Dan Urazandi of Bizarro World in Davis, California writes in to stress the necessity of a Tuesday release day for the Direct Market and believes the new Scott Pilgrim Vol. 6 TP is a prime example as to why.

The Scott Pilgrim Vol. 6 release clearly illustrates the need for Tuesday shipments.  The discussion is taking far too much time arguing on how to police this so that every comic store releases the same day.  I find this barely relevant as the largest comic stores already have Tuesday shipments and those of us who wait for UPS on Wednesdays do not have a consistent release now.  I've had new comics on the shelf as early as 11AM and as late as 7PM over the years thanks to UPS.  But while we are arguing this Borders and the rest of the Big-Box stores are releasing not just dvds on Tuesdays, but this week they had one of the hottest comics of the year, Scott Pilgrim Vol 6, one full day before the direct market.  This is not a collection but a first opportunity for fans to read this material, and I had several first time visitors on Tuesday looking for it.  The distribution system failed me that day, as I had to turn those customers away.
     
I was aware of Oni's early release program, but it demanded that I purchase Lost at Sea, an unsaleable non-Pilgrim book by O'Malley in either 1:4 or 1:5 ratio, I don't recall.  Unless Borders is also buying one unsaleable book for every four Scott Pilgrim Vol. 6's they took in, this special program does not create a comparable situation.  And we should not have to depend on special programs to maintain what shred of competitiveness we have with the mega-retailers.     
    
What was needed this week was a Tuesday shipment that allowed me to do my job--providing people with the comics they want, when they want them.  Instead, several 20-somethings now think my store is not the place in Davis to buy comics--they think Borders is.  This is only the first of many such debacles unless we stop infighting and start working with Diamond and ressuring them to do Tuesday shipments with some items for immediate release and some held for Wednesday if necessary.  There has been too much focus on policing and fears of the "other comic store" breaking release.  I have a predatory comic shop two blocks from mine, and a Borders two blocks in another direction.  I'm concerned with the Borders--I know I can hold my own in a fair fight.

Every retailer should consider the larger picture.  This is about our tiny industry competing with huge bokstores and big box bargain stores.  ICv2 reported that Scott Pilgrim Vol. 6 ran off over 100k copies; I wonder how many of those went through the direct market, and I really wonder how many were sold on Tuesday by the mega-stores--10,000?  That's a lot of sales that we didn't have access to.  That's a lot of customers being trained that they don't need a comic store to find the comics they want.  If Diamond can do a Tuesday release, lets make it so ASAP, for the imagined negative of some comic stores maybe breaking release doesn't begin to compare with the very real fact that big boxes are releasing before us right now.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.