first volume, but I still appreciate the new edition.

Deadbeats #78 and Soulsearchers #78
Both books are from Claypool, which will stop publishing comics in 2007. Sales are so low that Diamond is refusing to distribute them anymore, despite Claypool’s claim that they’re happy with sales. It’s a shame; we’re going to lose Peter David’s Soulsearchers because of the shutdown, although there’s been talk of moving the comics to the web. Claypool’s been mocked on the blogosphere for their lackluster marketing efforts; the names of the authors didn’t appear on the covers until this year. In fact, I ordered Deadbeats by accident; I only wanted Soulsearchers, and made an error on my online order form (my bad!).

I’d love to see Claypool consider reinvigorating the line on the web through the sort of promotion Slave Labor’s doing with online comics (89 cent downloads in PDF or CBR format); right now, there are only trades reprinting the first twelve issues, which can be discouraging for new readers. Here’s a thought; with David’s exclusive agreement at Marvel, why not see if Essential black-and-white budget trades could be put out through Icon?

Essential Luke Cage, Power Man Vol 2 TP
From the splash page of Power Man 28 (this is a scan from the comic, not the black-and-white Essential):

“Sir Nose has stolen the Bop Gun from Starchild! How will Starchild lead us all to Funkentelechny? Bring on the Mothership Connection! Ain’t nothin’ but a party, y’all! Flashlight!”

There’s a heck of a lot of talent in this book, actually: Chris Claremont, John Byrne, George Tuska, Sal Buscema (always a friend here at Why I Love Comics), Steve Englehart, Mike Zeck, Marv Wolfman, Don McGregor, and more. I’m looking forward to sitting down with this volume and doing a deeper read.

Finder TP Vol 8 Five Crazy Women
Carla Speed McNeil’s Finder saga continues. And I’m so far behind in reading this great, dense series that I’m stealing a quote from McNeil herself:

“Everybody’s asking about the other ‘lost issue’ now that BEWARE OF DOG has found a home in the FIVE CRAZY WOMEN tpb. Would anyone believe that FIVE CRAZY WOMEN grew out of a need to have a place to collect BEWARE OF DOG? I did those two single issues to Give New Readers Great Jumping-On Points. I hope it worked, because I can’t do short stories to save my ass, and for years those two issues have been loose ends defying all attempts at tidy tying-up. I could do a few more single-issue stories, I’d think. Then I could just collect all of the ‘Jaeger B-Sides.’ Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. Har. Me trying to write a short story is like a twelve-stepper saying he’s only going to have one Cosmopolitan.”

If you really need a jump-on place, why not hop over to lightspeedpress.com and read the webcomic? You can get the first 69 pages (as of this writing) for free.

Halo & Sprocket Vol 1: Welcome To Humanity TP
I bought this book solely because of Johanna Draper Carlson’s review. It’s one of her ten favorite comics. That’s good enough for me.

Hellblazer: Stations Of The Cross TP
I’m a Hellblazer fan going back to the days of Garth Ennis. I find that I like each author’s run after they’re all done. Mike Carey’s run still has another trade or two to go.

I’ll pick up on the pile tomorrow. Tonight, my wife CL and I are going out for fondue!

Fondue: gooey cheese.
Throw in some great dippers and
That’s a darn good time!

(See? Haiku. I sneak it in.)

Price Hike on Marvel Masterworks coming- but so is sewn binding

Since the relaunch of the Marvel Masterworks program in 2003, Marvel has priced the books at $49.95 for books with the new silver bookjacket design and $54.95 for books with the original marble design. Starting in January, the price will be $54.95 for either edition, but the bindings will be sewn, rather than glued. I own all but one of the non-Golden Age Masterworks, and I think this is great news.

Glued bindings have been a major complaint of those who chat on the Marvel Masterworks board. Glued bindings tend to be tighter than sewn bindings, so the books end up suffering from "gutter loss" (in other words, you can’t really see the art along the inner edges of the pages). The problem’s much more noticeable in the new Omnibus formats; the Alias book and the Eternals reprint had serious problems with gutter loss. Here’s hoping that Marvel puts sewn bindings in the upcoming Miller Daredevil and Ditko Spider-Man books.

Credit for this news goes to the always incredible Gormuu at MarvelMasterworks.com.

Fantastic interview with Neil Gaiman on Newsarama

Go here. The interview was in support of Neil’s new project, Fragile Things, a collection of short stories.

He’s not kidding about the lines at his signings, either; I’ve waited 5 hours to get an autograph from him before. And he was as charming at midnight as he was during the 7 pm reading. He’s definitely the real deal. (He signed the hardcover graphic novel of Stardust and a piece of original art from A Game of You that I bought at a ACS auction.)

I’m mystified about the idea that the Death movie would only be a $30 million movie; I always thought it would do incredible box office. But what do I know? The site’s Why I Love Comics, not Why I Love Estimating Box Office Receipts.

Boy, that’s a pretty cover, isn’t it?