Drunken Comics Rage

So it's Wednesday, the most sacred day of the week for comic readers. At our predetermined time of day we all proceed to our favorite place of worship and pay our tithes to receive the good word from our favorite colored jammy heroes. For me the call to temple occurs during a fairly extended lunchtime. I figure the world's major religions get exemptions for prayer time in the workplace, why should we be any different right?

Practically every week without fail the same ritual occurs. As I approach the counter to purchase my weekly reading, the guy behind the counter asks the same question?

“Any changes to your pull?”

It's a harmless question, really. But it gives me a fucking headache every time it occurs. Because if I thought long and hard about it, yes there would be changes to my pull. Drastic changes. Massive changes. Change of epic proportions quite likely. Changes that would likely involve ritual sacrifice of half the shit I'm only sorta enjoying reading but keep buying in hopes it turns around. We're talking wholesale slaughter of a pull list here folks.

But that's a lot of effort to put out on the fly during a lunch hour. Especially when I'm getting hungry.

Like all comic shops worth their weight, my regular haunt offers a discount for carrying a certain quantity of titles in your pull. The discount is all of 10%, but every little bit helps and it's clearly a way for them to guarantee some repeat business and get a fair measure of how they should be ordering. My shop currently gives the discount for 10 monthly titles. The key word there is monthly titles. Just buying ten books a month that includes miniseries and such won't get you there.

As I stated in yesterdays post, I tend to follow writers and artists, not just characters and titles. So while I probably buy 20+ comics a month, coming up with 10 consistent monthly titles for a pull is a little like advanced calculus for me. I rarely change my pull but I pretty well know I'm floating that line right around 10 monthly titles. Truth be told I might even be below the mark by one, but they've been keeping up the discount so I can't complain too much.

But I'm about to anyway.

Just a little.

A few times in the recent past the shop pulled some shady things with how they were counting monthly titles. If a book was consistently delayed for any reason (that never happens as we all know), they change it to a bi-monthly in their records. Doesn't count anymore. Publisher announces a book is getting canceled after issue 12? It's a 12 issue maxi-series in their records now. Doesn't count either. That kinda shit infuriated me when it occurred. Not so much because it was punishing me for decisions made by the publisher, but more because they never told you. You'd basically find out by noticing your 10% was gone one week and then ask to your pull. Once you got the print out, you'd discover their “reclassification”.

Infuriating is an understatement. It's enough to make a guy want to go all Keyser Soze on them.

But I never have. In part because I can't entirely blame them. Because the way the comics market is designed currently, they carry the largest part of the risk for minimal profit margin. With rare exception, the wares they sell are not returnable to the publisher. So they are stuck with the inventory for any title they order even if the “next big thing” ends up not being fit to line a birdcage with. They are quite literally at the mercy of whatever batshit crazy whim the publishers follow with their titles.

So in someways I sympathize with them.

But that doesn't mean I can't fuck with them a little.

So I think next time they ask if I have changes for my pull I will give them a list something along these lines:

• I only want issues of X-Men in which Colossus wins a fight.
• Any issue of Fantastic Four where Reed Richards actually invents something useful, rather than something that puts them team in extreme peril
• The same goes for Avengers books that involve Hank Pym.
• I want to read a Daredevil book wherein Matt Murdock gets to walk down the street with a smile on his face, knowing all his friends and loved ones are safe.
• And finally, I only want DC titles in which someone does not die or a character is not redefined.

Few (if any) of these books exist, but the quest for them will clearly give the store workers a way to occupy time.

Weekly reading list time:

1. Annihilation Conquest Prologue
2. Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America #4 (Spiderman)
3. Hulk #107
4. Moon Knight #11
5. Ultimate Spiderman #110

Tonight's wine is is Lo Tengo 2005 Malbec.

Filed under: DVO Reading Rage, General Comics Rage