Tuesday, June 05, 2007

What you've Been Waiting For

Here we are once again - time to look at the weekly Diamond shipping list and see what comics have been collecting dust, so to speak. They're not all late - some just have larger gaps between issues. But, some of course are late for one reason or another.

It's a pretty short list this week! Only 4 comics that we're getting in tomorrow have gone longer than seven weeks in between this issue and the one prior.

Just making the cutoff this week is Breathe #2 (Markosia). This is the story of a young Chinese girl who goes off to pick flowers and when she returns she finds her family has been killed - could it be a local gang, or someone else close to the family? We didn't sell any copies of issue #1, and I think we just pulled it off of the shelves last week. So, if you're interested in checking it out and keeping this book from being dropped from the comics we order, you might want to check the $1 bin for issue #1 and pick up #2. The first issue came out on 4/11/07.

The Lone Ranger #6 (Dynamite Entertainment) is finally coming out this week. This has been a consistently good comic book - not the Lone Ranger you watched as a kid! If you missed the first five issues, you're probably not alone - it sold out quickly and it seemed like in our store no matter how many more we ordered it continued to sell. The paperback collection of the first five issues should be coming soon though, so don't worry! Issue #5 came out back on March 14th.

Templar Chronicles The Heretic #2 (Markosia) has seen a gap of nearly 3 months between issues - the first issue hit shelves on March 7. "Adapted from the best selling novel by Joseph Nassise, THE HERETIC is about an ancient army...reborn. The destruction of the Templar commanderies has sparked a full-scale investigation." I thought it sounded great in the solicitation, but when I read it I couldn't even finish it - and I almost always finish comics. I don't know if I was just expecting a different story or if the writing was really that awkward, but I, unfortunately, didn't like this comic book. You might feel differently though - although I believe this is another comic we didn't sell a single #1 issue of.

The final issue of Sock Monkey: The Inches Incident (Dark Horse) is coming out tomorrow. The third issue was released back on February 7. It seems like each of the four issues of this mini-series took a bit longer than the one previous. We ordered this back in January, so we should have received it in March or April at the latest.

It looks like the long lag time comics are all indie books this week. Dark Horse is probably the largest publisher of the bunch, and lately has really had some printing and deadline issues. Although I'm happy to announce that they've FINALLY gotten more copies of FRAY (Joss Whedon) into Diamond's warehouse. Markosia is one of the newer publishers, and so far it looks like their books have garnered little interest in the shoppers at my store, so we probably won't be ordering too much from them. The Big Two (Marvel & DC) seem to have made it one week without a single book making my list. I'd say the tide is turning, but I just got Marvel's weekly retailer email and this week's list of delayed books is fairly long.

What I'm reading:
AVENGERS INITIATIVE #3
BIRDS OF PREY #107
BLACK SUMMER #0 (OF 7)
COUNTDOWN 47
DARK TOWER GUNSLINGER BORN #5 (OF 7)
DETECTIVE COMICS #833
DYNAMO 5 #4
JACK OF FABLES #11
LONE RANGER #6
SPIDER-MAN LOVES MARY JANE #19
STRANGE EMBRACE #1 (OF 8)
WELCOME TO TRANQUILITY #7

4 comments:

Unknown said...

my husband is a member of ComicsPRO. I attended a few of the events at the Las Vegas summit.

There was one black retailer in the room. Derick, the owner of Comics Oasis in Las Vegas.

Lisa said...

K,
I think I've met Derick at one of the Diamond Summits in the past. He is definately one of very few minority owners out there, as you saw at the ComicsPRO summit.

Anonymous said...

The time between issues is not our fault on Heretic. It was delivered to Diamond over 6 weeks ago. Check ebay...it will show copies sold over the past weeks from England, where it was distributed. It is very frustrating. I am sorry that Heretic isn't to your liking. We try. Hopefully, you'll like 13 Steps, a book I am writing with Phil Hester...or maybe you had a chance to check out Of Bitter Souls or Smoke & Mirror? I also am writing a KONG book for the fall. Hopefully something will grab ya! :)

Lisa said...

Chuck - not sure if you'll come back to read this or not, but I hope so. I have read Smoke & Mirrors and enjoyed that! Was it Bitter Souls that changed publishers after the first or second issue? I can't remember exactly if that was the one or not, but I think I read the first issue or two.

I am working on collecting information from indie publishers like yourself concerning the difficulties working with Diamond. If you could maybe email me with your contact information I'd love to ask you a bit more about the experience.