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Light, but not inexpensive. Still, interesting overall.
- Serenity Better Days #3 (of 3), $2.99
- Batman #676, $2.99:
- Checkmate TP Vol 3 The Fall Of The Wall, $14.99
- Simon Dark #8, $2.99 (because I love Gotham Central, even if I have to deal with a Frankenstein monster pastiche to get there)
- Starman Omnibus HC Vol 01, $49.99 (...oh, the pain, the financial pain. And no, probably not getting it right away.)
- Wonder Woman #20, $2.99
- Young Liars #3, $2.99: probably dropping this one, but we'll see
- Project Superpowers #3 (of 7), $2.99: and that's the first that I've seen that this was meant as a limited series. I wonder if that's just the first story arc, or if something's actually changed, or if I just missed the original statement of it being a limited series.
- Casanova #14, $1.99
- Death Grub (One Shot), $2.99
- Firebreather Series #1, $2.99 (...maybe.)
- Soleil Sky Doll #1 (of 3), $5.99
- Rex GN, $9.95 (containing the last 30 pages of this title. Which I'm pretty sure I want to know what happens, but it's definitely going to be very very grim.)
- Algebraist TP, $14.95 (...maybe. There seems to be a certain amount of confusion as to exactly what this is.)
This is also going to be the first time that my Previews orders are going to kick in. Have to admit, I'm slightly afeared of that.
See, what happened was this: for about ... oh, call it two months in a row, every single week, I'd come in to ye olde comics shoppe and ask, "Oh, did you get X comic from Ape/Oni/Image/Boom/some other small company?" And every month, the answer would be, "No, we didn't think there'd be any interest," or "No, we never even heard of that one." Added to that, every week for a couple months, I'd come in and ask, "So, do you have Y comic?" and they'd say, "No, we only ordered a few copies and they sold out right away." And so, after a couple straight months of this, I was begged -- importuned, even -- to become one of the shop's subscribers, with an actual pull list and a monthly subscription to Previews, and to use the BIG order form.
Now, for those who don't know what it is: Previews is the big catalog o' stuff that direct comics retailers order their stock from. Not just comics, but related magazines, toys ... you know, "stuff". Previews itself is several hundred pages long. The big order form alone (also known as the consumer order form) is generally about 40 pages long, and also serves as a partial index to the catalog. You'd think they'd want to move to an online/automated system if only to keep from doing in several million trees per month, but since Previews itself is also one vast advertising circular ... well, not so much interest in doing away with the catalog proper, thus explaining the staggeringly useless PreviewsWorld.com website, from the consumer side at least. I mean, you can download the order forms, if you lose them, but it would be far more convenient to actually be able to create an order form; if nothing else, something much like The Comic List's Printable Checklist would be immensely useful. After all, somewhere behind that monster catalog stands an actual database that Previews uses to generate the order form. (The idea of that being done entirely manually, in this day and age, doesn't bear thinking about.) DC, Marvel, and the naughty comix for grownups each have their own independent Previews magazine -- DC and Marvel's catalogs are each about the size of a double- or triple-comics issue, and the adult is just this pore poor pitiful thing, with all the vageeners and peepees all pixellated out, but with breastuses poppin' out all over! But I digress. Anyway, the idea, so I gathered, was not only to get me to stop asking, "So, did you get this?" but also apparently to have me be a sort of bellwether for indie stuff, things that other indie minded people might like if they knew the stuff even existed.
And well ... I kind of went slightly mad the first couple months with Previews. Ignored DC and Marvel, because they order the full run of those anyway -- except for Vertigo and Wildstorm, and I think I ordered exactly one Vertigo title -- ignored Virgin and IDW, again because they get everything from those publishers, and loaded up on all sorts of small press stuff. See, though, thing is, they're not only using this as a gauge of demand, it's also a firm(ish) order form. And the first two months, I just ordered with wild abandon, because I forgot that it was a firm orders form. Third month, I was gently reminded, and I added up the total for everything I wanted in the latest Previews, and I swallowed my tongue, and then, after several spelunking expeditions marched down my throat and pulled it back out again, I crossed a few (dozen) items off the list. So from July forward, it'll be more manageable, but May and June will be ... interestingly painful, financially speaking.
- Serenity Better Days #3 (of 3), $2.99
- Batman #676, $2.99:
The first of the BATMAN RIP storyline. I have to admit, I'm not at all sure how long I'm going to stick with it. According to the roadmap published in last week's Detective, it's going to cover five issues of Batman (FIVE MONTHS!), four of Detective, three each of Nightwing and Robin, and two of Batman and the Outsiders. Curiously, "Birds of Prey" isn't involved at all, as they were also absent from the "Resurrection of Ra's al-Ghul" crossover. Are the Birds no longer in the Gotham/Bludhaven area? I suppose that Barbara could be involved through one of the other titles, but having her not be involved at all would be terribly odd. And, of course, we'll see the color and size of Jezebel Jet's dueling refrigerators.
- Checkmate TP Vol 3 The Fall Of The Wall, $14.99
- Simon Dark #8, $2.99 (because I love Gotham Central, even if I have to deal with a Frankenstein monster pastiche to get there)
- Starman Omnibus HC Vol 01, $49.99 (...oh, the pain, the financial pain. And no, probably not getting it right away.)
- Wonder Woman #20, $2.99
- Young Liars #3, $2.99: probably dropping this one, but we'll see
- Project Superpowers #3 (of 7), $2.99: and that's the first that I've seen that this was meant as a limited series. I wonder if that's just the first story arc, or if something's actually changed, or if I just missed the original statement of it being a limited series.
- Casanova #14, $1.99
- Death Grub (One Shot), $2.99
- Firebreather Series #1, $2.99 (...maybe.)
- Soleil Sky Doll #1 (of 3), $5.99
- Rex GN, $9.95 (containing the last 30 pages of this title. Which I'm pretty sure I want to know what happens, but it's definitely going to be very very grim.)
- Algebraist TP, $14.95 (...maybe. There seems to be a certain amount of confusion as to exactly what this is.)
This is also going to be the first time that my Previews orders are going to kick in. Have to admit, I'm slightly afeared of that.
See, what happened was this: for about ... oh, call it two months in a row, every single week, I'd come in to ye olde comics shoppe and ask, "Oh, did you get X comic from Ape/Oni/Image/Boom/some other small company?" And every month, the answer would be, "No, we didn't think there'd be any interest," or "No, we never even heard of that one." Added to that, every week for a couple months, I'd come in and ask, "So, do you have Y comic?" and they'd say, "No, we only ordered a few copies and they sold out right away." And so, after a couple straight months of this, I was begged -- importuned, even -- to become one of the shop's subscribers, with an actual pull list and a monthly subscription to Previews, and to use the BIG order form.
Now, for those who don't know what it is: Previews is the big catalog o' stuff that direct comics retailers order their stock from. Not just comics, but related magazines, toys ... you know, "stuff". Previews itself is several hundred pages long. The big order form alone (also known as the consumer order form) is generally about 40 pages long, and also serves as a partial index to the catalog. You'd think they'd want to move to an online/automated system if only to keep from doing in several million trees per month, but since Previews itself is also one vast advertising circular ... well, not so much interest in doing away with the catalog proper, thus explaining the staggeringly useless PreviewsWorld.com website, from the consumer side at least. I mean, you can download the order forms, if you lose them, but it would be far more convenient to actually be able to create an order form; if nothing else, something much like The Comic List's Printable Checklist would be immensely useful. After all, somewhere behind that monster catalog stands an actual database that Previews uses to generate the order form. (The idea of that being done entirely manually, in this day and age, doesn't bear thinking about.) DC, Marvel, and the naughty comix for grownups each have their own independent Previews magazine -- DC and Marvel's catalogs are each about the size of a double- or triple-comics issue, and the adult is just this pore poor pitiful thing, with all the vageeners and peepees all pixellated out, but with breastuses poppin' out all over! But I digress. Anyway, the idea, so I gathered, was not only to get me to stop asking, "So, did you get this?" but also apparently to have me be a sort of bellwether for indie stuff, things that other indie minded people might like if they knew the stuff even existed.
And well ... I kind of went slightly mad the first couple months with Previews. Ignored DC and Marvel, because they order the full run of those anyway -- except for Vertigo and Wildstorm, and I think I ordered exactly one Vertigo title -- ignored Virgin and IDW, again because they get everything from those publishers, and loaded up on all sorts of small press stuff. See, though, thing is, they're not only using this as a gauge of demand, it's also a firm(ish) order form. And the first two months, I just ordered with wild abandon, because I forgot that it was a firm orders form. Third month, I was gently reminded, and I added up the total for everything I wanted in the latest Previews, and I swallowed my tongue, and then, after several spelunking expeditions marched down my throat and pulled it back out again, I crossed a few (dozen) items off the list. So from July forward, it'll be more manageable, but May and June will be ... interestingly painful, financially speaking.
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The individual pamphlet issues I treat as though they were ... well, pamphlets or magazines. Which is to say, I throw most of them out. It's kind of a waste of money, which is why I don't actually buy a huge number of them -- of the ones on any given week's "maybe I'll buy this" list, I tend to wind up with half or less. On the other hand, most entertainment is technically disposable income per se, so it doesn't bother me a lot to just chuck most of them when I'm done ... although I had to wrestle with it for a while. And the Strange Horizons gig has complicated that a bit; it both leads me to buy more and to keep more around, because I never know when I'll need to talk about something.
The trades and the few individual issues that I keep do, indeed, contribute to moving being such a pain in the ass. In fact, with the exception of a very few items, almost all of the comics growth has come in the last decade, so none of it ever has moved, and I really don't want to think about the pain in the rear that it's going to be to move them someday.
That said, I have an entire room of paperback and hardback noncomics books where my philosophy has shifted from DON'T THROW ANY BOOKS OUT EVER! to "Who will rid me of these troublesome things? Anyone? Anyone? Buehler? Buehler? ... OK, to the trash they go, then!" So I expect my attitude about the comics trades will move as well.
Honestly, if the entire comics industry would move to authorized and easily usable downloadable formats, it would make my life much simpler.