Scott Moore of Galaxy Comics in Saginaw, Michigan saw John Riley's comments about the limited availability of Captain America #25 (see 'Sharpening the Sword--Captain America Died') and comes to the conclusion that Marvel did not give enough information to allow retailers to order appropriately for this issue:
After reading this again it comes across as much more negative than I planned but, hey, I'm just a negative kind of guy sometimes. Anyway, here we go!
Wednesday night as I was sitting at home I came up with basically the same article that John Riley wrote. Mine may have not been as verbose but, then again, I'm not writing a column... I'm just ranting. I don't want to be just another of 'those guys' that blame Marvel for everything, but come on! How could they have not seen this coming? Does Marvel really like doing things just to annoy and frustrate retailers and comic collectors? Is Marvel really going to sit back and say it's not its fault? Let me go back and read the solicitation for this book... Oh! 'Access Denied!' Well, I guess I should double my orders then. Triple them even! I remember a day, long ago, when there was an Amazing Spider-Man (or Fantastic Four or Avengers or Cap) every single month and you had some idea what the story was about without giving everything away. Did Marvel not know that this would be on all the news networks and in all the papers? If not then who sent out the press releases? If they did know then why didn't they tell us, the retailers? Failing that why didn't they say to themselves, 'This book is gonna be huge! We'd best print a few extra copies for the upcoming surge in demand that our press release is sure to generate!' On Thursday we found out then did overprint the book and we'll get copies... sometime (but not next week).
Does anyone at Marvel have an answer or is it simply another 'You should have ordered more in the first place, you n00b!'
'Leaping from the final pages of Civil War... the life of Captain America! And it a... tell! We can't reveal more... will stun readers and send shockwave... here.'
Yeah... let me triple my orders based on that amazing solicitation. For the last few months I just look at my cycle sheets and order as many of a book as sold the month before. Half the time all Marvel does is list the writer and artist for a book and some hypothetical shipping date so I really don't know anything about what's coming out except whether it is or isn't a Civil War tie-in. It seems like every fourth issue is a groundbreaking, change the universe forever issue. How am I supposed to base my orders on that? Maybe I AM a n00b...
Marvel has to be loving the current state of the market. They don't need to say anything about upcoming books, they can ship product as late as they want, and sales are up across the board. 'Yay' for them ('Boo' for us)! Meanwhile I spent all day Wednesday telling potential new customers that the book is sold out everywhere. I'm going to spend the rest of this week telling potential new customers that the book is sold out everywhere but we are supposed to be getting reorders and *gasp* that Cap isn't really dead. Then they won't believe me so I have to show them pages 36 and 37 of Civil War: The Initiative (no reorders on that book either? Awesome!) and try to explain what happens when Marvel or DC 'kill' a main character and point out that issue #26 is offered in this month's Previews. It won't matter anyway because they saw on CNN or wherever that Captain America is dead and, by golly, he's dead and that book is going to put their kid through college and I don't know what I'm talking about and I'm just hoarding all of the issue #25's for myself so they are going to go to the 'other' comic store and buy it there.
Because, you know, that's what I really wanted to do this week.
I like in today's Talk Back that the only person who didn't put some or all of the blame with Marvel isn't a comic store owner. I guess everyone that's run a store for 10, 15, 20+ years should have OBVIOUSLY seen this coming and if you sold out then, well, you may as well quit because you still don't know how to order books. Funny. Oh well, I placed my reorders for more copies than my initial orders and I'm just hoping that a few of the people I've turned away will come back in a couple weeks to get this book. I've started taking names and numbers so I can contact people when it comes in but these aren't really comic collectors so, as much as I'd like to believe I will make more than $5.98 from each of them, I'm not going to hold my breath. As a final note, I'm really not looking forward to the people that paid $50+ for a copy on e-Bay this week coming in later to try and sell them to me. I missed that window of opportunity to rape people that don't know any better but I'm sure I'll have to pay the price of telling them later that they got screwed. Whee!
The opinions expressed in this Talk Back article are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
