This is My Next, Well What Exactly?

Yes, his name is really Al

2011 marked several significant milestones for me.

I turned 40, Charlene and I celebrated our 10th anniversary, December marks 5 years at Info-Tech for me, our basement, begun October 2009 will finally be fully finished

Also, my hands-on, day-to-day involvement with All New Comics ended.

It’s been six years since I joined up with Peter to form All New Comics, Canada’s Online Comics Superstore. In that time a ton has changed for me.

Char and I had two kids, moved from Ajax Ontario to London (where I’m 10 minutes away from two great comic shops,and a lunch time walk from two more), I have a new job with tons more responsibility, and I have less and less time for other stuff, all the while I’m trying to figure out what my next challenge will be.

Meanwhile the industry has changed, with stores closing, entire lines of comics being rebooted, and of course digital

We did some pretty super-cool things and I think it’s safe to say we changed the Canadian Comic Shop landscape in several ways, most significantly by servicing remote areas like Nunavut, where our lone customer there was 6 hours away from the nearest shop!

I am not gone, far from it. I’ve been transitioning with Pete since June, and he handles about 90% of stuff now. I will keep my hand in the marketing stuff (monthly updates, Facebook and Twitter stuff), and I’ll make sure the site’s code stays humming along, but the days of me responding to emails at 2am are likely over.

For our customers, nothing really changes, other than Pete responding to more emails than me. He’s handled most of the business for the last three years. You can expect the same quality of service, and the same awesome comics will still go out with the same attention to detail in the packing of orders.

What’s next for me? The New Ninjas and I are working on something cool that we hope to tell folks about soon, and I have an idea or two of my own up my sleeve, and of course Char says I should relax as well

I guess the best thing to say is stay tooned!

New Comics Preview for December 2010

Dark Horse Comics Let Me In

Here’s a little peek at what’s shipping in December from publishers big and small. As always, make sure you get your pre-orders in to All New Comics as soon as possible to ensure you get everything you’re looking for.

DC Comics: The Batman Hush – Unwrapped Deluxe Edition HC presents all 320 pages of Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee’s awesome Hush story featuring Lee’s artwork in pencil form. If you’re a fan of art, this is a book for you, $39.99.

There are a pair of slighly off the wall Green Lantern specials this holiday season with both the Green Lantern Larfleeze Christmas Special, and Green Lantern Plastic Man Weapons of Mass Deception.

Marvel - There’s a brand new Heroes for Hire group in the Marvel Universe, Wolverine, the Best There Is, a brand new series starring everyone’s favourite Canucklehead. There’s three more Chaos War one-shots this month with the all new Chaos War X-Men, Chaos War Ares, and Chaos War God Squad stories telling the tale of Marvel’s pantheon going rogue.

Finally, for those looking for a good workout, check out Thor by Walter Simonson Omnibus HC, 1192 mortal crushing pages of Simonson greatness, including Frog Thor! $125.00

Dark Horse: Let Me In: Crossroads, a prequel to the film of the same name. The new Conan series is called Conan: Road of Kings.

Image – There’s a new underwater superhero from Image in MarineMan, while The Art of Todd McFarlane The Devil’s In the Details HC, it’s 300 pages of McFarlane art for $64.99. This will be limited to only 5000 copies, so make sure you pre-order this one.

Other Publishers: Stan Lee’s Boom Studios superhero universe continues with Stan Lee’s Starborn, The Lady Death revival gets underway with an all new Lady Death #0, 90′s independant superhero darlings Next Men get a new lease on life from IDW with the all new John Byrne’s Next Men series, and Green Hornet’s revival continues to be collected with Kevin Smith’s Green Hornet V2 144 page HC from Dynamite collecting issues #6-10.

After the jump…the big fat list!

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New Comics Previews for November 2010

Dark Knight

Well, it’s the end of September, which of course means we at All New Comics are thinking about November’s comics.  There’s loads coming out, and there’s plenty of stuff to stock up on.  From the end of my favourite series of Hardcovers (Starman Volume 6 comes out this month, putting a bow on the Starman series), to some new Bat Titles.  There’s something for everyone this month.
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New Comics for September 2010

Aqualad makes his debut in Brightest Day #10

It’s the middle of summer, so of course, our minds wander to the month of September, when we go back to school, back to work, traffic gets busier, and a ton of new comics come out.  This is my monthly look at the Diamond Previews catalogue. If you’re a subscriber at All New Comics, make sure you visit the Subscriptions area to update your subscriptions before Monday July 26th.

Dark Horse has a new Terminator series starring Kyle Reese in 1984 during the first Terminator movie.  Written by Zack Whedon (brother of Joss) Terminator 1984 reads like a collection of storyboards for lost scenes from the Terminator movies (according to Comic Book Resources). Speaking of all things Whedonesque, Serenity The Shepherd’s Tale is a 56pg hardcover one-shot that finally reveals Shepherd Book’s past…written by Joss and Zack Whedon.  For something a little different, give Eric Powell’s (of The Goon fame) new book Billy The Kid’s Old Timey Oddities and the Ghastly Fiend of London a shot, it’s a 4 issue mini-series with Goon backups!

DC Comics gets things started with a series of Army-related one-shots including Our Army At War, Weird War Tales (by Canada’s own Darwyn Cooke), Our Fighting Forces, G.I. Combat, and Star Spangled War Stories. Marv Wolfman and George Perez’s long awaited graphic novel New Teen Titans: Games finally gets published in a 144pg Hardcover.  Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray take on The Freedom Fighters in a new ongoing series.  Grant Morrison’s awesome work on Batman continues to get collected in Batman & Robin Batman vs Robin Deluxe Edition HC (collecting issues 7-12 of Batman and Robin) with art by Canadian superstar Cameron Stewart among others.  Also check out the new hardcover edition of Legion of Super-Heroes The Great Darkness Saga Deluxe Edition HC (collecting issues 284-296 of LOSH and Annual #1), and Gotham City Sirens: Songs of the Sirens HC (collecting issues 8-14 of the series)

Vertigo brings us How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less HC, writer/artist Sarah Glidden’s travel memoir of her trip through Israel.  Fables gets another collection with Fables The Deluxe Edition Volume 2 HC, collecting issues 11-18 and Fables The Last Castle from the Eisner award winning series

Marvel brings us a bunch of good stuff.  Captain America Patriot, a 4 issue mini-series from Karl Kesel and Mitch Breitweiser.  Heroic Age 1 Month to Live, a 5 issue weekly series following Dennis Skyes, who has one month to live, and super-powers to change the world.  Alex Ross and Christos Gage bring us a new Invaders series

Simone Bianchi draws Thor as you’ve never seen him before in Thor: For Asgard, a 7 issue mini-series which sees Thor trying to return Asgard to glory.

The X-Titles get another shake-up, as X-Men Curse of the Mutants gets into gear with 2 one-shots (Smoke and Blood, and X-Men Vs Vampires).  Wolverine: The Road to Hell begins a big change for Wolverine and his clan of clones/sons, and murderers.  Wolverine himself gets a new #1 (if you get the current Wolverine series, we’ll continue you with this one), X-21 gets a new ongoing series, and Wolverine’s son Daken: Dark Wolverine gets a new ongoing series.  Be sure to catch up on your X-Men lore with X-Men: Second Coming HC, it’s a deluxe oversized hardcover clocking in at 344 pages, collecting the entire Second Coming epic.

This year’s surprise superhero hit Kick Ass gets a comic sequel in Kick Ass 2, with the original team of Mark Millar and John Romita Jr reuniting.

Image brings us Skullkickers, a new fantasy action comedy in the tradition of Army of Darkness.  Robert Kirkman brings Invincible’s Science Dog to a one-shot of his own, and the very popular Liquid City gets a sequel in the Liquid City Volume 2 OGN, 312pgs of terrific stories by creators from Southeast Asia.

Other publishers:

Archie’s marriage gets collected in a really great looking slipcased edition (200pgs of goodness for only $24.95) in the Archie Marries Slipcased HC.  From Archaia Entertainment, David Petersen returns to the world of Mouse Guard with Mouse Guard The Black Axe, Bongo Studios brings us Bart Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror #16, Aspen brings us Lady Mechanika. Some of Grant Morrison’s early work gets collected in Grant Morrison’s Vampirella SC, and early Vampi comics get collected in the Vampirella Archives Volume 1 HC.  The Best American Comics 2010, a collection of the finest independant comics of the year is guest edited this year by Neil Gaiman.

The big list is below after the jump.

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Why Comic Shops Can’t Afford Larger Discounts

Comics, every kid's best friend

I recently sent out a survey (here is the survey, and here are the results), and one of the choices I let people choose was “give a larger discount”. I also suggested we might start a referral program, and the overwhelming choice there was “give a % discount on my subscriptions”.

Unfortunately I don’t think it’s possible to do either one of those things, but let me explain why I am not ridiculously rich from my comics empire.
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New Comics for August 2010

Yes, his name is really Al

Wow, this summer is just flying by. We saw some of you at the Toronto ComiCon the first weekend in June, and we hope that we’ll see more of you come out to the big August show in Toronto (not only is it Canada’s largest comic show, but it’s North America’s 3rd largest comic show).  More details as we get closer to the date.

Update on the new site
Beta Testers, we got a little busy last month with the show, and I didn’t get a chance to send out that email, but watch your inbox this week. Not already a beta tester? Sign up today!

What’s New in Subscriptions?

Check out the entire list on the site right now, but here’s what we think looks interesting.
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My Comics for November 2009

Copper collected

I put out our monthly email about the great new stuff that we’ve added to All New Comics and I’m this is what I’m adding to my own Comics Pull List.

I’m trying to keep my monthly list pretty much status quo, so I don’t want to add more stuff than I take off (through attrittion every month), but there’s a ton of great stuff coming out in February.
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Fan Expo in review

A veritable flood of fans in front of our booth

August 28th to 30th was the annual Fan Expo Canada (yeah…almost two weeks ago!), and once again All New Comics was there. Initial reports have the attendance pegged at 59,000 people, and I’ve gotta say…it sure looked like about that many people to me.

I got there Friday afternoon (after being busy Friday morning with the framers who were starting our basement renovation), where Pete and Gus had everything set up really nicely.  I checked into my hotel room before heading over to the convention center, having scored an amazing deal at the Royal York hotel.
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See you at the Fan Expo!

Fan Expo Canada

Work is done, and I’m heading home. Tomorrow morning I’m going to set the framing guys up with what we want them to do…and then I’m off to Toronto for 3 fun filled days and nights at Fan Expo Canada, hanging with my nerdly brothers and sisters.

Check out the All New Comics Twitter account for frequent updates. I’m going to try to post pictures from my iPhone all weekend if I can, and of course I’ll update the fun here over the weekend.

All New Comics' almost acquisition

The latest version of All New Comics

A couple of weeks ago I posted to Twitter that we were working on a huge deal that I was really excited about.

Peter and I had an opportunity come out of nowhere which would have allowed us to buy a competitor outright for a fairly small amount of money. I was excited about their website as I really want to move All New Comics forward, but haven’t had the time, and I was excited to post a big press release saying that we had made a major acquisition.

Sadly, I didn’t get to make that announcement.

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