Hey, Folks!
Welcome to the first ever EDitorial with me, your stunningly handsome narrator, as the Lord and Master of ALL I survey! It’s been an interesting week. You’d think that after all of these years of getting prepped for The Takeover that I would have been pretty much ready for anything, but you would be wrong. I have been surprised and delighted by the amount of goodwill and support that I have received from all of you and I can’t thank you enough for making the beginning of my reign so very, very successful. Saturday, the first official day of my tenure, was draw droppingly busy. I was thrilled to see everyone…from the folks jumping in feet first to take advantage of the big sale to all of you who stopped by just to congratulate me and wish me luck. Honestly, it was moving and at the end of the day I was tired yet content with a job well done. I also want to thank everyone for giving their patience over the last couple of days as I wrestled with the new cash register system as well as dealing with a mob of comic hungry customers solo. You’ve all been fantastic to me and I hope that over the next dozen years I can continue to give you the customer service and support that Monarch Comics has strived to present to the public for over 30 years.
The Annual Post-Holiday Sale has begun as a roaring success pretty much right out of the gates. The back issue boxes that were fairly bursting with the new stock I’ve been adding during the end of Steve’s reign are already starting to slump and so I am going to be giving my attention to restocking them just as soon as I find a spare moment (HA!). I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to help people fill holes in their collections at such discounted prices. I’ve also been restocking the Dollar Boxes (now 3 for a dollar during the sale) and reaction to that has been heartening as well.
One of the biggest issues that I’ve has since last week has been literally just finding the time to get anything done! I mean the most jarring thing about my job has been the naïve realization that my old way of getting things done, like the shipping list or initial orders or whatever, has been upended as I also attempt to help customers and start the big clean up of the store in preparation for this Spring’s proposed remodel of the store. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day! Also, I’ve now become aware of the weird phenomenon of how every time I go to do something it magically unveils five other things that need to be done as well! For instance, on New Year’s Day the very first thing I endeavored to get done was the replacing of the old cash register system with the new one. It seemed like it would be a simple task as I had already assembled the new machine in the back room to test its inner workings and all of the technical functions were worked out ahead of time. But first I had to disconnect the old register and the credit card machine and then I had to get rid of the old refrigerator. But wait…there’s more! After moving the old refrigerator I discovered a dusty mess that had to be cleaned out as well as 40 minutes of untangling old cords to previous cash register. Then came the counter clean up and the setting up of the new system…which then revealed that the cord from the new printer wouldn’t reach the plug which required a trip to WalMart for a new extension cord. And don’t even get me started on how long it took me to remember that the new printer had an on/off button! Apparently this regime change is going to take a little more work then I ever expected…lol.
One of the first things I have done is spending a good five hours on Monday rearranging the comics on the “Recent Releases” rack and the tall white comic racks. With all due respect and love to Steve, the 90’s era racking of comics by subject matter (for instance, all the Batman related titles grouped together) was no longer working for me. It was a great system while the major comic companies were promoting the grouping of titles, but 20 years later it morphed into a confusing mess on the rack. Honestly, the main reason for the reorganization had less to do with customers (although the was important too) and more to do with streamlining my inventory procedures. It is just way easier for me to keep track of titles if the order they are in on the racks matches the order that they appear on my invoice as well as my inventory spreadsheets. So for those of you who are long standing customers I want to take this opportunity to let you know that everything is on strict alphabetically order on all of the comic racks. Of course, the hard covers and trade paperback selection will eventually get a pretty extreme makeover, but it is one of those things that will have to wait until I can get to it…hopefully soon.
Speaking of our hard cover/trade paperback selection I think it’s time to address some of the holes in our collection that people are starting to notice. There are a couple of forces that are affecting the industry right now and that are contributing to my inability to keep certain titles in stock. I know that you must be as tried of hearing it as I am of saying it, but the current Covid crisis is directly or indirectly responsible for a great deal of it. From what I’ve been lead to understand all of the comic book publishers, both great and small, have been dealing with trying to juggle getting their comics and trades printed by an industry that has yet to catch up after the shutdowns of the Spring. Titles from Dark Horse, Boom! Studios, D.C. Comics, and Marvel that were once ALWAYS available and in stock are currently going to backorder with alarming regularity along with assurances they will be back in stock soon. I have no idea how optimistic these predictions are, but for the time being I can only assume that we are only weeks away from thing starting to stabilize across the industry.
Another issue right now is D.C. Comics’ library of titles. As some of you know I’ve just starting dealing with yet ANOTHER D.C. Comics distributor this year (the third distributor I’ve been forced to run in the last year) and, frankly, I’m not sure how ready they were to be the “only” D.C. Comics distributor in the states. Now don’t get me wrong…the first shipment I received from Lunar was shipped early and it was impeccably packed with absolutely no damages or shortages. Honestly, it was a beautiful job and I have no reason to expect it was a fluke. The problem, however, lies in the apparent unavailibility of reorders of new titles as well as the shocking lack of D.C. backlist hard covers and trade paperbacks. D.C. Comics current line wide event, Future State, has been promoted pretty heavily over the last couple of months and the first week’s offerings came in and sold out with an almost distressing quickness despite what I considered pretty heavy initial orders. When D.C. was at Diamond this wasn’t a particularly huge problem as reorders were typically available for at least the first week, especially on a series with such heavy promotion. With Lunar, however, that has apparently gone out the window with all of the Future State titles going to backorder in days or weeks before they actually ship out. I’m not sure what the issue is at this point. It could be that Lunar simply puts everything on backorder whether they are actually out of copies or not in order to assess and cover any damages or shortages that get reported…after which they will simply release them back into the system and start filling back orders. It could be that D.C. is no longer going to overprint their titles at all and if retailers don’t order more upfront then they won’t be able to get anymore on the back end. Or it could be that Lunar wasn’t quite ready for the amount of reorders from all of their new customers.
As for the backlist situation, well, I’m not sure what to make of it. There are literally dozens of popular D.C. titles that are no longer available from any comic book distributors. The holes in Lunar’s back list stock are somewhat surprising. Again, no official word on what the problem is, but I’m hoping that it is simply a case of D.C. shunting their stock of back list titles from Diamond and UCS and getting them into Lunar’s hands. I have no clue as to what the hold up actually is and whether or not it will be resolved any time soon. So if you don’t see a D.C. Comics title in stock please ask me about it. I can certainly let you know if the item is currently available or not. I have been keeping an extensive list of back order or unavailable titles that I’m hoping to restock soon.
So Future State has turned into a bigger hit then even I was expecting! At this point I’ve only read Future State: Harley Quinn (loved it!) and Future State: The Flash (only so-so), but the enthusiasm for the new direction of the D.C. universe has been amazing! Most of the titles are sold out here at the store although the last time I checked there were still a couple of copies of Future State: Superman of Metropolis and Future State: The Next Batman on the rack. I want to let everyone know that I have placed reorder on this week’s titles as well as bumps to all of the remaining January shipping books. Of course, as I mentioned above, they all went to backorder although I am living in a World of Hope that they may yet show up. However, as a result, I have decided to limit orders for the Future State titles on a one-per-customer basis until I can be sure to get some more copies in stock. This is to spread out the copies as much as possible to customers who want to check out the new story line. This does NOT apply to customers who special ordered multiple copies/covers before FOC. Thank in advance for understanding my decision on this situation.
Well, customers are starting to stream into the shop so I will take my leave of you and get this as well as the Shipping List/Subscription Form posted. Thanks again to all of your help making Monarch Comics a continued success! Next week I’ll talk a bit more about the remodel, decisions in regards to hiring help, and FREE COMIC BOOK DAY 2021!
Eddie