Hey, Folks!
I hope everyone is having a good week. Mine cab easily be filed under “so-so” at this point, but there is the chance it will be redeemed. As some of you may already know, we had a few problems with the comic shipment this week. Nothing catastrophic, but merely a few minor blips that won’t bring ruin upon us, but do make things a little more interesting.
I’m never sure just how interesting the nuts & bolts details of running a comic book shop are to the uninitiated. I mean, on one hand, I worry that most of you are simply interested in coming and having a stress-free moment in your busy day to talk about comic book storylines and to enjoy your hobby. On the other hand, I’ve always figured that if there is a problem that prevents you from coming in and purchasing your weekly fix of comic book goodness then you deserve to know from whence the troubles come. It’s kind of a juggling act because I don’t want my seemingly endless rants to sour anyone on the prospects of visiting the store. I’m always worried that it will become and instance of, “I really want to get the new issue of Batman, but I don’t want to listen to Ed whine for half an hour about how hard everything is”…lol.
So in the interests of not oversharing, but still giving you the information you may desire, all I will say this week is that we had a couple of Diamond shipping boxes that took serious hits to the corners. All this means is that the comics at the bottom of the box got damaged during shipping in a way that makes them essentially unsellable to the condition conscious collector. Unfortunately, one of the damaged books was Spawn #311 cover B which is the McFarlane Chadwick Boseman variant that many of you were looking forward to picking up. It’s not a HUGE emergency as I still had enough copies to cover 95% of folks who preordered it and the damaged copies were available for replacement. Even better news for those of you who may have missed it on Wednesday…the replacement copies are being emergency shipped to us and we should have them by Friday. So, no harm, no foul there…
I’m also sorry to report that we have a complete sellout on TMNT: The Last Ronin #1. For those of you coming in late, IDW, for whatever reason, put in their orders at the printers for this comic before they received our final orders for the title. They guessed at how many they would need to print and they guessed wrong…really wrong. All stores were hit with a 20-25% allocation on the number of copies they received versus the amount they actually ordered. The Last Ronin was already tracking to be a big hit just on the strength of its central concept, but this accidental “shortage” of copies also set off every speculator in America with eyes set on selling the book for 3-4 times cover price Wednesday morning on e-Bay. It was a nightmare scenario and one in which we dealt with as much grace and elan as was available to us. I just want to mention again that while we are sold out of the regular cover 1st printings (we still have a couple of the variants in stock if you’re interested), but we will hopefully have plenty of 2nd printing copies available on its release date of 12/2. This will be shipping in a full two weeks before #2 comes out on 12/16.
On a personal note, I am about to continue my exploration of homemade baked goods this week. I have been on a baking tear since the Apocalypse broke out and have been concentrating on upping my skills. I have taught myself how to make many basic baked goods in the last six months while also upping my game in regards to set skills like cake and pastry. I’ve learned how to make and bake bread, choux pastry, homemade jam, perfected my custards, and can now roll out a magnificent pie crust with little to no problem. Hillman and I have a small get together to attend on Saturday and for the occasion I am trying a new recipe combo that I have never attempted before…an orange cake! More specifically, an orange cake with dark chocolate orange infused ganache filling, with cream cheese frosting partially infused with orange flavor. I never even knew orange cake was a thing, but after watching several seasons of the Great British Baking Show I have learned that citrus-based cakes have ALWAYS been a thing…lol. So, I’m gonna try it out and see how it goes. I’m also going to attempt an actual pumpkin design on the top of the cake so if it turns out I’ll share some pics on the Facebook page. If it doesn’t turn out, well, just forget you read any of this while I am in the corner crying while eating bad cake.
One more thing while I’m thinking about it. A few of you missed the subscription list last week because you couldn’t find it on the Facebook page. I’m afraid this was a combination of Facebook and my own negligence. You see, normally when I cut and paste the subscription form link Facebook automatically generates the sub form picture you see as part of the post. For some reason it didn’t properly display the image last week and I didn’t notice until it was too late to do anything about it. So, in the future if you don’t see the graphic just know that the sub form link is always posted after the EDitorial and the shipping list. Alternately, it also always posted on the front page of Monarch’s website.
That’s it for me this week! I hope everyone has a fun filled and safe Halloween weekend!
See ya in the funnies pages, Kids!
Eddie