Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by retailer Steve Bennett of Mary Alice Wilson's Dark Star Books in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  This week, Bennett talks back to Marvel EIC Joe Quesada.

In a previous column I strongly suggested DC rethink their plans to offer only a reprint of Justice League Unlimited  #1 (just as the TV series was leaving the Cartoon Network schedule) as their contribution to Free Comic Book Day.  Nobody could have been happier (or more surprised) than me to discover they decided to do just that by also presenting us with a reprint of Superman/Batman #1.

Rationally I know that column had absolutely nothing to do with DC's decision, yet it's done nothing but encourage me to sound off even more, even dare talk back to Marvel's Joe Quesada.  Last Friday over on the Newsarama web site in the Joe Fridays feature he talked about DC's upcoming 52 series, chiefly that 'returnability isn't healthy' for the market.  I suggest you go there and read his comments in their entirety, but in the meantime I'd like to refute a couple of his points:

Q:  'The problem is our industry is not built to manage this dynamic.  Retailers are too busy putting up product to go through and pack up inventory and return it.'

B:  As someone who is exceedingly busy, doing magazine returns via Ingrams on a weekly basis doesn't take up that much of my time.

Q:  '...this is still a problem because this is not a marketing tactic it is a change in the very business model that has made this industry work.'

B:  Yes, yes it does, but I'd suggest this business model 'works' better for some than for others.  In the beginning of the direct sales market, retailers took all the risk because they received a considerable discount (because the comics weren't returnable).  But in the beginning direct sales was just a little side business for Marvel, and now we're the horse that keeps their cart in motion.  Maybe this would be a good time for us to talk about our working conditions.

I'm not suggesting all Marvel comics suddenly become returnable, but it would be nice if the publisher took some of the risk, at least when it comes to some of their riskier titles.  If you're so confident about such unknown quantities as Sgt. Fury's Howling Commandos (seriously, did anyone look at this ugly mess because they released it upon the world?) and Sable & Fortune (which was much better, and a much better seller, than I could have imagined), what would it hurt to make at least the first issues returnable?

And finally:

Q:  'So, if a retailer takes an aggressive stance on 52, then that money has to come from somewhere and it will most likely come from books within the mid sales tier and lower.'

B:  One of the things about DC's 52 that hasn't been talked about (to the best of my knowledge) is that DC has considered both the retailers and the consumers by trimming its publishing schedule for at least the first six months of the years.  It's winnowed away several extraneous Batman and Superman titles and stopping publishing altogether titles like Flash, Wonder Woman, and JLA, potentially freeing up a lot of income for their new weekly comic.

Onto another topic on Joe Fridays, he asks what other 'Special Months' (Monsters, Romance, Westerns, etc.) we'd like to see.  As someone with a love of both old comics and genres other than super-heroes, I'd love to see supernatural horror, jungle, kung fu, funny (let's finally see a definitive collection of Powerhouse Pepper) and funny animals (free Ziggy Seal and Silly Pig!).

But mostly I'd like to see a month devoted to Marvel's long history with girls comics, everything from Patsy Walker & Company to reprints of Tessie the Typist, Nellie the Nurse, Blonde Phantom, Sun Girl, Namora and Marvel's innovative format-busting Miss America Magazine. 

Manga has certainly proven comics for girls are financially viable (I bet the 'low sales' of their Barbie comics aren't looking that low these days, especially with the prospect of collecting them into little paperbacks), and while Marvel has repeatedly talked about reviving them, they always get cold feet at the last minute. But then, these 'Special Months' really aren't about reviving the genres in question; they're about having fun at the expense of genres the publisher considers silly or antique, then selling the results to the same audience who buys super-hero comics.

To me, this seems a missed opportunity.  I mean, I was one appreciative old fogey when Marvel released their latest batch of Monster books, but it seems like in a world where kids are still (when does the hurting stop?) crazy about Pokemon and Digimon, I'm guessing that Gomdulla, Goom and Googam have a built-in audience who won't find them silly at all.