RANT - too much at once

I am working on my list of what's coming out of note this Wednesday, and let me prepare you - it's going to be LONG. There's a TON of stuff. I might have to split up the blog entries just to make it easier to read. Our invoice is almost double last week, and our new this week list is almost twice as long, just to give you an idea of what I'm dealing with here. We're not even sure how we'll fit all the new comics out on the New This Week shelves (which, by the way, can hold up to 42 titles full front). So, I just HAVE to rant about it!

It makes me CRAZY when publishers spread out their books poorly. Why do so many of the “popular” X-Men books come out the last two weeks of the month? For example this week we've got New X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine, X-23 and X-Men this week. And DC's doing the same with Batman this week: Gotham Knights #64 BAtman Jekyll & Hyde #1, OMAC project #1--and the Batman family: Birds of Prey, Robin, JLA, JLA Classified. PLUS a new wave of Batman Hush action figures and several different paperbacks. And, on top of it all, we're also getting the May Previews catalog. WHEW!!!

New publisher Speakeasy Comics has been releasing their books all the same day – and while they are new and only have a few books out, I could see this growing into a problem, so I wrote them and explained how spreading the books out would benefit not just myself and other retailers but also themselves.

Customers only have so much money to spend on comics. And retailers only have so much shelf space (and of course, money). People – retailers and customers won’t spend money to take a chance on something new when there’s just too much already. One comic book retailer, Brian Hibbs, who writes for Newsarama.com, recently went to an independent press convention and told many of the new writers and artists that if they’re not GREAT, they should either get GREAT or find some other line of work, because no one can really afford to take a chance on average stuff when there’s so much out there (this article can be found at: http://www.newsarama.com/Tilting2_0/Tilting16.htm).

The list/lists of new comics is coming soon...