Talk the Talk, Walk the Walk is a weekly column by Kendall Swafford of Up Up Away! in Cincinnati, Ohio.  This week, Kendall looks at the question of comic final order cut-offs, along with a potpourri of other thoughts.

Hello again!  What started as a one-week break for a short family weekend in the mountains somehow turned into a month-long sabbatical from column writing.  When I returned from my vacation, I'm suddenly staring down the barrel at days and days of catching up, which turns into Thanksgiving and Black Friday, which somehow leads us to... right now.

Let’s talk Final Order Cutoff for a moment, shall we?  As I’m sure (well, I HOPE) most of you will agree, FOC might be the single best change in the ordering process to come along in the last 20 years.  Trumped only by the impending early release program, FOC is invaluable to me.  At its simplest, it’s a way to right the wrongs built into the advance-order commitments we’re all forced to make month in and month out.

Earlier this year, when IDW was anointed to the status of Premier Publisher with Diamond, the promise of IDW being added to FOC was made, as soon as some programming hurdles were overcome.  As the long-standing Premier Publishers (Marvel, DC, Dark Horse & Image) are all "brokered" publishers, meaning DCD is only a sales agent, they do not purchase inventory from the Big 4, they somehow interact differently with Diamond’s ordering/purchasing systems than a non-brokered publisher does.

It was also put forth by Diamond that other, smaller publishers would be able to join FOC at that time, once the programming changes were in place.  So, here we are, it’s nine months later and… nothing.  Not a word has been spoken about the matter, and that’s where my frustration begins to set in.  We saw it earlier this year with the day early delivery program; months and months of silence, waiting and wondering until a proclamation is made.

It would be nice if we were kept in the loop, is all I’m saying.  If Diamond would just say "We hit a few snags along the way, we’re hoping for a first quarter 2011 launch" or "Thanks to day-early delivery, we’re waiting until the dust settles from THAT to add IDW to FOC" or SOMETHING.  Diamond can be secretive to a fault, and I fail to see why.  God knows it can't be because the competition might find out what they’re up to!  Nine months of silence on an important issue such as this is maddening.  I’d call it unacceptable, but that would imply we have some matter of recourse, which we don't.  But a little bit of communication goes a LONG way.

Beyond the programming delays, I’m concerned about where the line might be drawn regarding which publishers will be eligible for FOC.  Beyond IDW, BOOM! (Hey Chip!), Dynamite, and maybe Zenescope, there aren’t many others I want to add to my weekly workload.  Obviously, the bigger the store (or chain) the higher the stakes for accuracy in ordering, so maybe many smaller publishers on FOC would be a benefit to some.  But my fear is that too many publishers on FOC could cause me to spend too much time tweaking orders on a weekly basis.  Suddenly it could feel like we’re completing our monthly Orderpak orders every week!  "Just ignore those smaller publishers then!"  Yeah, I hear you sayin' it.  Easier said than done, I’m surmising.  So, does Diamond decide by market share?  Or open invitation to all?  Could we as retailers opt in/opt out the publishers we want to see?  Either way, I’m looking forward to the change, I just hope it’s soon!

*****

I thought I'd take a few minutes to touch briefly on recent happenings:

Thanks to BOOM! for both Darkwing Duck and Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers.  Both are performing very well relative to the rest of the Disney/Pixar lineup, which as a whole has been fantastic!

Thanks to DC Comics for recent editorial changes.  You know what you did, and it was the best for all concerned.

Is everyone hearing this next sentence, or is it just me?  "Wow, they have a comic book for The Walking Dead already!?"  Either way, love the show, love the sales bump.

Marvel needs a hit, desperately.  While I’m thrilled to see Marvel come to their senses and start scaling back the line, there seems to be a general apathy in my store toward most of Marvel’s output.  When Ozma of Oz outsells every X-Men title on the shelf, something’s gone horribly wrong.  But I gotta say thanks to Marvel for continuing the Oz line.  Probably the single best book they publish!

'Til next week... same Bat-Time, same Bat-Channel!

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