Posted in: Comics | Tagged:

When Garth Ennis' Crossed Disappears From Buddy Saunders' MyComicShop.com

Published Tue, 29 Jan 2019 09:30:31 -0600

Crossed is a horror comic created by Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows for Avatar Press – the publishers of Bleeding Cool. A zombie-esque series, it sees an infection turning humanity into its most monstrous and sadistic side, and those who manage to (temporarily) survive it, with the worst actions drawn from Amnesty International reports of what people do anyway, without such an excuse.

A reader got in touch to tell us,

Just a heads-up that I noticed that MyComicShop.com has quietly (and, I believe, recently) removed all of its listings for Crossed titles published by Avatar. I know that Buddy Saunders has angered a lot of people in the past (e.g., by refusing to carry Preacher in Lone Star Comics shops), but MCS online has tended to offer a wider selection of more adult material. I'm mostly annoyed because I use MCS's want list feature to keep track of what to add to my collection, and now I have no idea which ones I'm missing (or which variants exist) without digging through boxes.

MyComicShop.com is the online version of what used to be Lone Star Comics, and has built up one of the biggest online comic book back issues. Its owner, Buddy Saunders, is one of the longest standing names in comic book retail. Over the years he has used his stores to highlight concern over comic book content and was credited with leading DC Comics to begin running content warnings on their covers.

So was it possible that something similar could be happening again? Other horror titles from Avatar and others were listed, but Crossed couldn't be seen at all. Now, every store is naturally free to sell what they want and not what they don't. But MyComicShop had gained a reputation as a comprehensive comic book listing service – and even if they didn't stock the comic, they provided reference to its existence.

I got in touch, citing my clear conflict of interest here, and spoke to Buddy Saunders, who was surprised to hear the news and considered it a glitch. I was then told by Sean of MyComicShop,

Last week we were making some internal changes to how we handle the title Crossed, and it's spin-off titles. Unfortunately in doing so we accidentally removed the titles, issues, and listings from our website. This was an unintentional side effect, and as you have seen was rectified when we became aware of it this morning.

Going forward these titles will no longer be on our want list for selling to us through that feature, but we will still be actively selling what we currently have in stock and any further copies we acquire through bulk/collection deals. Furthermore customers should be able to again record these items into their personal collections on our webuycomics webpage.

I asked about those changes and why Crossed was specifically targeted and was told,

Buddy's focus is on back-issues and he had never looked at the title that closely. After his recent review, he decided to lower the profile of Crossed and its spin-off titles on our website by reducing the quantity we purchase individually through our want list. Back issues will still be available for our customers to order.

These titles, and any others we don't carry as new comics, have always been offered to our customers who preorder them before the monthly order deadline.

And, as a result of Bleeding Cool's enquiries, the listings have been restored and, indeed, there are Crossed comics for sale at MyComicShop. For now…

Anything else gone missing? Buddy would really like to know. He may not sell all the comics but he does provide the database for use for free…