Hey, Folks!
Here I am with yet another interesting week under my belt.
The week started innocently enough. I had a scheduled meeting with the store’s accountant on Monday. Steve has used the same firm since God was a child, so I’ve decided that it is one of those “If it ain’t broke then don’t fix it” kind of things. I figured it would be a good idea to meet with her and get the skinny on exactly what would be expected of me tax-wise and find out exactly what she can do for me. It was a good “meet and greet” style meeting and we identified some things that I needed to do and some things she needed to do and we are meeting again at the end of the month to compare notes. She also helped me make a final decision on where I want to set up the new business bank account.
So, after the meeting, I sauntered over to the bank in order to start the process of setting up a new Monarch account. If I’m being perfectly honest I foolishly thought it would be a fairly simple process. I mean, I just want a place to dump wheelbarrows full of cash. I turns out that it is more of a process than I had considered. A simple request for a bank account turned into a scavenger hunt for a variety of paperwork and triggered several calls to the accountant and my attorney. Who knew that getting vendor’s licenses and tax ID numbers was such an adventure?
Well, I should have known for one, especially after the procedural craziness I went through to get my Dad’s guardianship approved. I started to mentally castigate myself for not starting all of this stuff earlier in the year, but I was ultimately comforted by the knowledge that it probably wouldn’t have gone any quicker six months ago when everything was shut down. Besides, I still have a couple of months to get all of this paperwork together…what could possibly happen to throw a wrench into the process?
Well, that was when the other shoe dropped. I checked the store’s e-mail early in the afternoon while I was putzing around and was somewhat irritated to find out that UCS, our “new” D.C. Comics distributor, was going to no longer be distributing D.C. product after the end of December. You would think, Gentle Reader, that this would have sent me off in a right royal tizzy. I did tend to go on and on about the inconvenience and general chaos of changing distributors back in the Spring when we were forced to make a choice between UCS and Lunar. But you know what? I found out that there is a limit to how irritated and upset I can get about this whacked out industry. I read the e-mail announcing the change and how sorry UCS was and how we had to immediately set up an account with Lunar in order to make sure we had uninterrupted D.C. Comics service. They also included some assurances that any preorders we’ve placed with UCS for items that don’t ship until after December would still be good and that there was a plan in place to transfer our orders. Of course there was no concrete reason given for the sudden change. I mean, there’s rumors making the comic retailer rounds, but nothing has been confirmed or denied. I realized that ultimately it doesn’t really matter to us peons what the reasons are…we just have to make sure that we are signed up with the new supplier. It also serves no purpose for me to get all excited and upset over it. I just don’t have the emotional bandwidth right now to deal with it on that level.
So I have begun the “hoop jumping” segment on the distributor changeover. I’ve opened an account and am currently waiting for the acceptance of my application. It shouldn’t be a big deal. I mean, we purchase several thousand dollars of D.C. comics in any given month and we pay our bills on time so I’m pretty sure they don’t want to do anything to disrupt it. There are some problematic aspects to changing distributors the same month that the business is also changing ownership, but I think I am currently on top of it. I guess I just want to assure you that at this point there is no danger of an interruption of services. I’m going to try and block out some time this week to poke Lunar’s website with the proverbial stick to see how it works, but I just realized that my initial Diamond orders are due today so I’m going to be plugging away at that this afternoon and probably tomorrow morning as well. We will see how it goes.
The long awaited TMNT The Last Ronin #1 is finally going to be coming out next week. Unfortunately, IDW made the disastrous decision to set their final numbers with the printer before the FOC for the title and as a result they have allocated everyone’s orders for the title. This has resulted in Monarch having 15 fewer copies than I originally ordered. Thank goodness I really ordered heavily on account of all of the customer interest in the title. I mean, normally TMNT isn’t exactly lighting the sales chart on fire, but I definitely got the message on the excitement generated by this “Dark Knight Returns”-style take on our beloved turtles. Frankly, I’m not quite sure of how to handle this issue. I mean, if I had gotten my full order I was prepared to just throw our copies out there and let the feeding frenzy begin. However the current situation has churned up even more of the dreaded speculator interest in the title and I have no easy way to curtail this activity. Also, to try to make up for their foolish move, IDW has already offered a 2nd printing of the title, but that will not be coming out until 12/2.
So this is what I’m going to do. I am going to limit the number of copies to “one per person” to begin with and there will be NO exceptions to this policy. I’m also going to only make about half the copies I am receiving available for order on the subscription form this week. What this means is that as soon as I hit that halfway mark I will remove the listing from the form. The rest of the copies we will have for sale will then only be available to walk-in business starting on Wednesday morning. Again, the “one per person” policy will still be in place and if I detect even a hint of chicanery I will shut it down. Please do not bring in a round robin of children, spouses, friends, etc. to attempt to buy multiple copies for resale online. I’m handling this situation in this way to make sure that as many people as possible can get a copy of a popular title, not so I can act as an unofficial distributor for an E-Bay store. I hope that everyone understands the position that I am in. Additionally, if you don’t care what printing you get or waiting an additional month to get it then please let me know and I will order it up for you.
Because there is no rest for the weary, there is another big book coming out next week. Spawn #311 with the Chadwick Boseman tribute cover drawn by Todd McFarlane will also be available. Now this one I took quite a few preorders for before FOC so I should have plenty of copies available. If you ordered the book in advance then I still have your request on file and I will be filling those orders first. Unless you are an established subscription service customer I will only hold your preorder until 11/4 unless you call the store and make other arrangements. I’m only doing it this way because of in the past we’ve ended up sitting on preordered comics for months only to be stuck with them because someone forgot they ordered them or ended up buying them elsewhere. I will be limiting purchases to “one per customer” unless you specifically preordered more than one copy. Once I’m satisfied that all of the regulars have been covered I will lift the “one person customer” limit and you can buy them to your heart’s content. I f you have any questions about this policy (or about the TMNT issue) then feel free to give me a call at the store or message me on Facebook and I’ll help as much as I can.
Some of you may have noticed that the outward changes to Monarch Comics have begun this week as well. Steve kindly went to the trouble to fix something that has been driving me up the wall for years. We are now “officially” no longer “Monarch Cars & Comics” and from this point on we will only be known as “Monarch Comics”. The very capable staff of Fast Signs came by on Tuesday and removed the “Cards &” letters from the sign above the door. I briefly considered renaming the joint “Ed’s Comic Emporium”, but considering that I’ve spent my entire adult life building up and promoting “Monarch” I figured I should just keep it simple. I’m getting ready for the future and it is barreling down on us like a bullet train!
And before I forget I’d like to let everyone know that I will be out of the office on Sunday this week. Hillman is off this week and we decided to go to lunch in Ann Arbor with some friends on Sunday and maybe get some light shopping done. I understand about the rise of the specter of Covid in Ohio and Michigan lately so we will be erring on the side of safety during our travels. In any case, Steve will be covering for me so if you have any questions or problems I will get back to you as soon as I can.
I hope everyone has a great weekend!
Eddie