§ Toronto retailer Chris Butcher live blogs the Previews catalog as he makes his order.

Have you always wanted to know what it was like to be a comics retailer on the day that the PREVIEWS catalogue is due and it’s 2:47pm and you haven’t even looked inside yet? NOW YOU CAN. In a… surprising… experiment for this website, I’m going to liveblog my reactions to the March 2009 PREVIEWS catalogue (for comics and graphic novels and stuff scheduled to ship starting in May, 2009). It’s due today at Midnight and I foolishly called a TCAF meeting for 5:30pm today! Let’s see what happens!


What happens is that Butcher says the things most of us only think. The task is so immense that it must be divided into
two posts:

8:49pm: Page 178: bahahaha. Now you can own an action figure of sad little Wolverine Teen, trying to figure out what the hell those are coming out of his hands. WOLVERTEEN’S ANGSTY AWAKENING. Is it slash? Is it an action figure? No, it’s a mini-mate, the Go-Bots of miniature figures. Comes in a set with Wolverine in Cowboy Hat, Wolverine from Mark Millar’s dark future, and BWS Wolverine-all-hairy-in-a-metal-diaper. At least it is only $16?


And you thought being a retailer was easy!

§ Eddie Campbell vs Ian Rankin.

§ The purchase of a Muppets comic by Roger Langridge forces Fantagraphics’ Eric Reynolds to undergo several epiphanies regarding the purchase of comics periodicals:

(1) Why aren’t there more comics like this? What does is say about modern comics that the closest thing I can find to something I want to buy is a licensed comic featuring characters I haven’t watched on TV in 20 years and have no abiding nostalgia for? By a cartoonist I’d rather ultimately read doing his own stuff, if he could afford to? Why are the editorial departments of mainstream comics so stultified that in 20+ years of Star Comics, Cartoon Network Comics, Archie Comics, etc., I’ve rarely seen anything as unimpeachably professional as this?

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§ We know you are over you know what, but just one more??? Rorschach, via Daniel Spottswood, reviews WATCHMEN.

1 COMMENT

  1. Eric Reynold’s rant is one of the things that annoys me. He works for a comic book company, yet readily admits to not buying any comics (except for this one, apparently) in the last couple of years or so.

    Sure, comics are getting very expensive now and all, but for someone to not even try out one of the many great comics out there today, even if to get to know what your competitors are putting out there, it baffles.