That old tyme music: Hibbs' blast from the past

I love Harris Miller II, attorney to the comics stars. Upon seeing my "reintroduction" to the site, he sent me this email. Obviously, from the intro, this isn't the FIRST Savage Critic, but here's one Harris archived from 10/6/1993! So, it's been at least 14 years...

Don't try to email me at that address below (if it survives posting) -- haven't used it since the end of the 20th century!

Look how much longer the ratings list was back then!!!!

I like my new format better though....

Thanks, Harris!!!!

-B

**************************

From: Brian Hibbs (Comix Exp.)

Newsgroups: compuserve.cs2outlookexpress.forum.CIS.COMIC

To: All

Sent: Wednesday, October 06, 1993 10:29 PM

Subject: The Savage Critic 10/6:

Because YOU demanded it! The exciting, no-holds-barred return of the Savage critic, featuring the best one word review column in town! We'll start this week with part 2 of the 9/29 shipment, but first, let's put thel rating system in perspective. In ascending order:

Unreadable Crap Terrible Awful Sucks Thud Yawn Eh O.K. Good Very Good Excellent

One special "rating" that doesn't fit on the chart: Don't care. This is reserved for subject matter that I couldn't care less about or am unqualified to judge. Additionally humor comics will be judged as "funny" or "not Funny"

Other superlatives are more or less equal to excellent.

Also, I reserve the right to change or add to the ratings at anytime, for any reason. You'll just have to muddle along.

I will not personally spend my money on any book rated merely good or lower.

Onto the final batch from last week:

Dances with Demons #3: O.K. Blazing Combat: Vietnam & Korea #2: Eh Vietnam Journal: Khe Sanh #3: Eh Days of Wrath #2: Eh Death's Head II #12: Awful Incomplete Death's Head #11: Crap Genetix #2: Unreadable crap Killpower #3: Unreadable Crap Chiller #1: Good, but not worth $7.95 for an incomplete story Dinosaurs for Hire #8: Funny Ferret #5: Terrible Protectors #13: Terrible Tor #4: Good Go Die: O.K. Femforce #65: Crap Good Girl Art Quarterly #13: Crap Flare #13: Unreadable Tigress #6: Unreadable Murcielaga she-bat #3: Crap Elfquest: Blood of 10 chiefs #2: Good Hugo Tate: O, America: Very Good Jason Goes to hell #2: Unreadable crap Jurrasic Park #4: O.K. Kip #3: Awful Lost Laughter #3: Good Meteor Man #4: Terrible Post Brothers #33: Very Good Ninja High/Speed Racer #1: O.K. Speed Racer w/ Ninja High #2: O.K. Zillion #1: Crap TekWorld #15: Terrible Vixen Wars #5: Unreadable crap Xenotech #1: Yawn Mia Farrow-Woody Allen Story: Unreadable crap Raven #1: thud Wandering Star #3: good

That covers *every* non-reprint, or children's comic that came into my store on 9/29. Let's move on to the first half of 10/6:

Team Titans #14: Awful Darkstars #14: Awful Nightstalkers #14: Yawn Guy Gardner #14: Yawn Kamandi #6: Thud JLI #58: Sucks Eudaemon #2: O.K. Negative Burn #3: Good (if a little uneven) Children of the Voyager #4: Very good Shadowman #21: O.K. HArbinger #24: Yawn Magnus #31: Eh Hard Corps #13: Yawn X-O #23: O.K. Deadpool #4: Thud What if? #55: O.K. Action #693: good Warriors of Plasm #3: Crap FF #382: Crap Spidey 2099 #14: O.K. Freex #3: awful Hardcase #4: Good Sludge #1: Very Good (W/ Rune #A: Eh) The extra 55 cents for 3 pages of BWS, 1 page of Magnor, and more (effectively) ads *is* a supreme burn. 3 pages just don't cut it - this wasn't even a *taste*. And FIVE dollars for shipping the "free" comics you get for buying ELEVEN others is a monumental ripoff.

Saint Sinner #3: Unreadable Lethal Foes of Spidey #3: Crap Night Thrasher #4: Crap Static #6: Very Good JL Task Force #6: Eh Ren & Stimpy #13: Funny Cable #5: Eh Warlock Chronicles #6: Crap Showcase #11: Good Titans #103: Unreadable Robin #1: Good Catwoman #4: O.K. X-Men Annual #2: Eh. Batman & Superman Magazine #2 (comics): Way excellent (the Rest): Don't care Law Dog #7: Very good Monster Menace #1: Cool Batman Adventures #14: Excellent ("The Goy Wonder", indeed!) Spawn #14: Very Good Hitchhiker's Guide #1: Good adaptation Wolverine: Killing: Excellent Animal Man #65: Very Good Swamp Thing #137: Stupefyingly terrible Hellblazer #71: Excellent Batman/Houdini: Devil's workshop: Excellent The Upturned Stone HC: Excellent

That's it for now -- more as I get to it (todays' batch represents 6 and a half hours of my time!)

That was my opinion, now what's yours?

Brian

Hello, Hello and welcome to the show tonight: Graeme reintroduces himself, thanks his wife and reviews a book that's coming out on Wednesday.

So, yeah. I'm not sure if I have to do an introduction, being one of the old guard here - and yes, that's pretty depressing, given my immense personal vanity and desire to think of myself as young and beautiful all the time - but, hello to anyone who came here for the first time via the press releases; I'm the one who tends to post a lot and swear. I'm also the husband of the woman responsible for the new look of the site (although I may be responsible for the green. Kate's also the one who got everything up and running on the new URL and everything else, as mad as it drove her last night when Blogger suddenly ate the post titles for no immediately apparent reason), and would like to push another round of applause in the direction of Kate, just because.

And just because this is a review site...

I'll say this about pull-quotes: Sometimes, they work. The evening that I got my copy of the new AiT/PlanetLar graphic novel MONSTER ATTACK NETWORK in the mail, Kate found herself reading the testimonials on the back cover from the likes of John Rogers, Jeff Parker and Ivan Brandon and becoming more and more excited to read the book itself. Me, I was sold on the name alone, and the realization that the acronym was M.A.N.

Like the recently-released first issue of their Wildstorm series, The Highwaymen, Monster Attack Network shows that Marc Bernadin and Adam Freeman have absolutely no problem writing popcorn action fiction - There are set-pieces here that are perfectly constructed in terms of mixing the spectacle of the main action with the cutaways to add scale and humor (I especially liked the massive monster slug-riding rushing past the window of a restaurant, with the shouted "Shit! Shit! Shit!" as parents talk to their son), and their High Concepts and snappy dialogue hits the spot repeatedly. Where they're lacking - and considering this was their first book, despite it coming out post-Highwaymen, it's really not that bad a flaw - is the ability to slow down; the story feels like it's always "on", and even the scenes that should be quieter and more still end up vibrating with the energy of the crazy.

The art has a similar problem; Nima Sorat's work is stunning in places, Paul Pope does the Venture Bros does early Marvel monster books, but there are times when the desire to wow the viewer overwhelms the clarity of the storytelling (There are, to be fair, other times when the art just clicks and sells the story to you - I don't want to imply that this isn't good art, because it is); it's as if everyone involved is so excited about working on the book that they can't stop wanting to really, really impress the reader and maybe go slightly overboard.

They needn't have worried; this is a really enjoyable book, despite the overeagerness: The central idea and plot are so strong that, even if the execution hadn't been as Good as it is, it still would've been worth a look. Like I said; I was sold on the name alone.

Johanna Says Hello

I'm an early bird, so I'll join the crew: Hi!

I'm Johanna Draper Carlson. You may know me from Comics Worth Reading. Or before that, Usenet. Or before that, CompuServe... I remember those days, Brian, and I loved reading that history.

I'm not nearly as creative as some of these other folks here, but I am quite opinionated, and I'm honored to be one of the gang. I'll be starting my contributions with a look at the Del Rey manga line, since many of the guys here already cover superheroes brilliantly. (Although feedback is welcome, dear readers, if there's anything in particular you'd like an opinion on.)

And in this corner... Diana says hi!

Things I know: That A on his head did not stand for France. Things you know: Darkseid is.

Things I'd like to know: Exactly how much Jagermeister was needed to come up with "Skrull Invasion"?

Things you'd like to know: Why was Paris Hilton snubbed for the role of Kara on "Smallville"?

Things I should know (but don't): Never post ahead of the boss. (Sorry, Brian!)

Things you should know (but don't): Since I'm on the other side of the Atlantic, I'm usually up and running while the Comix Experience crew's asleep (Do Comic Retailers Dream of Hologram-Foil-Covered Sheep?). Just think of me as your late-late-late-late-late night talk show host.

Things we all know: Kurt Busiek wins!

Brian Sez: Welcome!

Right, so it's after midnight, so that makes it Monday, and, although I'm not sure all of the backstage technical stuff (and hurray for Kate McMillan, too right!)is going to let you see this the second I post this, at least I know I've written the introduction. So, this is the Savage Critic.

I've been writing reviews under this name for, basically, forever. It was back on CompuServe on Doug Pratt's Comics & Animation forum in the early 90s. I want to say '94, but heck my memory for dates is terrible, so maybe it was as late as dunno, '97. Either way, it's been more than 10 years, I'm sure of that.

A lot of things started there -- I seem to remember the first Newsarama posts launching from there, and Rich Johnston was doing a thing, too.

Anyway, one day I idly commented that I read pretty much every comic that came out each week, and someone (Lou Perez, maybe?) said "No way, prove it", so I started writing these super-short (sometimes one word short) little reviews of pretty much every comic that came out every week. It's kinda my job -- since I own a comic book store, people ask me a lot about what I think about specific books and storylines and characters. I need to have an informed opinion.

And there weren't as many titles released each week, back then, either!!

I did it, mostly weekly, for at least a year or two, then starting burning out (as I'm sure you could imagine), and when I migrated to the Real internet, away from CompuServe, I stopped writing it.

Flash forward a few years (2000? 2001?), and I started realizing that this internet thing was actually catching on, and I knew we had to do a basic "business card" web site for the store (Comix Experience, if you didn't know); but that it needs *some* measure of "content" to get people to pay attention to it. I thought, "oh, sure, I can do the Savage Critic again!" -- enough time had passed to make me forget how much work it actually is!

Those should all be archived here somewhere, though I don't know if there's a direct link (the site is down as I write this, prepping for the launch) any longer.

I did it for a while, then starting burning out again, and Jeff Lester thought we should switch to Blogger, so I didn't have to keep emailing him my weekly thing, so he could post it, and I convinced him that he should join in reviews with me -- harder to burn out when there are two of us.

And then we invited in Graeme McMillan, who makes writing funny snark look so easy, I could cry. And I thought we really were rolling along.

Then Jeff decided it was time for him to retire, quit the store from his one day a week gig, and just generally focus all the time he was giving me to write for his own career -- eminently the correct move, if you ask me.

Well, I wasn't sure if it could survive without Jeff's solid backbone, so I spent several weeks casting about for what to do, and, as usual, it was a stray comment by Jeff that proved to be the right thing after all.

"You should just invite, I don't know, Jog, or Spurgeon, or whoever, and make it like the Justice League of Reviewers."

Oh. Exactly! Duh!

So I did, and we are, and that's where we're at now.

Conceptually, there are 7 of us now, which means "daily posts" (will Graeme continue to be insane and write daily entries? We'll all find out!), since everyone is committed to doing one review a week here. In practice, they'll probably clump up, but let's see what happens. And if someone "misses" a week, that's fine too, because the rest of us will cover.

That's the plan, at least.

We're going to start at 7 (well, 8 really, because I think I put together too good of a group, and basically forced Jeff out of "retirement"), and there's a chance we'll expand it from there. There's at least another dozen people on my Dream List, but I didn't want to try to start it TOO wide because that's just a mess organizationally.

Anyway, I'll still be posting "retail intelligence" here, as well (I really don't want a second blog, darn it), when it comes up. Even though it kinda won't fit. But that's OK, I think.

Over the next day or two expect everyone to pop in, say hi, and then we'll get set reviewing. I'll be back later today (well, tomorrow for me, because I should go to sleep now, so I can get up and start writing Tilting tomorrow!) with a review as well myself.

Welcome to the New Savage Critic, hope you enjoy the ride!

-B

Your Big News: The NEW Savage Critic

TOLD you there was big news coming (though, just FYI, this link will still work just fine): For immediate release!

All-Star Savage Critic Launches July 16th!

The Magnificent Seven! The World’s Greatest Comics Reviewers! Amazing! Spectacular! Web of! (Is there someone else’s Intellectual Property we can infringe upon?!?)

The Savage Critic, America’s snarkiest comics review website, brainchild of Comix Experience’s Brian Hibbs, is expanding its roster with a relaunch on Monday, July 16th at www.savagecritic.com.

Joining Hibbs, and Savage Critic regulars Jeff Lester and Graeme McMillan, is a new all-star line-up of comic’s best critics, including:

Johanna Draper Carlson, of Comics Worth Reading!

Diana Kingston-Gabai, of Sententia 3.0!

Abhay Khosla, notorious comics commentator (without his own website)!

Joe McCulloch, of Jog - The Blog!

Douglas Wolk, author of Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean!

“Dude, I mean, seriously – isn’t this the coolest line-up of comics critics you’ve ever seen in one place?” said Hibbs, “If I was ready to die, I could die happy now!”

“Not that anyone should get any ideas,” added Hibbs quickly.

“Finally, people talking about comics on the internet! Every ancient text has prophesied this day. It's all true!” said Jog.

"Truly, this is the Savage Critic Age of Argumentative Assessments. Ex cathedra!," Wolk chimed in.

"The Savage Critics. The blog of dreams. Men's dreams. It STINKS of men, of... oops, my bad, someone left a Jim Balent comic on the counter. Where was I... right. It STINKS of men. Of DOORWAYS and abandoned, obsolete blog links used as URINALS. Of alcohol-soaked morning sweat and stale cigarette smoke and inky diesel fumes and sickening-sweet aftershave and how the hell did I end up at San Diego Comic-Con?" added Kingston-Gabai

The Savage Critic relaunches on Monday, July 16th at www.savagecritic.com

Self-referential text is the new rock and roll: Graeme on more from 7/11

A short one today, because there's work to be done before tomorrow... (And I'm not just talking about Hibbs' big news - I also have deadlines for the newsletter and Comics International to deal with this weekend as well. I'm not quite sure how all of that happened...)

DEADPOOL/GLI SUMMER FUN SPECTACULAR: You know that criticism that often gets applied to things, that those involved in the creation clearly had a lot of fun making it, but forgot to be able to translate that to the audience? If there's ever a need to defend that in a court of law, then the majority of this book could easily act as Exhibit A. There's absolutely no doubt that Dan Slott and Fabian Nicieza are having a ball as they co-write each of the shorts in the vaguely-connected collection, but almost none of that fun comes over for the audience. The "main" stories are all pretty generic and throwaway pieces - enough to raise a half-smile, maybe, but that's about it - but, it's the Squirrel Girl interludes, where she discovers what happened to Speedball in Civil War and sets out to save him, that the true interest (and true fun) of the book lies. Those interludes are genuinely funny and have some purpose to them, as if they're the entire reason for the oneshot, and the other stories were the price paid in order to get their snarky dissatisfaction with the fate of Speedball into print.

But if that's the case then, the price was worth it. And the book itself is worth it just for those scenes, and in particular, the scene where Squirrel Girl meets the current-day Speedball, Penance.

The fact that the writers find Speedball's transformation into Penance ridiculous and at odds with both the character and the general tone of the Marvel Universe is very, very obvious. Not only do they poke fun at the plot of Damage Control being responsible for Nitro exploding at the start of Civil War - "No! That couldn't have happened! I know Damage Control! I've worked for them! They're funny, silly, and goofy! They'd never do anything that... dark!" "Uh... Rob, you shouldn't be dark either. You're Speedball! You bounce! With balls!" - but they also point out the holes in Civil War's "everything is different! Stamford was destroyed!" reasoning by referring to recent Marvel history: "The Avengers blew up half of Washington not long ago. Thousands died, and they did just fine... Iron Man killed a U.N. Ambassador - - while he was drunk - - on TV! And now he's running SHIELD!" Penance's response is priceless in its barely-concealed amusement/despair: "You just don't get it, do you?! This self-punishment thing? It's too deep for you! See?! I'm deep now! And that means I do deep stuff!"

It's a (if you'll pardon the pun) weirdly ballsy scene, and the kind of thing that makes me hope that people in Marvel aren't taking all of the Civil War fallout stuff as seriously as they sometimes seem to. Don't get me wrong; the book is still pretty Eh overall, but you should definitely leaf through it just to read the bits in between the stories...

Space Is The Place: Graeme heads out for interstellar policemen from 7/11

It's the war of the space opera epics this week, as the first non-special-oneshot chapters of both DC and Marvel's star-crossed slam-bang-fests shipped, inviting comparisons that'll probably do no-one any good. But let's try anyway, why don't we?

ANNIHILATION: CONQUEST: WRAITH #1: Maybe it's Kyle Hotz's artwork - which, especially on the title character here, reminds me of Sam Keith's stuff - or maybe it's the choice of inverted word balloons for the eponymous hero, but I couldn't quite shake the idea that someone, somewhere, at Marvel sees this as "What if Sandman was a butt-kicking space mercenary?" It's an entirely unfair comparison, of course, because the story owes nothing to Neil Gaiman's gift to DC's intellectual property (although if you suggested that Wraith is Sandman meets Lobo, you're actually not a million miles away from the truth), but also a sign of how disinterested I found myself in the story and looking for distraction. There's nothing bad about the story, necessarily, but also nothing that makes me particularly excited about the prospect of checking out the second issue, nor about the idea that this will be a necessary piece of the whole Annihilation: Conquest larger story. Eh.

NOVA #4, on the other hand, is much more successful. While the superhero snob in me wonders when we're going to see an issue of the book that isn't a crossover with some larger event (even the first issue was pretty much an epilogue to the original Annihilation), the reader in me has to admit that the sudden intrusion of A:C brings a very enjoyable intensity and sense of disaster to the series. I'm not falling for the idea that Richard Ryder is, as suggested by the last few pages, dead, but I'm very much liking the idea that the creative team are ready to throw away the title character for awhile so early in the book's run. Good, and offering enough insight into the Phalanx that I'm even more curious as to where the larger story is going next.

Meanwhile, over at DC, GREEN LANTERN #21 takes the Sinestro Corps War storyline to the individual books, with surprising restraint - I have to admit that I was expecting some kind of obvious "Hal Jordan! I, Sinestro, am going to kick your ass!" moment in this issue, but instead the big guns seen at the end of the opening oneshot are purposefully kept in the background while the new Parallax essentially goes solo on a revenge mission against Hal. It's another well-done issue, giving this book an organic separation from the Green Lantern Corps book, even though the two series will be carrying the same story for the next few months, while also giving new readers all the backstory they may need both in terms of plot and psychological motivation. It's the wonderful lack of what you'd expect that made this so Good; much more subtle than something like Infinite Crisis, maybe Geoff Johns really did learn some tricks from the rest of the 52 writers after all...

POS Follies Part 6

Woof. So, first off, thanks to those who gave me Excel tips in the last post -- yep that's what I'm using. Wish I had those BEFORE I started doing the eyeball sort, but c'est la guerre.

'sfunny, I've been using Excel for like a decade (maybe more?), and I haven't got the SLIGHTEST idea how like 75% of it functions. I generally only need it to sort, or move chunks of data around, or that level of depth -- most of those options in the, say, "Tools" menu? Don't even know what they do.

ANYway, done with the majority of the database futzing -- yesterday and today I went and scanned in most of the barcodes that MOBY didn't already have (something like 600 of them?), but that was a pretty fast process, really.

There's still TONS of stuff w/o barcodes, or stuff that HAVE barcodes, but which won't scan, no matter how much I try -- but I have to say I'm more pissed about the former than the latter. There's a couple of surprising (to me at least!) publishers, like Heavy Metal, who never bothered to put barcodes on any of their books. I really can't figure it out.

I can get all of the comics that don't have them -- typically small/self-published books, or from publishers that didn't believe there was enough "critical mass" of retailers USING them for the time/expense in doing them, but my life will certainly have more of a pain in the ass from the OPTIC NERVE or LOVE & ROCKETS of the world, where we still sell 3-5 copies of each and every issue, each and every month. Having to slow down at the reg to either consult the "cheat book" (a binder with a bunch of non-barcoded items in it, with a user-generated barcode), or type-and-find into MOBY to look them up is not going to be fun.

I can deal with that pain for L&R or OPTIC NERVE, but I suspect that, come, oh let's call it 2009, I will no longer stock publishers-who-don't-barcode just from a hassle-vs-profit point of view, if they're not selling L&R numbers for us.

Anyway, as things stand, I think I'll be "done" with the database, latest, this time next week. Next week has several other things that need to get done (Tilting! And the SUPER SECRET THING that will make you go "whoa!" when we announce it [Very Soon!]; oh, and, just for good measure, the blackline of PREVIEWS showed up today, so ONOMATOPOEIA is presumably next week too!), so it will be "next Friday", rather than "Tuesday, latest" it would have been otherwise.

Really, all I have left to do is to set the Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary distributors for the non-brokered publishers, which, I think, is less than 6 hours work. (It is probably 3, but I have to factor time to look-up-and-confirm-pricing on a number of books) My BIG PROBLEM with this, is there's a lot of items in the databse I'd want to set Cold Cut as the Primary, or Secondary-after-Direct-From-publisher, and I'm kind of dreading the possibility that Cold Cut might either close or drastically mutate in the next 3-6 months, causing me to have to edit thousands of records inside MOBY (not nearly as fast as Excel.... which could do it in about 9 keystrokes, total) -- in MOBY, you have to individually open each individual record of a product (or, I think, group -- which would make changing L&R, for instance, one action, rather than 20-something different ones)

The funny thing, is my orders to Cold Cut are probably poised to triple or better, because I won't be doing that ad hoc bullshit method I'd used before, but I'll now have a "one button" process to deal with it, and the encouragement to hit that button more.

I really and truly hope they find a buyer no later than San Diego, and that said buyer understands the potential they have there -- with just a couple of tweaks, Cold Cut could become a significant player, picking up the vast majority of the non-exclusive reorder business in the DM.

I want to comment on this a bit, because I think something that Dan Vado really needs to be stated again, a couple of times.

[So, in fact, let me give myself a clean paragraph break to make it easier to link, and take a deep breath to refocus my thought here]

ANY publisher who has signed a distribution deal with Diamond, that does not have exclusions, for Cold Cut or Last Gasp, or even possibly a new startup, where that publisher is sold to retailers at an "F" (45%) discount or less has made a terrible, terrible mistake that they really NEED to rectify at their next contract negotiation.

Why? Diamond assesses a 3% reorder penalty. That means your 45% discount, just dropped to 42%. Guess what? If Diamond is distributing your books, that means Baker & Taylor and Ingram has them. ANY chimpanzee, who pays on time, and places an order of 10 or more books (not of a single title, for a whole ORDER of books! Cake!), gets AT LEAST 42% off from B&T.

And Free Shipping.

And Returnability.

THEREFORE, at a 45% or lower discount -- again, that's the "F" code, or a "H" code for 40% -- it is actually CHEAPER for retailers to buy it from the Distributor that *Diamond* is selling to, than from Diamond, on a Reorder (and, in many cases, on the initial)

You want your retailers to get the BEST POSSIBLE PRICE on your wares, don't you? So they make lots of money, and buy MORE of your books, right?

THEN MAKE SURE there is competitiveness in the marketplace.

I kind of die inside when I ponder a company like Achaia -- they're exclusive to Diamond, no exceptions; They've been quietly building up a line of high quality titles with a fairly broad "real human" appeal... but because they are "Buy/Sell" with Diamond, DIAMOND DOESN'T HAVE THEIR BOOKS *IN STOCK* MOST OF THE TIME.

To give you a good example, for the last few weeks I've been buying my copies of the MOUSE GUARD HC from B&T, rather than Diamond BECAUSE DIAMOND HAD NO COPIES, and B&T *did*. I'd kill to be able to buy, in open stock, virtually anything that Achaia produces... but because of the deal they locked themselves into, I usually can't.

Tom asked why the New Boom doesn't seem to be translating for publishers or certain aspects of retail? That's because the only publishers, on reorder, that retailers can "keystone" (double their investment) are the four brokered ones -- the ones without any 3% reorder penalty. Everyone else, you're crippled at the outset because of a regressive policy that dates from a different time of distribution. Even if you're an "E" (50%) publisher -- your Onis, your DEs -- you're 47% on a reorder from Diamond, *and* dependent on Diamond's whim of whether they *stock* your comic or not. Not "will order it, if a customer asks", but *stocks*.

Think about that VERY carefully the next time your contract comes up for renegotiation. Because I have to tell you that I think about those things constantly, and I'm the one buying your books.

[*puff* *puff* OK, rant over]

So, ah, where was I?

Right, assigning dists to the database. Quick process, I'm hoping. Then... Hm, another pass through the "series" codes (I want to make sure it understands that, say, BPRD, is actually the SAME book, despite restarting at #1 every 5th issue), and maybe futz with the author and illustrator fields a bit.

And after that, it's just another 2 weeks of scanning and looking for errors I missed before, but not the intensive 10-13 hours a day things I've been doing the last few weeks.

I figure, since I'm working from an existing database, that, of the data I'll be using (way under 10%), I'm still going to have 1-200 books with some sort of error that I didn't catch, and won't until things are running. But, hopefully, I'll be able to deal with those on the fly, and that they won't be too disruptive as things run.

But, pretty much, the overwhelming bulk of the Scary Database Project is pretty much done. There's still doing the physical inventory, and entering that data, but that will just be an ugly 8 hours that can't be done until the last second, anyway.

Right. Off to have some recreation, then back at it for Saturday...

Oh. And did I say to watch out for something Really Cool in the next few days?

Well, do.

-B

The ghost of Justin Hartley looms large: Graeme goes green from 7/11.

Is it that wrong of me that I couldn't stop thinking of Smallville as I read GREEN ARROW: YEAR ONE #1? It's not just the high concept "Superheroes before they were superheroes" aspect that reminded me of the show, but the execution of same - the wooden expositionary dialogue, the repurposing of the character as an EXTREME THRILLSEEKER, DOOD, the weird villain as security guard to rich boy thing... This first issue curiously captured the feel of the Smallville show much better than the Smallville comic did, which is even more unexpected considering that it's by the Losers' creative team of Andy Diggle and Jock.

It's tempting to say that neither of their hearts are in the book, but I'm not really sure that that's the case; Diggle's script, while featuring some show-stopping moments of clunkiness (The villain's speech when confronting Ollie towards the end of the book is stunning in its laying out not only the character of Ollie as the book starts, but of the signposting of what's going to happen to him during the course of this series: "Look at yourself. You're not Robin Hood. You're Peter Pan. You're the boy who never grew up - - because you never had to. You don't value anything, because you never had to earn it. You don't think the rules apply to you, because you've always been able to buy yourself out of trouble. And you don't give a damn about anyone but yourself - - Because you're still the same spoiled selfish little brat you were when your parents died... Because there's never been anyone there to say no." You kind of have to wonder if Diggle finished writing that and thought, "You know, I'm kind of done."), still has some nice moments, and Jock's art here seems a lot less rushed than his Faker, last week (His cover is beautiful, if entirely destroyed by the barcode and credits - Look at the naked version on the DC Nation page, and see how good the art itself is). Perhaps it's that there was some kind of editorial guidance pushing them towards the Smallville gene, or perhaps presenting heroes as self-centered teenagers (or whatever age Ollie is meant to be here - early 20s, I think...?) is the way to go when trying to reach a new market.

Despite all that, this isn't actually that bad an opener - Everything gets set up easily enough, even taking into account the signposted dialogue, and if everything feels somewhat tensionless, the fact that this is almost intended to be the least exciting part of the story has to be taken somewhat into account. An Okay opener, then, and here's hoping that it picks up the further we get into the story.

My gut tells me this isn't too great: Graeme gets space-age patriotic, 7/11

Since it was announced, I've been somewhat nervous of reading STEPHEN COLBERT'S TEK JANSEN #1. Nervous for all the right reasons, mind you; I really like all of the creators involved, and also find myself fairly fond of The Colbert Report as well (Although I still prefer The Daily Show, especially since Johns Hodgeman and Oliver joined the crew), but there just seemed either an optimism or the kind of ego that Colbert normally parodies to base a spin-off series on what was essentially a one joke idea ("The self-important news anchor secretly writes shitty sci-fi - but he's completely unaware of how shitty it actually is!").

Sure enough, the first issue struggles against the limits of the pretty limited joke; the writers do their best to expand the Tek Jansen universe with new characters and situations, but the problem is that doing so sacrifices the humor that Colbert specializes in (political and social satire) for something both more broad and narrow at the same time. There are political allusions in both of the stories - and in the first strip, also some Colbert Report injokes - but stripped of the real world context, they come across as weak and toothless.

The sad thing is, the writers are probably doing the best that they can with the core concept of the series, and the stories are fun enough (They're also attractively drawn; I just realized that I hadn't said anything about Scott Chandler and Robbi Rodriguez so far, even though both do a pretty good job juggling the likeness with the cartoony) - It's just that I think that the reality of a Tek Jansen comic is pretty much fated to just be Okay at best, always going to be less valuable in reality than in name-dropping theory.

POS Follies Part 5

Just jumping in real quickly to let you know the project proceeds. Last Thursday, Friday and Saturday I spent a total of 33 hours, in those 3 days, walking the store, pulling books off the rack shelf-by-shelf and checking to see if they had records already in MOBY's database. Basically, over those three days, I've touched every single item in the store (except the back issues) at least once.

(I also pulled a lot of stuff OFF the shelves for our sale box -- so, if you're a CE customer and you haven't checked the TP sale box in a while, NOW is the time to do so; there are some tremendous deals in there! [I just made Jeff Lester spend another fifty dollars, I am afraid])

This took a whole lot longer than the inventory will take (estimate: 10x longer) because I had to pull everything off the racks, shelf-by-shelf, carry it over to the counter and the computer, and type in a bit of its title in the cntrl-F Find box, then walk the books back and reshelf them. Whee, and stuff.

The FUN part of it was that MOBY's database uses DIAMOND's database at its core, and Diamond does not... well, how to be kind about it?

It is my understanding (perhaps out of date) that Diamond doesn't have a master file of what it stocks. Instead, the individual brand managers RETYPE THE ENTIRE CATALOG EVERY MONTH. Perhaps more importantly, Diamond doesn't have an exacting standard format that they use to present information, so it is entirely possible that you'll have a series of TPs that look something like this in Diamond's database:

DWEEZLEMAN VOL 1 TP DWEEZLEMAN DWEEZLES AHOY VOL 2 TP DWEEZLEMAN VOL 3 DWEEZLES BIG ADVENTURE TP DWEEZLEMAN GN #4 DWEEZLES NIGHT OUT

(this is an extreme "example", generally speaking no one series has more than 3 schema -- and even those tend to be multi-year 10+ volume series)

Because of this, if you were to sort your list into alpha-numerical order, it would sort like this:

DWEEZLEMAN DWEEZLES AHOY VOL 2 TP DWEEZLEMAN GN #4 DWEEZLES NIGHT OUT DWEEZLEMAN VOL 1 TP DWEEZLEMAN VOL 3 DWEEZLES BIG ADVENTURE TP

Which drives me insane when trying to work with the data.

So I was also editing titles as I went along to try and mitigate some of this. For myself, there's only ONE format that is appropriate and that's:

[Series Title] VOL [#] [Subtitle] TP ([optional notes])

I also am a total weirdo in that I like to add a zero to sub-ten-volumes entries (that is, it is VOL 01, 02, and so on to 09) -- that's because, since the volume number is in the title field (though we have a column for "issue #" as well of course) if you don't do that, an alphabetical report sorts like this:

VOL 1 VOL 11 VOL 12....19 VOL 2 VOL 20 VOL 21...29 VOL 3 VOL 30

(and so on)

(and yes, you *can* stretch this out to the 40s. No, not a manga series; Fantagraphics PRINCE VALIANT reprints reached well into the 40s)

With the "extra" leading zeroes, everything sorts the way its supposed to.

Also, this is where I hate the ABC line books -- rather than "VOL [#]" they are listed as "BOOK [number spelled out]" so that "BOOK FIVE" sorts before "VOL 05". Once someone from DC (I don't recall who, nor the context) indicated to me that they were that way because Alan Moore insisted on it, but whoever made the decision to have it that way in DIAMOND'S DATABASE should be taken out back and shot. That's not just from a POS POV -- I'm changing the titles myself, obviously -- but from an invoicing POV. DIAMOND prints their invoices in straight-alpha, which makes checking in fun fun fun.

There's also a lot of mislistings -- things categorized by Diamond as "comics" when they are actually "magazines", that kind of thing -- or bad listings. For instance, basically every book that's listed in the "book" section of PREVIEWS has in the "publisher" field the header of the category that it was listed in PREVIEWS. "How-To", "Art Books", "Fantasy/Sci-Fi" that kind of thing. Which is often annoying, but not something I'm going to fix now, because it doesn't matter *that* much, and I can always edited the important ones later.

Anyway, so that was Thur-Sat, the upshot of which is that I *could* take a hard physical inventory tomorrow if I needed. (that's end of the month though)

Sunday I vegged out.

Monday I hit the database for ~10 hours and found "all" of the things that I "should" be stocking, but didn't have on hand. This includes a lot of out of print stuff, but that will work itself out quickly. I found about 200 items. Approx 60% of them are probably OOP. Of the ones that aren't, about a quarter were on this week's restock arrival already.

I also noticed on Monday that, hm, a lot of items I have on hand don't have a barcode in the database -- this is probably because Starclipper (MOBY's "home" store) never stocked them (Diamond's database doesn't provide barcodes in advance, except for a very small handful of publishers). I hadn't realized that I was going to fill in quite that many holes, so I sorted the list of on-hand by barcode and made a sublist of the ones I'd need to scan in. About 800-ish titles.

Tuesday morning I started in on it, and got about 10% of the list done in an hour (which reminds me, I'm going to need to make another list of things that will need to have barcodes generated FOR them...), but then it was time for the New Books to arrive, so clearing that up will be Thursday and maybe Friday in the store.

Today I am at home and, literally, staring at columns of numbers. MOBY has separate data fields for "MSRP" and "MOBY price" -- that is, what the "price" is, and how much the program will charge you for it. But Starclipper, over the years, has put some number of objects on SALE... so I've got to go through and compare column A to column B.

THAT's why I'm typing this essay, BTW -- comparing two columns of numbers on a computer screen is not easy on the eyes, so every 5 or 6 PageDWNs I flip over here and type a paragraph or so.

The way I am doing this, I *know* I am making mistakes (or, at least, not catching some) -- if there's a $12.95/$12.99 discrepancy I won't be catching it in most cases (though I caught one!), and maybe not a $15.99/$19.99 one either. Thankfully, on the few occasions where it's a Starclipper-putting-it-on-sale situation (as opposed to data-entry mistake) they're generally cutting the price to half, making 5/9.99 easy to spot.

Right, so that's done, thanks for listening while I distracted my eyes. Off now to start messing with reorder points!

-B

The death of a party came as no surprise: Graeme starts the week off with an end, 7/11.

Given the, um, individual charms of Frank Miller's writing on All-Star Batman these days, I'm not sure it'll come as a massive surprise to anyone if I say that I'm not sure that MARTHA WASHINGTON DIES is worth the price of admission. But what was surprising - to me, at least - was that the story in this oneshot was clearly never meant to be anything other than the epilogue to next year's collection of all of Miller and Dave Gibbons' Martha Washington stories (Give Me Liberty from the 1980s - which I remember being disappointed by as a teenager, reading it and thinking "There's no there there. Is this really meant to be great? Am I missing something?" - and Martha Washington Goes To War from, I think, the early '90s). The strip in this issue offers no real story at all, other than fulfilling the promise/threat of the title, but also offers no context for anyone who hasn't read any of the earlier works. What it does offer is the chance to make cheap analysis into Miller's state of mind - the narration talks of an America under attack by "barbarians" who seek an "armageddon we'll never let them have" and chant, even though they've tried to destroy religion ("Back when there were churches. Back before the barbarians won their awful victory..."). Has this story now become all about Miller's 9/11 epiphany...? What else could it mean when Martha seems to become fireworks exploding in the skies above New York City, after all?

To call this "light" would be polite - It's 17 pages long, and of that, there are four double-page spreads and an additional four splash pages - and as nicely as Gibbons and colorist Angus McKie can make things, there's still a feeling of being somewhat cheated by the presentation of this as a full-priced comic as opposed to some kind of budget teaser for the complete book advertised on the inside back cover here. There may be some extra value for completists in the five page original synopsis by Miller for the opening of Give Me Liberty - although a cynic like me looks at it more as the only way they could make this book more than 20 pages long - but overall, this was a pretty disappointingly empty Awful.

At an alarming pace, running away from his face: Graeme finishes out 7/5, bald-head style.

So, Zuda Comics, huh? Why'd they go with that name, I wonder? Although I have to admit that I found Newsarama's interview with Paul Levitz about it curiously honest - Did he really admit that DC should be the last place you look to for innovation these days, or was I reading too much between the lines...?

While pondering that, let's look at the dying world of print:

ACTION COMICS #851: Pretty much an issue of filler with the exception of the last few pages - and that really wasn't where I thought the Luthor subplot from the Annual was going, thankfully enough - but when filler comes with a pair of 3D glasses, I'm pretty much sold. Okay, but I do feel sorry for those who looked at this without rose-colored (well, and blue) glasses.

ALL-STAR SUPERMAN #8: Surprisingly, not so great, and I'm not entirely sure why not. Normally I'm a sucker for both Morrison and Quitely and also Bizarro World stories, but this felt incredibly light and lacking on new ideas or surprises, for a change. Technically, it's still head and shoulders above almost every other superhero book released this week and still Very Good but I really expected more from this.

BLACK CANARY #1: Paulo Siqueira proves rather adept at the kid-centric portions of this somewhat unnecessary miniseries (Admittedly, I say that partially because Gail Simone isn't writing it; I loved her take on Dinah in Birds of Prey, and even though Tony Bedard follows it closely here, it's still not enough, dammit), but ultimately it still feels like retcons are being used to manufacture fake drama instead of trying to make an interesting story about Dinah herself. Okay, but it could've and should've been better.

COUNTDOWN #43: Hibbs told me as he rings me up for this week that he's suddenly realized how badly this is going to read in trade, considering that this week's issue is all about the death of the Flash, which happened in another series altogether and wasn't even referenced in this book before last week. And he's not wrong, but that portion of the book was still more interesting than almost all of the actual Countdown-centric scenes that we got this issue. That said, everything is starting to pick up slightly, and I wonder if that's just because we're two months in and Dini et al always intended to start slow and speed up, or if it's down to the presence of new co-editor Mike Carlin, who joined the book with this issue. Either way, still Eh.

FAKER #1: I think I liked this, but to be honest, it all kind of rushed by without making too much of an impression - I feel as if I need to read the next issue (which will take me a third of the way into the series) before I could honestly say whether or not I thought it was worth my time, which leaves me somewhat ambivalent about the experience. Nonetheless, it's more proof that Mike Carey is a surprisingly versatile writer (Again, compare and contrast this to his X-Men, Re-Gifters or any other things released that he's worked on in the last month) and Jock is an engaging, if left-hand-biased, artist. Okay, I guess?

NEW WARRIORS #2: You know it's a bad sign when the thing that catches your attention most about a book like this isn't that - gasp! - the New Warriors are depowered mutants with new superpowers but that the book namedrops and uses the logos of MSN, Yahoo and Google. Between that and the Old Spice logo usage in recent books, it looks like Marvel has dived straight into the world of product placement with no fear whatsoever. Ah, this brave new world, etc. etc. As for the story itself, Eh; pretty much as you'd expect.

What did the rest of you think, anyway?

Arriving 7/11

Busy busy on the database, so just a list of comics shipping this week.... 100 BULLETS #84 (RES) 30 DAYS OF NIGHT EBEN & STELLA #3 ALIEN PIG FARM #4 (OF 4) AMAZING SPIDER-GIRL #10 AMORY WARS #2 (OF 5) ANITA BLAKE VH FIRST DEATH #1 (OF 2) ANNIHILATION CONQUEST WRAITH #1 (OF 4) BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL #7 BATMAN STRIKES #35 BETTY & VERONICA DIGEST #176 BIG PLANS #1 BLADE #11 BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL #127 BPRD GARDEN OF SOULS #5 (OF 5) CARTOON NETWORK ACTION PACK #15 COMICS COMICS COUNTDOWN 42 DEADPOOL GLI SUMMER FUN SPECTACULAR DEEVEE 2007 DMZ #21 EXILES #96 FABLES #63 FANTASTIC FIVE #1 (OF 5) FRESHMEN VOL 2 ERIC BASALDUA CVR A #6 (NOTE PRICE) GEN 13 #10 GREEN ARROW YEAR ONE #1 (OF 6) GREEN LANTERN #21 GRIFTER MIDNIGHTER #5 (OF 6) HEDGE KNIGHT 2 SWORN SWORD #2 (OF 6) INDIA AUTHENTIC INDRA #3 JLA CLASSIFIED #40 JUGHEADS DOUBLE DIGEST #132 JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #7 LEFT ON MISSION #3 (OF 5) MAD MAGAZINE #480 MADMAN ATOMIC COMICS #3 MARTHA WASHINGTON DIES (ONE SHOT) MARVEL ILLUSTRATED MAN IN THE IRON MASK #1 (OF 6) METAL GEAR SOLID SONS OF LIBERTY #10 (RES) NEW AVENGERS #32 NEW EXCALIBUR #21 NEXUS #99 SPACE OPERA ACT 1 OF 4 NICOLAS CAGES VOODOO CHILD TEMPLESMITH COVER #1 NOVA #4 OMEGA FLIGHT #4 CWI (OF 5) PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #9 CWI SHADOWPACT #15 SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #177 SPAWN #169 SPIDER-MAN LOVES MARY JANE #20 STAR TREK NEXT GENERATION THE SPACE BETWEEN #6 (OF 6) STAR WARS LEGACY #14 STAR WARS REBELLION #8 STEPHEN COLBERTS TEK JANSEN #1 (OF 5) STEPHEN COLBERTS TEK JANSEN CASSADAY VAR CVR #1 (OF 5) STORMWATCH PHD #9 SUB-MARINER #2 CWI (OF 6) SUPERMAN #664 SUPERMAN CONFIDENTIAL #5 TAG CURSED #5 (OF 5) TICK COMIC CON EXTRAVAGANZA #1 ULTIMATE X-MEN #84 VERONICA #181 WITCHBLADE #108 WITCHBLADE SHADES OF GRAY FOIL CVR #2 (OF 4) (NET) WORLD WAR HULK GAMMA CORPS #1 (OF 4) WWH X-FACTOR #21 XOMBIE SEELEY CVR A #3 (OF 5)

Books / Mags / Stuff ASHLEY WOODS 48 NUDE GIRLS SC BATTLESTAR GALACTICA VOL 1 REG ED TP CLUBBING COMICS BUYERS GUIDE SEP 2007 #1633 DEVIL DINOSAUR BY JACK KIRBY OMNIBUS HC ELRIC MAKING OF A SORCERER TP FALLEN ANGEL PREMIERE COLLECTION HC FULL FRONTAL NERDITY VOL 1 BIG BOOK OF EPIC FAIL TP GANZFELD 5 JAPANADA TP HEARTBREAK GN HELLBLAZER THE RED RIGHT HAND TP HULK VISIONARIES PETER DAVID VOL 4 TP LEES TOY REVIEW JULY 2007 #177 NAOKI URASAWAS MONSTER VOL 9 TP NEXTWAVE AGENTS OF HATE VOL 2 I KICK YOUR FACE PREMIERE HC NODWICK CHRONICLES COLL NODWICK VOL 6 TP PS238 VOL 4 NOT ANOTHER LEARNING EXPERIENCE TP RAMAYAN 3392 AD VOL 1 TP SADHU VOL 1 TP SHOWCASE PRESENTS BATGIRL VOL 1 TP SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM GN (A) SQUADRON SUPREME HYPERION VS NIGHTHAWK TP TOYFARE SIMPSONS MOVIE FIGURE CVR #121 TRUE STORY SWEAR TO GOD VOL 1 TP UNCLE SAM AND THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS TP VIDEO WATCHDOG #132

What looks good to you?

-B

I'm tho Thor, I can hardly...: Graeme looks at a Mighty return.

It's not exaggerating to say that all of my positive feelings about THOR #1 come from Olivier Copiel's artwork. Which, considering I finished the issue and thought to myself, "Well, I might pick up the next issue to see where they go with this after all," is saying more than you may think.

J. Michael Straczynski's resetting of the Lee/Kirby dynamic here is the kind of thing that doesn't really make that much sense if you spend too much time thinking about it - I didn't read the last issues of the last run of Thor's title, but it seems from this issue that Thor didn't die after all, but just ended up in some kind of ideological limbo that was also inhabited by Donald Blake, who was (years ago) unmade by Odin, but that unmaking was then itself undone by the death of Odin, which somehow undid all of Odin's magic except for the bits of Odin's magic that are necessary for the series to work. I have no idea if any of this will be explained in future issues, or if it's just the kind of doublespeak that readers are expected to just accept as the necessary evil in order to get Thor back and move on, but I chose to go for the latter option and look at the pretty pictures instead. And what pretty pictures...!

Copiel's choice of making Thor larger - or, at least, broader - than life manages to both differentiate him from Donald Blake and also give him the physique that makes you believe that he really could stand up to Ice Gods or whatever other Asgardian monstrosities come his way; I particularly liked his out of control eyebrows and broad nose, for some strange reason. The same cartoony impulse reappears towards the end of the book, with Donald Blake's new landlady, whose happy panel wearing glasses was a wonderfully welcome moment of visual comedy in a scene that could otherwise have been bogged down in too-clever dialogue. Copiel obviously likes drawing people instead of just superpeople, if you can understand the distinction; his body language and comfort with clothing (He understands how clothes hang on people, unlike so many superhero artists) are the signs of a smart artist who's looking to do something more than just whatever happens to be popular or hot right now, and his panel layout on the second-last page of this book - almost entirely silent - is something that makes me want to see what else he could get up to when paired with a writer who wants to challenge him a little more. I've been a fan of Copiel since his Legion work, but this book really makes me want to see him on something out of the mainstream so that he can show just how good he really is.

It's interesting; I know that I should give this book an Eh because, really, the story's not up to much at all and the dialogue borders on the pretentious and ridiculous. But the artwork is so good that I've kind of got to say that you owe it to yourself to at least take a look and decide for yourself whether this is as Okay as I ended thinking it was...

Sure, it may be not Ratatouille, but still: Graeme gets less than meets the eye.

NEW AVENGERS/TRANSFORMERS #1: The cross-marketing platform that Marvel have been waiting for rolls out - I'm sorry - into stores, in time to make everyone who reads it realize that, well, it's pretty Awful. There's something about this book that really makes you feel as if this is a half-assed attempt by Marvel to try and cash in on what they hoped would be a successful movie. It's a shame, really; the sheer nostalgic power of picking up a Transformers comic with that lo-fi version of the logo (Just like the old Marvel UK version of the comic when I was a kid!) managed to make me relatively hopeful that this could be something enjoyable and full of throwaway pop thrills, but it's clear that pop magic isn't what those involved were looking for - There's a self-conscious seriousness to the narration ("The engines of war. Sometimes they grind so loud in your brain - - They drown out everything else" ponders Captain America towards the end of the issue) that kind of ruins whatever dumb fun points the admittedly goofy plot (Megatron is increasing humanity's aggression so that the Avengers are fighting each other! Only the Autobots can save them from themselves!) has earned so far. More depressingly, Tyler Kirkham's artwork is so dull - it just sits on the page and does the job without any style or joy or anything, which is entirely the opposite of what was needed here. With a comic that brings superheroes and giant robots that turn into cars together, what I really want to see is some absurdist excitement about the whole thing, something that pulls me into the story and distracts me from the ridiculousness of the whole thing, and this attempt - while well-meaning (at least in the initial plot) - completely misses the mark.

Doesn't stop me wanting to see the Transformers movie itself, though.

Folks, you better stop and think: Graeme deals with Acceptance, 7/5.

You know, I really thought that Jeph Loeb was building to something with the whole FALLEN SON: THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN AMERICA thing. I don't really know why, to be honest; I'd been through Superman/Batman and watched as those 25 issues resolutely failed to have any real sense of resolution. I'd put that down to everything else that was happening in his life at the time, and kept this vague hope that - despite all the usual claims and complaints about Loeb's writing - he really could finish a story after all.

And it seemed as if Fallen Son was building to something, you know? The way that the characters followed through the individual issues, with Wolverine seeming to act as some kind of guide through the whole shebang... I honestly thought that there was going to be some kind of emotional payoff, at least, in the final issue. And with the rumors of spoilers and big events that should get retailers ordering extra copies, and of news coverage of this issue, I thought: Okay. We're building to something after all.

Except we're not.

It's not that the final issue is bad, per se. John Cassaday's art is fine enough - As much as I recognize how technically good he is, I really don't get why everyone loves his work as much as they do - and I appreciate the weird, Sinatra-esque take on Rick Jones (complete with apparently-receding hair, which amused me greatly for some reason), but there's no there there. I appreciate that Loeb (and, presumably, Marvel) felt that Captain America's funeral was enough of an event to finish the series with a bang (or dull thud of a coffin going into the ground, perhaps) but there's still no proper closure. Lots of flashbacks and lots of dramatic speechifyin', sure, but nothing else. Maybe that's to be expected - it is just a spin-off cash-in to the central plot from Captain America's own book, after all - but logically knowing that doesn't stop this from being a letdown that makes you go Eh.

And I need to be redeemed to the one I sinned against: Graeme finally gets around to thinking about criminals and diamonds.

In some weird, bizarro world somewhere in this fine multiverse, there is someone who knows what I’m talking about when I say that, for me, CRIMINAL #7 and THE BLACK DIAMOND #2 are distant relatives in some strange sense.

I mean, sure, when you read both back to back, you may not have any idea what I’m thinking, considering the very different executions of each book. Criminal, for those who haven’t been picking up the series to date, is pretty much the crime book out there to beat these days, and this issue – the second chapter of the second story of the series – demonstrates why perfectly. Over a plot of revenge and good people in bad situations (although, I have to admit, I have no idea if Tracy is really a good person or not; I just like the idea that he has some sense of honor as opposed to just being in this for revenge. But let’s face it, Brubaker trades in moral ambiguity in books like Captain America, so why should his crime noir book be any cleaner?), Ed Brubaker delivers a tight, tense script that doesn’t so much explain itself as hints at what’s happening and who to trust and leaves the rest to the reader. It’s writing that works through dialogue without being overly chatty, which puts it entirely at odds with Larry Young’s script for Black Diamond, also in the second chapter of its story (or third, if you could the preview released a couple of years back) and also featuring good people in bad situations.

Young’s script for Black Diamond is all about the dialogue, and I mean that in the best way. More than really being plot-driven (as I’d suggest Criminal is), this issue of Black Diamond is three different conversations that rejoice in language and digressions and little bits of information that aren’t important to the core plot but tell you about the characters nonetheless. It’s an incredibly chatty book, but done in such a way that you forgive the metatextuality of characters referring to themselves as literary devices, or the bigger-picture expositionary download of the middle conversation, because… well, it’s just plain enjoyable to read language being used like that (See also: Sorkin, Tarantino, Bendis, etc. Yes, I get that people don’t really talk like that, but I don’t see why that should affect my enjoyment of fiction).

It’s good that Young’s script is so strong, because Lee Proctor’s visuals are kind of… not. Actually, that’s not fair; the book is visually stunning, but that’s because of Proctor’s amazing coloring and his sense of page design – his linework itself is pretty static and infuriatingly inconsistent (Mostly in his female characters, who change hairstyles depending on which photoref he seems to be using, panel-to-panel), to such an extent that it snaps you out of the story every now and again, when you have to stop and wonder whether that’s a new character who’s just appeared, or a new look for the same character as the last panel. Criminal, meanwhile, has no such issue; Sean Phillips does work on this that should be used as masterclass fodder for artists wanting to see how to get emotion onto the page without it being melodrama, and how to tell a story effectively without the art overwhelming the story (Val Staples’ coloring is also to be pointed out as understated but entirely effective). That, in fact, may be the core difference between the two books – Criminal is a comic that works because the creators involved put the story first and submerge themselves in the work, whereas Black Diamond is enjoyable because of the creators being present throughout the book. If that makes sense to anyone that isn’t me.

Nonetheless, both books are well worth your time. Black Diamond is Good fun, Larry Young showing off his chops with Jon Proctor backing him up, and Criminal is Very Good, Brubaker and Phillips both perfectly in synch with each other and focusing on getting the job done, which seems fitting for a crime book (For those who liked Sleeper and, for some reason, haven’t picked up Criminal yet – You really should. As good as that book was, this is much better). Mama Crime Genre can feel happy that her children may not look much like each other, but they’re both doing just fine, thank you very much.

POS Follies part 4

Right, so where was I? Last Friday I lost a few hours because the firewall router I was trying to install wasn't working with the modem for some arcane reason I can't begin to understand. I had my dad come (over three tries) and get it going (he was a network guy for PacBell before he retired), but that cost me some precious computer time on Friday.

Saturday, Sunday, and much of Monday were lost to me because I kinda forgot it was "that time of the month" -- order form for August, and subscription set up for July, and the general "end of the month blues" of paying bills, etc.

Tuesday, the comics arrived. Can't sell them until Thursday, but we have Tuesday delivery, and since Wed was the holiday, it was either Tue-for-Thur, or Thur-for-Thur, and I chose to have the piles of boxes in the store, thanks.

Wednesday.... well, despite the holiday, I HAD to get back to the database. So I did. All day. "Finished" the comics section of it. And the magazines (though, come on, how much work really needs to be done there?)

Thursday was today, and it was New Comics Day. And I worked it alone, because Sue is off at a wedding. And yet I still mostly managed to deal with the Book part of the database for most of the right hand side of the store.

Friday is tomorrow, and I'm hoping to finish off the right hand side of the store, and maybe (MAYBE) the center too.

I'm piling up a bunch of books to put on clearance, too -- nothing like touching every book in your store to go "and these must go away!". I'm hoping those will be put into the sale boxes by Saturday, but who really knows, might not be until Tuesday.

Saturday will be my normal weekly reorder pass, but if I haven't finished the center-of-the-store, then I'll have to do that as well, being wholly under Rob's feet. He'll like that.

Sunday... well Sunday, I'm hoping I can rest.

Monday, all day at home working with the books inventory of all of the things we DON'T have in stock, and setting up primary and secondary and tertiary distributors for them, as well as reorder points for the stuff I actively want to stock, and so on. Unlike the comics, where there is necessarily a reorder point except "huh, sold out, get more", basically every book needs to have a decision made about it about HOW MANY I want to keep in inventory at all times. That will take me 3 (?) days... so, since Tuesday is Comics-arrive, I'm planning on being done by Thursday early AM (Because, damn it, I have to have time to take Ben to the park!!!!). Then next Friday (a week from tomorrow) will go towards all of the "behind the counter" (T-shirts, toys, whatever is in the case) stuff, which, hopefully, is only 3-4 hours work, max.

Then normal-weekly-reorders on Saturday, rest on Sunday, then start thinking about writing a TILTING around 7/16, to run on 7/20.

There's also something else going on on Monday 7/16, but you'll hear more about that a little later.

On 7/28, Mark Richman, programmer of MOBY, is coming to SF to reimport back our now edited version of the database, and to train us on the system, Unless something goes categorically wrong (and, hey, shit does, in fact, happen), we should be trained on MOBY on Monday 7/30, and POS is "live" as of that point, just before my "Dream Date" of 8/1. So, fuck yes.

That also means that, between (let's say) 7/16 and 7/28, I HAVE to get the database finished, no screwing around. I think that's an easy deadline (unless I biffed something hard I really should be done with a week to spare), but it IS a deadline, and I have to remain aware of it all the way along.

And somewhere in there is the new ONOMATOPOEIA (I'm guessing we'll have the "blackline" of PREVIEWS on the 17th or so, for a we-photocopy-it date of 7/20 and PREVIEWS street date of 7/25, but I never keep PREVIEWS dates straight in my head)

OH, and the deadline to Turn In next month's orders is 7/31, which means that I can't possibly work the order form in the 7/28-7/30 window I would normal do.... because we're being trained in MOBY right then. Gonna have to figure out a way to do it all on Wed 7/26, because there's not a whole lot of other day options available to me right now.

And, the normal end-of-the-month functions (like bill paying!) seem like they're going to become first-of-the-next-month this cycle, whooops.

So, this is what July looks like to me, wheeeeee. But at the end, I'll have POS and a much better control of my inventory, so this "Lost Month" will be all worth it, I think.

Anyway, just letting you know I'm alive, and why I'm leaving Graeme out to fend for himself right now (Sorry, G!) -- and why my wife hates me because she's having to shoulder like 96% of the entertaining-Ben duties (Sorry, Tzipora!) -- but it's just going to be an ugly July.

More as I have time -- now to take a shower, and maybe pretend I'm a human being entertained by some recreational activity for an hour or two before I sleep...

-B