DC Comics announced nearly a year ago that they would be creating a series of stand alone graphic novels about the major heroes in the DCU, and appropriately enough they started it off with Superman Earth One.
Written by J. Michael Straczynski and illustrated by Shane Davis with colours by Sandra Hope, Superman Earth One is a modern retelling of the Superman Mythos.
For those of you wondering, Superman Earth One is in stock on All New Comics, although you should grab a copy quickly as it has sold out at the publisher and distributor level. Read more
I had an opportunity to get my hands on an iPad today when Mark at work brought his in for some Info-Tech show and tell. Steve Jobs has declared it a “Magical Device”. Arthur C Clarke once said “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Well in that respect, the iPad is magic.
It’s fast, attractive, intuitive, and using it is effortless.
I played around with the Marvel Comics app (which is also available for the iPhone), and it’s pretty amazing.
The presentation is incredible. Comics look pretty much full size, and the whole panel by panel thing works really well, and may actually be a better way to read a comic.
The collection aspect of the app is really good too. It’s a nice layout, and you can easily find the comics you’re looking for.
There’s two knocks. I found the in-comic navigation a little weird. It was very hard to get back to the main menu once you’re reading a comic. Secondly, you will need a seperate app for every publisher right now. There’s no “Comics” app, well there are a few, Panelfly, ComiXology, and soon Graphic.ly, but there’s no single app that has access to all comics.
DC Comics really needs to get in gear on this. They’ve yet to announce ANY sort of a digital initiative, and Marvel is really grabbing headlines with this app launch.
The thing that will push this over the edge is the day that a consumer can buy a brand new comic the day it goes on sale in the Brick and Mortar stores. I’m not afraid to admit I’ll be one of those customers buying my comics on the couch. I’ll still buy some Hardcovers and Trades, but I’d love nothing more than to not have physical copies of comics around my house anymore. They’re a pain in the rear to deal with, and space is at a premium in my house.
Last week I got an email from a prospective new customer for All New Comics asking what condition our comics come in. My business partner Peter prides himself on the way he ships stuff, he puts each comic in a bag and board, wraps a bunch of them together in a bag, puts that bag in a layer of bubble wrap, then puts the bundles of bagged, boarded, bagged, and bubbled comics in a box, fills that box with a bunch of packing paper and ships them out. My comics always arrive perfectly, and we’ve only had about three complaints in the five years we’ve been in business (for literally thousands of orders). Not shabby.
This customer however wanted to know what “CGC Grade” our comics were in, because if they were less than a 9.9 he wasn’t interested in our books.
This is a market I’m not interested in at all, so I told him he should probably get his comics from a brick and mortar store where he can go through a stack of comics and find the ones that meet his exact standards as it’s not something we’re very good at. We ship out good comics with no obvious dents or dings, but what we deliver meets the qualifications of “mint to near mint”.
The Cover has: No creases, no fading, lies flat and has no rolls or curves
The Spine: is straight, staples exhibit no signs of rust, minor bindery tears are acceptable no more than 1/16th of an inch.
Inside: pages have no stains, marks, cuts or tears.
2009 was a pretty good year for comics sales. At All New Comics we saw our month-to-month sales rise by about 80% year over year, with a lot of that coming from new customers.
Our existing customers aren’t demonstrating any of the so-called “event fatigue” which retailers like Brian Hibbs are complaining about, and instead are subscribing to event based titles in record numbers for us, prompting us to place our first triple digit numbers for some titles!
For fun, here’s our top 10 subscription title on All New Comics right now.
Blackest Night – DC Comics 8 Issue Mini-Series
Batman – DC Comics
Amazing Spider-Man – Marvel Comics
Green Lantern – DC Comics
Batman and Robin – DC Comics
Captain America Reborn – Marvel Comics 6 Issue Mini-Series
New Avengers – Marvel Comics
Detective Comics – DC Comics
Captain America – Marvel Comics
Green Lantern Corps – DC Comics
That’s what we’re selling a lot of, but what were my favourites this year? Well that’s a slightly different story. Here they are (in no particular order). Read more
Did I fall asleep? At least for a little while. I’ve forgotten about a bunch of stuff lately, and I’ve got about a dozen half finished posts on my blog here including my Top 40 Comic Runs stuff. I’m back though, here’s another crop of 10 titles (21-30).
This one includes some more modern stuff including Powers, Civil War, and All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder, as well as the first appearance of a couple of titles that will make reappearances in the Top 10 when I reveal those later. Read more
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. Read more
I’ve been thinking about the comics that inspired me when I was younger, and that got me to thinking about what my favourite runs of all time were. This inspired me to write a list.
For the next five weeks I’m going to post 1 group a week. 40-31 are up first, next is 30-21, 20-11, 10-6, and finally 5-1.
The rules were simple, they had to be comics I was incredibly excited when they came out. I had to have bought them off the shelf when they were released (so Watchmen, Camelot 3000, Dark Knight Returns, Captain Britain, and a few others were disqualified). One shots didn’t count, so that left out Killing Joke (which is one of my favourite stories comics or otherwise of all time), and original graphic novels were out too. This list was about anticipation, and these are the comics that I went absolutely nuts waiting for 30 days to go by so I could find out what happened next.
This first batch says a lot about my core formative comics collecting years. I read comics for years before I officially started “collecting them”, I remember having a ton of Marvel comics in the late 70′s/early 80′s that I swapped outright for my grade 5 friend Chris’ DC collection. I had never read Blackhawk, or The Unknown Soldier, or Swamp Thing before. I knew Batman, Justice League, and Superman of course, but those weren’t the comics that fascinated me. This dog eared pile of Mister Miracles totally captured my imagination, and I became a DC Fanboy from that day forward. Chris, wherever you are, thanks for swapping my Hulks, She-Hulks and Howard the Ducks. You changed my life sir. Read more
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.
In news there’s a saying that goes “Don’t bury the lead”, so the rest of this pre-amble is flavour, here’s the meat of this review:
Despite DC Comics telling us otherwise, Blackest Night is not JUST a Green Lantern event. It is a DC Universe event that spans Identity Crisis, Infinite Crisis, and Final Crisis, and everything from the Death of Superman to the death of Batman. If it’s got death in it, it’s in here, and when you think of the prominent superhero deaths that have occurred in the last decade…this could be a doozy.
On Thursday at lunch I did something that I haven’t done in several years. I decided I couldn’t wait to get my comics next week, and I actually walked into a comic store to buy one of this week’s comics. As the web guru behind All New Comics, I usually wait until Pete (the comic guru behind our organization) ships out my comics every couple of weeks to read the new releases. I couldn’t wait with this though. This is a comic that was first teased two years ago when the undead blackened hand of the Anti-Monitor rose at the end of The Sinestro Corps War and the caption proclaimed “The Dead Shall Rise. The Blackest Night coming in 2009″.
Since then Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps have been my favourite comics being published today.
So it was this anticipation that I walked down to the local store on my lunch break and picked up a copy of Blackest Night #1 as well as Blackest Night: Tales from the Corps #1. Read more
Once again it’s that time of the month, when a young man’s fancy turns to the comics he will be reading two months hence. There’s some good stuff that interests me and that I’ll definitely be adding to my Comics Pull List through my online comics store All New Comics.
If you’re not already subscribing to your comics from All New Comics I gotta ask you, why are you going to your comics? Make your comics come to you!
Okay, shameless plug out of the way, this is what I’m adding to my list this month: Read more
Brian Garside is a full time web guru and part time comics pimp. He currently resides in London Ontario with his wife Charlene, daughter Kaylin, Maks, several hundred comic books, graphic novels…and many toys which his kids aren’t allowed to play with.
This site is intended as a working journal, it's my space to talk about comics, technology and life in general. The site has lived under many names including "Tales from the Darkside", "Tales from the Garside", "Chronicology", and most recently "Radical Hive".
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