I couldn't help but smile as I read James Furferri's parting comments to Marvel.  It always amazes me when the publishers steam merrily ahead on what looks to us like a runaway train to nowhere; despite the shouts and warnings of those retailers who are only too willing, but able to really provide some insight into how to prevent a big train wreck down the road.  We are at the front lines every single day -- the one thing most of us in the direct market game have going for us is the fact that we are NOT huge corporate conglomerates -- we're small enough to have the time to go and chat with our customers.  We know most of them, know their likes and dislikes.  We talk to new people and known people each and every day, and yet time and again, when the publishers announce the next big thing (can you say The Brotherhood, for example?) and the retailers say, 'Hmm. Doesn't sound promising.' Still they charge ahead.

We hear about the next superhero movie -- the one where they want our hero to lose the cape, wear a black duster, etc, because all the pajamas from the comics just 'aren't cool.'  The retailers will tell them that they may make a decent movie, but it won't really be about that superhero.  The suits then intone solemnly that they are 'not interested in makie a good movie about that superhero, they are interested in selling toys.'  Ooookay.  Then the movie (predictably) tanks, and the suits decry the fact that comic properties just don't sell.  The retailers wink up their sleeves, because we know that if they made a good movie about a comic hero, it would sell fine.

The truth is that many of these disasters could be avoided if the 'Powers That Be' would simply put their ear on the track, which the train comes down every day, and take advantage of the intelligence they could gain from doing it.  The lowly retailer, my friends, has his finger on the pulse of what the consumers REALLY want -- because we know.  We take the risk of trying new stuff all the time.  We see what sells and what doesn't.  Sometimes we're surprised, but not too often.  And still publishers and manufacturers point at the retailers and try to blame us for their lack of sales (as if we DIDN'T want good products we could offer and sell), when if they would just LISTEN to us once in a while, they might not waste money chasing a bad idea, and might actually make money offering something whose time had come -- and how would we know that its time had come?  Because we're face to face with people who have money in their hands every day, who have TOLD US they would buy it if it was available.  I'm not sure this qualifies as inside information, but I know that those of us who actually spend an hour to four hours a week just chatting up our customers have a solid basis and foundation for recommending that certain ideas be pursued, and others be abandoned.

But what do we know?  We're just the dumb retailers.