Two recent additions to the sidebar are blogs of guys who have recently returned to reading comics after too long of an absence:
Kurt, over at Return to Comics, has started reading comics again after having been out of the game for twenty-five years (except for a prief daliance with Image ca. 1993), and Zilla, Comics Junkie comes back into the fold after a 15-year hiatus.
Not sure if it means anything or not, but it's a good sign if some of the lost sheep can come back into the fold. In terms of variety of material available, this is probably the best that comics have ever been (if if that variety very often has a hard time finding a market). These guys have many years worth of good stuff to seek out.
Friday, 1 July 2005
Runaways Contest - Final Day!
Today is the last day to send in your entry for the YACB Runaways Contest. Grand prize is the first 3 Runaways digests, collecting the entire 18-issue run of the first series, and second prize is the first 6 issues of the series in comic book form. Details for entering are here. Entries are due by 11:59pm EDT today (Friday, July 1, 2005), and the winners will be announced early next week.(A big YACB thanks to Dave, Gordon, and Johanna for helping to promote the contest.)
Thursday, 30 June 2005
Also New This Week
In my New This Week for this week, I totally forgot to mention the collection of Don Rosa's The Life and Times of $crooge McDuck from Gladstone, for no better reason than I skipped over it on the NCRL.I also neglected to mention Jane Smith Fisher & Kirsten Petersen's WJHC: On the Air collection from Wilson Place Comics, because it wasn't even on the NCRL, but it showed up in my big box-o-comics from DCBS today anyway.
Death of a Comic Book Store
At the end of business today, The Underworld, which up until recently was my LCS of choice, will close its doors for the last time.
Earlier this year I rather publically aired on this blog the reasons why I was dissatisfied with the changes that the store was making and was thus taking my main comic buying business elsewhere (although I still continued to shop there from time to time, especially for gaming needs). I suspect that I wasn't the only one. Although the reason given to me by the manager for the closing was that the landlord was hiking the rent and they couldn't afford to stay in their current location nor could they find another suitable place in town for a reasonable price, I suspect also that there was a downturn in business due to their eliminating the subscriber discount and cutting back on the breadth of comic offerings.
Back in the boom days of the early 90s, there were four comics stores in Ann Arbor, with two more in neighboring Ypsilanti. For years I had been a loyal customer of Dave's Comics, but when they suddenly closed their doors (due to the landlord raising rents past their ability to stay--I'm sensing a pattern here...) I switched over to The Underworld. With the closing of The Underworld today, that will leave just one comic store here in Ann Arbor (the rather good but very inconveniently located indy-focused Vault of Midnight*) and another in Ypsilanti (the front-of-the-catalog Stadium Cards & Comics).
Of course, the big change is that bookstores these days have a wider manga & graphic novel selection than most comic stores. Ann Arbor is the home to the Borders book chain, and we have two Borders stores and a B&N as well, plus several independent bookstores and a plethora of used bookstores (I read somewhere once that Ann Arbor has more bookstores per capita than anyplace else in the world). Bookstores are now the outlet of choice for the casual comic reader, leaving comic specialty stores to fight over the constantly dwindling pool of hardcore comic buyers. (There's also a store in town that specializes in Japanese pop-culture merchandise that caries a healthy stock of manga titles.) While it's sad to see yet another comic store close, I see it as yet another indication fo the shift to a bookstore-oriented GN/collection based consumption model of comics in this country. It used to be that when a comic store closed in an area those comic consumers would be left in a lurch, but with bookstores and the Internet picking up the slack it's no longer the tragedy it once was.
So what course for a local comic store these days? To compete, a comic store has to offer quality service and a deep & broad selection. Ordering from the front of the catalog and sitting around playing Magic (or Yu-Gi-Oh or whatever) all day isn't going to pay the rent. Good comic stores will survive by being the place where those readers who encounter comics in libraries and bookstores will go to find the things they can't get elsewhere, and receive a level of service from a knowledgable staff which knows more about comics than the clerk at the local big box bookstore chain.
But back to me...
Like a buzzard circling a soon-to-be-carcas, I stopped by The Underworld yesterday to pick over their everything-must-go sale. Non-Marvel/DC GNs were going for 80% off, so I picked up about $375 of product for about $75, most of which will either get given away as gifts or donated to the library collection. It's amazing the stuff that I'm willing to buy at 80% off, and equally amazing all the stuff which I wasn't willing to buy even at 80% off.
(* for anyone wondering, our library has been buying the majority of our comics for our new collection through Vault of Midnight.)
Earlier this year I rather publically aired on this blog the reasons why I was dissatisfied with the changes that the store was making and was thus taking my main comic buying business elsewhere (although I still continued to shop there from time to time, especially for gaming needs). I suspect that I wasn't the only one. Although the reason given to me by the manager for the closing was that the landlord was hiking the rent and they couldn't afford to stay in their current location nor could they find another suitable place in town for a reasonable price, I suspect also that there was a downturn in business due to their eliminating the subscriber discount and cutting back on the breadth of comic offerings.
Back in the boom days of the early 90s, there were four comics stores in Ann Arbor, with two more in neighboring Ypsilanti. For years I had been a loyal customer of Dave's Comics, but when they suddenly closed their doors (due to the landlord raising rents past their ability to stay--I'm sensing a pattern here...) I switched over to The Underworld. With the closing of The Underworld today, that will leave just one comic store here in Ann Arbor (the rather good but very inconveniently located indy-focused Vault of Midnight*) and another in Ypsilanti (the front-of-the-catalog Stadium Cards & Comics).
Of course, the big change is that bookstores these days have a wider manga & graphic novel selection than most comic stores. Ann Arbor is the home to the Borders book chain, and we have two Borders stores and a B&N as well, plus several independent bookstores and a plethora of used bookstores (I read somewhere once that Ann Arbor has more bookstores per capita than anyplace else in the world). Bookstores are now the outlet of choice for the casual comic reader, leaving comic specialty stores to fight over the constantly dwindling pool of hardcore comic buyers. (There's also a store in town that specializes in Japanese pop-culture merchandise that caries a healthy stock of manga titles.) While it's sad to see yet another comic store close, I see it as yet another indication fo the shift to a bookstore-oriented GN/collection based consumption model of comics in this country. It used to be that when a comic store closed in an area those comic consumers would be left in a lurch, but with bookstores and the Internet picking up the slack it's no longer the tragedy it once was.
So what course for a local comic store these days? To compete, a comic store has to offer quality service and a deep & broad selection. Ordering from the front of the catalog and sitting around playing Magic (or Yu-Gi-Oh or whatever) all day isn't going to pay the rent. Good comic stores will survive by being the place where those readers who encounter comics in libraries and bookstores will go to find the things they can't get elsewhere, and receive a level of service from a knowledgable staff which knows more about comics than the clerk at the local big box bookstore chain.
But back to me...
Like a buzzard circling a soon-to-be-carcas, I stopped by The Underworld yesterday to pick over their everything-must-go sale. Non-Marvel/DC GNs were going for 80% off, so I picked up about $375 of product for about $75, most of which will either get given away as gifts or donated to the library collection. It's amazing the stuff that I'm willing to buy at 80% off, and equally amazing all the stuff which I wasn't willing to buy even at 80% off.
(* for anyone wondering, our library has been buying the majority of our comics for our new collection through Vault of Midnight.)
Wednesday, 29 June 2005
Adventures of Superman on DVD
TVShowsOnDVD.com has all the details about the release of the first season of Adventures of Superman on DVD on October 18. This is the classic television show from the 1950s that starred George Reeves as the Man of Steel. It also includes the full-length feature Superman and the Mole Men that introduced Reeves in the role.We here at YACB Central are quite stoked. (Do the kids even say 'stoked' these days?) Despite having been born nearly 20 years after the show first aired, we remember watching it in afternoon reruns as a kid. Yes, the production values weren't great, but it was a daily dose of Superman! Now we all can relive the nostalgia.
Tuesday, 28 June 2005
New This Week: June 29, 2005
Based on the NCRL list for this week's comics shipping from Diamond, here are a few things to look for at the local comic shop tomorrow:The Pick of the Week is Penny & Aggie #1 by T Campbell and Gisele Lagace--yes, it's an Alias book. I really liked Campbell & Lagace's now-defunct Cool Cat Studio, so I have high hopes for their new project, which appears to be told in the form of Sunday strips. (There's also an online comic, but this print version I think is all-new material.)
In other comics:
About comics have a new issue of Nat Gertler's Licensable Bear (#2).
Antarctic have the second issue of Oz: The Manga.
Ape Entertainment have Go Go Gorilla & Jungle Crew Summer Special--you can't go wrong with monkeys!
Checker have a trade collection of the old Topps X-Files comics.
DC debut the Moore/Moore/Repion reworking of old British super-heroes that no one else remembers in Albion #1. There's a trade collection of Matt Wagner's Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman: Trinity; an eigth collection of Lucifer; the Authority Lobo Spring Break Massacre one-shot; and new issues of City of Tomorrow (#3), Hellblazer (#209), JLA Classified (#9), The Losers (#25), The OMAC Project (#3), Planetary (#23), Seven Soldiers: Shining Knight (#3), Solo (#5), and Wonder Woman (#217).
Del Rey have the first volume of a new manga series, Perfect Day for Love Letters (sounds like Shojo!); and the latest volumes of Negima (vol. 6), Othello (vol. 4), and Wallflower (#4).
FC9 have the debut issues of Genie and Hell, Michigan. Yes, there really is a town named Hell here in MI. We also have a town named Paradise--sort of balances it all out.
Hyperion have the first volume of Disney's W.I.T.C.H. manga (although mine arrived last week...)
IDW debut Angel: The Curse and have the second volume of The Complete Jon Sable, Freelance.
Image have Jimmie Robinson's Avigon: Gods & Demons GN.
Kenzer & Co. have a new issue of Knights of the Dinner Table (#104).
Kyle Baker Publishing have the debut of Kyle Baker's Nat Turner biography.
Marvel have the debut issue of X-Men: Kitty Pride: Shadow & Flame (Paul Smith art!) and new issues of Machine Teen (#2) and Runaways (#5).
Viz have the seventh volume of the second edition of Fushigi Yugi.
Plenty of good stuff this week. Happy reading!
Runaways Contest Reminder
There are less than four days left in the YACB Runaways Contest. Entries are due by 11:59 pm EDT this Friday (July 1).
Response has been pretty underwhelming so far, so at this point your chances of winning are pretty good. But you have to enter to win...
Response has been pretty underwhelming so far, so at this point your chances of winning are pretty good. But you have to enter to win...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
