Hey, Folks!
Well, that’s one holiday down and one to go before everything can get back to normal! Or, in my case, a semblance of normality. When you work in the comic biz everything eventually boils down to a rigorous weekly schedule and just one frakata holiday can throw everything into a tailspin and this time of year I’ve got two that screw everything up. I want to remind everyone that next week’s new comic day will remain Wednesday and that for the first time ever I will haul my hungover @$$ into the store from 12-4 to attend to your comic buying needs. Tired of Quality Family Time by Wednesday? Monarch Comics is the place for you!
I hope everyone had a good Christmas this year. It was a pretty good one for me despite my (deserved) reputation as a curmudgeon and a Scrooge. Hill and I visited my good friend Wendy’s grave site in the morning, visited his mom, went to see the car wreck of a movie musical Cats, watched the latest episode of The Great American Baking Show, and had a lovely dinner courtesy of my roommate David. Well, I had a lovely dinner…Hill ate his usual baked sweet potato. I enjoyed the extremely tasty roast leg of lamb…lol.
By the way, if you were tempted to go see Cats in the theater let me just warn you off right now. I am decidedly NOT a fan of the original musical, but I am a dedicated “Swiftie” so I had to go to see Taylor’s movie debut. Also, I am a movie masochist and I needed to see for myself just how bad it could possibly be. I am pleased to report that it exceeded all of my expectations and just might be the worst movie I’ve seen all year and I’ve seen some stinkers. I lost count of the times my gaze swiveled over to Hillman and we shared a shocked What the %^&# glance during some of the more bizarre sequences, including the Rockette-inspired cockroach dance sequence with creepy CGI faces painted onto the roaches while they get randomly eaten by the cat characters. It was a strange experience as I kept feeling a vague sense of embarrassment watching Dame Judi Dench and Sir Ian McKellen stumbling shellshocked through the musical wreckage in display. It felt like watching some pretty advanced elder abuse. The tap dance scene was pretty good though…
I also took my Dad to see the new Star Wars movie. I won’t get into any specifics as I don’t really feel qualified to comment on it from a fan perspective as I’m not really much of a Star Wars fan and my expectations were pretty low going into the theater. That being said, I found it amazingly entertaining…far more so than I had anticipated. It wrapped up 40 years of filmmaking in a somewhat satisfying way and I was never bored, except during the 40 minutes of trailers and commercials before the film started that was the cinematic equivalent of a forced march through 10 miles of knee deep snow. My Dad took me to see the first Star Wars picture back in ’77 and it felt strangely satisfying to watch the final chapter together. I will say that it beat the hell out of The Last Jedi in terms of simple entertainment. I do have ONE question though. Why did the final character (no spoilers) end up back at that $#!%hole of a planet Tatooine? Lol
I’m not expecting to be too busy this week as there are only a handful of new titles this week and most of them are small quantities and are already nearly sold out. One title I apparently under anticipated was Marvel’s Incoming #1, the sequel to Marvel Comics #1000 and 1001. I based my orders on the sales for #1001 and we are already at a sell out. I suspect I might need a few more copies and I do have some in the works, but because of the vagaries of holiday shipping I won’t see them until next week. So if you wanted an Incoming #1 then please let me know and I will do my level best to get a copy of it for you.
One final reminder and then I will get to completing my December initial orders. Monarch Comics’ annual Post-Holiday Sale will be begin on January 1st and will consist of 25% off hard covers/trade paperbacks, 25% off wall display books, and 50% off the back issue boxes. Additionally, the dollar boxes will become 3 for a $1 boxes for the month of January.
Oh, wait! One more final thing…the regularly scheduled Monarch Comics…AT NIGHT Facebook Live show will be recorded/broadcasted at 5pm on Tuesday night rather than the usual 7pm time. This is because we close at 5pm on New Year’s Eve and I have dinner reservations for 7pm…lol.
Happy New Year’s, Folks!
Eddie