Bill Jemas, one of the wonderful head honchos at the House of Reconstituted Ideas, has now gone one better with us low IQ retailers.  In his recent comments in response to Heidi McDonald's questions, he pointed out that the top class retailers agree with Marvel's no reprint policy; ergo, those who don't agree are lower class retailers.  Since our IQ and status are so low, it's probably fair to assume that our thoughts and opinions regarding the industry are as unimportant to Jemas now as they have always been.

Marvels' no overprint policy is endorsed by retailers? -- not by any I know, that's for sure.  And what about DC?  Well, when Diamond failed to fill my initial order for issue #4 of Y - The Last Man, DC came through.  The wonderful Vince, DC's finest rollerblading staffer, managed to scrounge up the 13 copies I needed.  I can now take care of my customers needs.  The most amazing thing is that DC is sending me these copies free of charge, which was totally unnecessary for them to do.  Not only have they strengthened their good will with me, but indirectly, they have forged a stronger link between themselves and their end user customers, the fans who buy and read their books.  I will pass these books on to my customers at no cost as well, so that DC's generous action garners the maximum results.

In contrast, I cannot order any copies of Marvels' Fantastic Four issue that recently came out which touchingly dealt with Ben Grimm's Judaism.  Not only could I sell more copies of the book on the basis of its' strong story content to general readers, but I might have been able to turn some non-comic reading Jewish neigbors onto comics with that issue, if I could only get more.  Of course, this issue is the exception to Marvels' current level of editorial quality.

Check out Marville #2 for instance, in which a nasty racial slur is delivered by Iron Man.  Or the MAX line, which instead of primarily trotting out new characters in vibrant, alternative storylines, decided instead to mostly use Marvels' existing cache of characters and portray them as potty-mouthed mysoginists and psychosexual freaks.  What Marvel initially touted as an intelligent and challenging line of books ala the very best of the Vertigo line has turned out to be a bunch of salacious nonsense.

It may be true that Marvels' shareholders are happy for the time being as sales numbers continue to increase.  But those increases are mostly due to retailers ordering extra copies in case they need them, since they know they cannot get them from Marvel a second time.  Retailers orders may have gone up, but so have the number of leftover copies on their racks.  I don't believe Marvel has created any new readers with their no overprint and other policies; it's just that some editorial changes intrigued some older readers enough for them to try certain titles again.  Mass market advertising brings in new people and retailer outreach and enthusiasm helps to keep some of them coming back.  Marvel sales will dip again the minute they stop forcing retailers to buy extra books as a safety hedge.  Let's see what the shareholders think then.

And what about us low IQ, low class retailers?  Well, we'll just continue to hope that one day Marvels' stated version of reality actually comes to pass -- a reality where they really care about all their customers and not just their shareholders; a reality where Marvel once again has renewed corporate vision and truly new and creative ideas.  But I fear that's not likely anytime soon.