Posted in: Comics | Tagged: comic store in your future

Comic Store in Your Future: Left at the Bat-Altar

Published Sat, 07 Jul 2018 09:00:37 -0500

Last updated Wed, 15 Jun 2022 16:22:52 -0500

Rod Lamberti of Rodman Comics writes weekly for Bleeding Cool. Find previous columns here.

Spoilers for recent comic books below.

After reading X-Men Gold #30 and seeing Shadowcat do the runaway bride trick on Colossus, I was hoping Catwoman would not do the same to Batman. There were hints that it was not going to happen. Issue #49 was a big red flag; really, Catwoman is going to listen to the craziest person ever, the Joker? Reading about the upcoming issues after the wedding were clues to me. Such as: where were Batman and Catwoman going to go for their honeymoon? One would assume there would be an issue or two dealing with that after the wedding.

I am glad we sold out of the X-Men wedding issue one-shot. I am also glad the Batman prelude one-shots sold well and not many copies are left, since no one is going to be interested in them now that they didn't get married.

I was debating having our third exclusive cover for Batman #50 by Ed Benes again, if he would. I even commented on Benes's Facebook page after seeing one of his new drawings of Batman and Catwoman about how it would be a neat Batman #50 cover, though by then it was too late. Now I'm glad I did not.

In my mind, this whole lead-up to the wedding should have been handled differently. There should have been more of a tease of "will they or will they not?" The prelude wedding issues were completely unneeded. Where Marvel had just one wedding issue as a cash grab, DC had to have more. I also blame Tom King, the writer. He should have been making it more of a will-they-or-won't-they tease through the storyline and in interviews. Why, if the wedding was never going to happen, did he have to have David Finch draw Batman proposing to Catwoman? He had a fight with his editor over this at the time, which caused his editor to leave the Batman title.

As a retailer, I ordered high on Batman #50 because months ago when orders were first due I thought the wedding was going to happen. Then DC added in incentive covers to boost sales, like the Jim Lee cover. Why do that for a non-wedding issue? The answer I learned was, it is a total money grab.

Why spoil it not just the day before, but also days before the issue comes out? The main reason I decided to be open early on July 4th was the wedding. Now people are expected to buy it to see Batman stood up?

The original spoiler article in the New York Times even went into detail about the whole story, making it even more pointless to buy the issue. Why spoil it? Make it similar to when movies have critic screenings but limit spoilers. The critics can talk about certain things in a movie but not the stuff that they do not want spoiled. DC knew about the New York Times article and apparently signed off on it.

One of my employees summed it up best. If the comic companies keep saying one thing and it does not happen, people are going to lose interest. Remember when superhero "deaths" were joked about as a quarterly thing by Marvel? Because a "death" would spike sales it was done — pardon the pun — to death. Moreover, the fact that the death often did not last removed the stakes, and people lost interest.

These last few years as a retailer, I am in total shock at what Marvel and DC are doing. Marvel's nonstop first issues make ordering them a gamble each time, because it makes it an unknown factor for me. For instance, a monthly series I may sell 20 copies an issue, so I know to order 21. I want one extra in case someone new decides to pick up the title. Granted, the title may also drop, but if it does it usually drops by a few copies an issue and I still make money on the title. Here in store, Immortal Hulk #1 sold out, which means no money lost, while Doctor Strange #1 did not do well, and I have a lot of copies left — meaning I did not make money on the title while Marvel enjoyed the first issue boost. Add in that Marvel for some reason is having Iceman and Unstoppable Wasp return — titles that made me no money here the first time. Even if I had ordered exactly what they sold here in store, it would not cover any expenses. I often wonder what Marvel is thinking. Let us tank the direct market and we can just make movies all the time?

DC is following Marvel's lead. This month Justice League Odyssey and Justice League Dark launch. While not relaunches of titles that ended just a month or less from their first issues, the Justice brand is being used a lot.

Batman #50 is a painful bullet. People were getting excited about the issue. When the New York Times article came out spoiling the issue, I was getting emails, calls, and texts about the issue now being a non-issue. Did any of those people go "Oh, cool, this sounds like a great issue!"? No, everyone that contacted me was disappointed.

Even the writer of the NY Times story that originally spoiled the Batman wedding in the headline stated he should have done things differently — such as not having the spoiler in the headline.

July 4th went from a day I was excited for, sales-wise, to a day I dreaded.

I have plenty of copies left of the X-Men Gold #30 wedding issue. As I type this it looks like I will have plenty of copies of Batman #50 left.

Comics, of course, for the most part, are non-returnable.

My plea to Marvel and DC: please get people excited to buy your products. Instead of tons of variants and gimmicks having us over-order comics that we cannot hope to sell, have people wanting your product. I would much rather have people coming in putting pressure on us to up our orders than I over-ordered just to get a variant or to hit a higher discount.

As of now, it looks like DC is trying to invade our dollar bid with Batman #50. Currently, there is not a single Batman issue in there. Now it looks like come next month that will not be the case.

As I type this up at closing on July 4th, it could have been a good day, though I ordered too much. Years ago DC was actually worried about the high order for the Legends of the Dark Knight series. They were worried comic stores would have trouble selling the amount they ordered, so DC had different colored covers to help retailers move the comic. My, times have changed.

How does a comic store cure over-ordering? Order less. Which, of course, I will have to do. Not as a threat to Marvel or DC — if Rodman Comics ever went out of the comic business, I doubt the big two would blink. That is life. Comic ordering often is a lot like gambling, as I have said in the past. With ordering, like gambling, I have limited control (if any) over the outcome. I can, however, easily control how much I am willing to lose. So after ordering high and gambling high and losing, I will need to order and gamble low. I may very well miss the next big thing in comics, but I know I can no longer trust the hype or take the chance.