The fine folks at Gemstone’s SCOOP newsletter are helping get the word out about our updated version of Captain Action: The Original Super-Hero Action Figure. Check it out:

http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/public/default.asp?t=1&m=1&c=34&s=262&ai=82144

Ahh, that word makes me hearken back to my 1980s college days at Auburn University, with the Go-Gos on the radio while I sat at my between-classes job, drawing designs at the local t-shirt shop.

Speaking of vacation, I just got back from taking Pam and the girls to my mom’s house near the Gulf Coast in southern Alabama. My 4-year-old Hannah Rose caught her first fish, as did Pam (Pam wasn’t nearly as excited as HR), and both our daughters got to drive grandma’s boat on the river by themselves (I was sweating it out nervously, but neither daughter hit anyone or anything).

It was a nice bit of R&R after a busy few months—and before the next couple of months, where we’ll have a boatload of new stuff shipping. Here’s what’s about to ship in the next 3 weeks:

Jack Kirby Collector #52
Grailpages
Batcave Companion
Modern Masters Vol. 20: Kyle Baker
Rough Stuff #12
Draw #17
Alter Ego #85
Back Issue #34

Some of those books are shipping way later than scheduled, for various reasons, but we’re getting back on schedule, and heading into the big Summer Crunch (with Comic-Con International just 3 months from now).

We’ve also got a “Last Chance Sale” coming shortly, offering newly found copies of a bunch of long sold-out books, if I can get time to add them to the webstore this week. More on that shortly.

And if you were on Spring Break the last couple of weeks, I hope you had as nice of a time as we did!

After way too many weeks of struggling with it, the new Jack Kirby Collector (#52) is off to press, and the Digital Edition is already posted for downloading. This was one of the hardest to produce yet, due mainly to one article in it about an unused Thor story by Jack. I spent countless hours working on it, which is why blog posts have been missing here the last few weeks. But I’m back in the saddle again, and looking forward to a couple of Kirby-less weeks to recover, before it’s on to #53.

And see that awesome cover image by Kirby? I’ve been searching for that one since about 1995, when I first saw it in the background of a photo of Jack appearing at a comic convention. It finally turned up (compliments of Jack’s grandson Jeremy Kirby; thanks, Jeremy!), and I’m especially proud to be able to finally present it as a cover.

That image was one of two Kirby art items that I swore I’d have to track down before I could stop doing the Kirby Collector (or die, whichever came first). The other? Any page from Jack’s original version of Spider-Man, which Stan Lee rejected before turning the project over to Steve Ditko to draw. If you happen to be in possession of a copy or scan of any of that, make my dream come true and send it in, okay? I’ll give a lifetime subscription to ALL our mags, to anyone who sends it!

Our bud Randy “Sarge” Sargent clued me in that he was watching TV last night, and came across this segment of “Surfin’ with Kirk” on local station WTAP in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Kirk Greenfield, the news anchor, is apparently a big fan of the Jack Kirby Collector, and gave a nice shout-out about TwoMorrows and showed our home page. The video’s here:

http://www.wtap.com/surfinwithkirk/headlines/41844902.html

The piece is preceded by a short commercial and a spotlight on another website that helps you locate a restroom when you travel (which I hope isn’t an indicator of the quality of our books 🙂 ), but the TwoMorrows piece starts about halfway through, in case you want to fast-forward it.

Thanks, Kirk; we appreciate the plug!

I knew it was bound to happen, but more and more I’ve getting wind of Bit Torrent sites that are posting complete digital versions of our copyrighted books and magazines, for anyone to download for free. If you’re one of the culprits out there, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor (or at least deluding yourself into believing that), let me clarify things for you.

If you’re illegally posting or downloading copyrighted material (ours or anyone else’s), you’re hurting the very companies whose work you seem to enjoy enough to spend the time stealing. And make no mistake; if you’re not paying for it, you’re stealing it. You can try to justify it, but there’s simply no real justification for it. You are taking money out of the pockets of our editors and authors, and comic shop owners, and hurting TwoMorrows’ bottom line. Particularly in this unstable economy, with sales dropping for all publishers across the board, every sale we lose to a free torrent download hurts really badly, and jeopordizes our future.

If you enjoy, say, the Modern Masters books, support us. Tell your friends about them, and buy a copy for yourself. And if you have downloaded a copy, do the right thing; go out and purchase the print edition. But please don’t give away our hard work. When our sales erode due to these torrents, the end result is we simply won’t be able to keep publishing—we’ll be out of business.

We’re not some giant corporation with deep pockets, who can absorb these losses. We’re a small company, with dozens of hard working creators, slaving away day and night and on weekends, to make a pretty minimal amount of income for all this hard work. Don’t rob us of the small amount of compensation we’re already getting. Doing so just ensures there won’t be any future products to download.

We’re auctioning off a limited edition hardcover copy of our new book, The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore: Indispensable Edition, autographed by “Watchmen” and “V For Vendetta” author Alan Moore. All proceeds from this auction go to THE HERO INITIATIVE, a federally chartered not-for-profit corporation dedicated to helping comic book creators in need. The auction can be found on eBay at this link:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140305806596

The auction runs through 9:30 PM Eastern Standard Time on Thursday, March 12, 2009. Alan was so generous with his time on the production of our book, and with signing 100 copies of the hardcover for us. So George Khoury and I felt this might be a nice way to give a little back to the industry as well. Since Alan doesn’t attend comic conventions, hopefully the relative scarcity of his autograph, mixed with all the hubbub from the film, will carry over and raise some funds for a really worthy cause.

This is #99 of our 100-copy autographed limited hardcover edition, which is the definitive autobiographical book on Moore, in which he reflects on his life and work in an insightful and candid fashion through an extensive series of interviews about his entire legendary career, including new interviews covering his career since the original edition of this book was published in 2003 (where Moore, for the first time, goes into detail about why he distances himself from Hollywood’s adaptations of his work). From Swamp Thing, V For Vendetta, and Watchmen to the future of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and beyond – all of his most important works and major themes are discussed. Also included are rare strips, scripts, artwork, and photographs of the author, most never published elsewhere, and best-selling author Neil Gaiman headlines a series of tribute comic strips featuring many of Moore’s closest collaborators elaborating on their relationship with the writer. Included as well is a color section, featuring the rare Moore story “The Riddle of the Recalcitrant Refuse” (newly remastered, and starring Mr. Monster, with art by Michael T. Gilbert), plus his unseen work on Judge Dredd, and other tales. The book is edited by George Khoury, with a cover by Dave McKean, and includes a numbered art plate, personally signed by Alan Moore.

So get to bidding already!

I’m gearing up for the long drive from Raleigh, NC to the Big Apple for this week’s New York Comic-Con, and I’ll be bringing a ton (literally!) of goodies with me to Booth #1703, right in the front of the Jacob Javits Center.

Debuting will be the new (and final) issue of WRITE NOW, #20, with a big focus on Will Eisner’s SPIRIT. Editor Danny Fingeroth will be on hand to greet readers at our booth, so be sure to stop by and tell him how much you’ve enjoyed his hard work on the magazine over the years.

In addition to having copies of almost every item we have in print, we’ll also have gobs of free copies of our new 2009 Catalog to hand out, listing all kinds of new items we’ll be publishing between now and July 2009. So be sure to stop by and get yours!

The annual TwoMorrows Publishing Panel will be held Saturday, February 7, from 1:45 – 2:45 in Room 1A17. I’ll be moderating an assemblage of some of your favorite authors and editors from the TwoMorrows stable, so take a break from the pandemonium on the show floor, and see what’s new (including some special double-secret announcements).

KIRBY COLLECTOR FANS: Joe Simon will be making a rare convention appearance, to celebrate the launch of The Official Simon and Kirby Library archive series from Titan Books, and will be signing exclusive limited edition lithographs. (Titan plans to release two books a year, and these will be the only editions authorized by both Joe Simon and the estate of Jack Kirby. In addition to The Official Simon and Kirby Library, Titan will publish the autobiography of Joe Simon in 2010.) So don’t miss your chance to meet this living legend!

Due to our convention appearance, we’ll be closed from February 4-9, so any orders placed during that time will be filled beginning on February 10. But if you’re in New York for the Comic-Con, save yourself some postage and stop by Booth #1703 to pick up your TwoMorrows items in person; I hope to see you there!

No, that’s not the issue number of a rare comic I’m searching for. It’s a phrase that has brought me no small amount of scorn and ridicule from my wife over the years. As the New York Comic-Con looms next week (one which I’ll be driving to with my buddy Jim Amash), let me hearken back to another convention trip years ago that really sticks in my mind.

It was 1979, and the Atlanta Fantasy Fair was days away. I was then 17, and after much begging and pleading, I’d convinced my parents to let me make the three-hour drive from Montgomery, Alabama with my best friend Matt Turner. Matt and I had saved our money for months in anticipation, but we were looking for some last-minute subsidies. Learning that glass Coke bottles could be redeemed for the princely sum of 10¢ each in Atlanta (you only got a nickel in my hometown), we combed our relatives’ garages and attics searching for six-packs of transparent green treasure. We managed to accumulate 100 bottles, adding a cool ten bucks to our budget. We left my house early Saturday morning in my beat-up 1971 Datsun 510 station wagon to the sound of glass bottles clinking together in the back seat of my car.

My car (if you want to call it that) burned through oil like a bank through T.A.R.P. money, and at our first hourly stop to add a quart, the oil cap slipped out of my hand, landed on one of the dry-rotted hoses in the engine, and caused a trickle of water to leak out of the hose (or, at least, we hoped it was water). No way were we gonna turn around and head home from this minor mishap, after all it took to convince my dad to let us go solo. A quick search of the car found an old roll of electrical tape, and we made a makeshift patch from an old rag, and taped it tightly around the hose. We filled up some of the Coke bottles with water, and lumbered on down I-85, stopping every time the temperature gauge started heading toward “H”, and added water to the radiator.

We reached Atlanta an hour before the convention opened, and proceeded to cash in our Coke bottles at a grocery store. They would only accept half of them, so we decided we’d cash in the rest on Sunday, rather than miss the opening of the con. In an attempt to save even more cash to spend on comics, we purchased a loaf of bread and two packs of the cheapest pressed chicken luncheon meat we could find. You know the kind; sliced thinner than comic book newsprint, and loaded with little hard things that we passed off as “protein.” But we computed that if we only used two slices of meat per sandwich, we’d have enough to last the weekend. And we didn’t dare splurge on a jar of mayonnaise – that 89¢ could be put toward comics! We checked into our hotel (paying up front to avoid spending the money on comics), turned the Air Conditioner on high, and set the lunch meat on the vents to keep it cool. After putting our remaining Coke bottles in the room for safe-keeping, we loaded up on dry chicken sandwiches and ice water, and headed for the con.

The first day of the convention, we found more things to buy than our budget would allow. By day’s end, we’d depleted our funds, leaving only $5 gas money for the return trip. But I still needed copies of Nick Fury, Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D. #3 and #5 for Jim Steranko to sign. Knowing we had more yummy dry sandwiches to sustain us the weekend, and five dollars worth of Coke bottles to use for gas money, I dropped my last ‘fiver’ on #3, and got Steranko’s signature on a treasured collectible.

Little did we know what horror awaited us back at the hotel.

When we walked in our room, my first thought was to make sure the lunch meat hadn’t gone bad. A quick sniff told me it was okay, so I prepared our dinner. But suddenly, Matt screamed.

“The Coke bottles are gone!!!”

The maid who cleaned that day apparently thought they were trash (although Matt and I swore she was out somewhere living it up on our five bucks). Regardless, we were stranded in a hotel room in a strange city, with no money for gas, and only a few dry sandwiches to eat.

We were terrified! What would we do?! I didn’t have a dime to call home, and anyway, my father would kill me when he found out I’d carelessly spent all my cash! Desperate thoughts started to sink in. Could I sell my comics back to the dealers? Could I sell the car? Could I sell Matt?!

After a restless night, I still had no ideas the next morning. And suddenly, I remembered My Emergency 10.

You see, when I first got my driver’s license, my father had stashed a folded-up ten dollar bill behind the photos in my wallet. “This is Your Emergency 10, son. Forget it’s there, and only use it in an emergency,” he said. And every so often, he’d pull a surprise inspection of my wallet to make sure I still had it. I’d quickly learned to completely forget about it, lest I succumb to the temptation to spend it.

I reached into my wallet, and there it was! Ten semolians!! The look of relief on Matt’s face was overwhelming, and as we sat there eating our dry chicken sandwich breakfast, I contemplated what to do with the extra $5. My first thought was to go buy that Nick Fury #5 and get Steranko to sign it, but I decided to hang on to it, in case another emergency came up.

So we filled up the gas tank with petrol, some old jugs with water for the radiator, and left Atlanta, malnourished and tired. But I was happy I didn’t have to sell my comics, my car, or my best friend. As lunch time approached, we pondered the condition of the car, those remaining sandwiches, and that extra $5 in my wallet…

…and we threw caution to the wind and used that five bucks to buy lunch at McDonald’s! Because after two days of consuming those awful chicken sandwiches, no emergency would be worse than having to eat them again!

Luckily, no other misfortunes befell us that trip, and I managed to replace my Emergency 10 before my dad pulled another surprise inspection. But to this day, I still keep a ten dollar bill tucked away in my wallet for emergencies.

My wife laughs at the idea that $10 will make a difference today in an emergency. But it has saved me (and her) many a trip to the ATM machine when we were short on cash for a quick lunch. And I always replace it immediately. There’s just something very reassuring about knowing it’s there.

Besides, you never know when you’re going to come across a cheap copy of Nick Fury #5…

Diamond Comic Distributors has just announced some big changes in how they deal with publishers, which probably won’t have any effect on Marvel and DC, but the smaller guys like us are eyeing the new policies very closely. The one that’s generating all the hubbub lately is their decision to raise their order minimum (ie. the bottom line amount of orders after their discount) to $2500 per item. Basically, any order for less than that amount will not be sent to us in most cases, although I’m hopeful they’ll make some exceptions for longstanding publishers (like, um, us).

It doesn’t really affect new issues of our mags (or any of our books, since those have higher cover prices), except for BrickJournal, which sells most of its copies outside of comic shops (although the comic shop sales are a nice benefit, and losing those will hurt, and they are on the upswing in comics shops). But it will affect our ability to do “Offered Again” items—resoliciting something to alert people who might’ve missed a book the first time it was listed in PREVIEWS. Naturally, the second time something’s listed, it gets fewer orders than the first time, and frankly, we do rely on O/As to generate some much needed income on our lower selling books. Without it, any number of worthy, but really niche items that we want to publish, probably won’t be able to be published.

But just as disturbing to me is Diamond’s new policy, stating that once a MAGAZINE is listed in PREVIEWS, they won’t accept reorders after 60 days of the item’s release. (And I hope I’m reading that right; if it’s from the scheduled ship date, that cuts the 60 days down even more if we ship something a week or more later than planned.) So 60 days after its release, Diamond will basically erase the item from its system, as if it never existed, and even if it’s a runaway best seller, comic shops won’t be able to reorder it after that point. And of course, since Diamond wouldn’t want to get stuck with extra copies of something after that 60 days, I’m sure they’ll be cutting their initial orders on magazines.

Although in the past it’s never been stated to us as an official policy, I’ve noticed Diamond’s been more or less following this standard for at least a couple of years. During our first decade in business, Diamond would regularly overorder our mags, to keep them on hand to fill immediate reorders, and then place reorders with us over time, regardless of how old the mag was (which is why we’ve always listed Diamond’s order codes in our magazines, catalogs, and online). I remember in the late 1990s, our older issues were selling well enough that we took out an ad in Previews, listing the order codes for every magazine we had in stock, and we got a really big Purchase Order from Diamond for all those items. We also got a call from our Diamond rep, telling us they made a mistake allowing that, and we could never do that again, because of the extra paperwork involved in handling all those individual items. (Gee, I thought that’s what computers were for… 🙂

In the last couple of years, Diamond’s been cutting initial orders on magazines, but we’ve been making most of it up on reorders within the first couple of months of release, although some would trickle in beyond a two-month window. I guess that trickle is officially dead now.

We’ve been hearing from retailers for years that they can’t get magazine reorders from Diamond, only books. (We even put a notice to that effect in our January 2008 catalog, so people would stop trying to place reorders for mags through their local comics shop, then end up waiting months and nothing would ever show up. A few people viewed that as an anti-retailer stance by us, but it was just our way of helping our customers AND retailers avoid the frustration of never getting their reorders.) At least Diamond’s made it official now, so we’re all clear on the rules.

I’m not as concerned about losing a few reorders, as I am about the long-term effect this’ll have, on us, on retailers, and the industry. Plain and simple, our old stuff sells. Unlike Wizard and other mags, our stuff isn’t dated. It’s either about comics history, an artist spotlight, or a how-to publication, none of which relies on the latest comics crossover event, or Hollywood blockbuster, to make it marketable. If someone with an interest in comics history shows up in a comic book store (or flips open PREVIEWS) and has never seen ALTER EGO or BACK ISSUE! before, it won’t matter whether they see the newest issue, or one from three years ago; both are just as likely to appeal to them. Which is why we’ve always had a thriving audience for our older issues, and we try to keep them in stock.

It’s impossible to grow magazine readership these days through comics shops, with Diamond putting disincentives like minimums and reorder windows in place, and so many retailers only willing to order enough copies to fill their pull list, and not stocking a single extra issue for a new reader to discover. So we’ve got to keep pushing people to our website and our convention booths to buy them directly from us. We’ve made a push over the last two years to get more retailers to order directly from us (we offer discounts comparable to Diamond, and free shipping), and there are a few of the larger or more service-oriented retailers who’ll take the time and effort to do so, to keep their customers happy, and coming back to their stores regularly. To my mind, those are the ones most likely to weather the current economic storm, and stick around for the long term. And we’re about to sign up with Haven Distribution so retailers will hopefully have a more convenient route to reorder our mags; maybe Haven can come up with the right formula to be successful stocking the lower-priced items.

I understand what Diamond’s doing; cutting costs like everyone else the last couple of years. It costs a lot to warehouse tons of paper, and they’ve consolidated down to just 3-4 warehouses now, from the 7-8 they used to operate 4-5 years ago. In that 4-5 years, an awful lot of new paper has been printed, so do the math; if you’ve got 4-5 more years of additional printed material in the system, and 3-4 fewer warehouses to hold it, either there’s a black hole somewhere sucking up all that stuff, or Diamond’s just not stocking it all anymore. The logical choice is to stop warehousing lower-priced stuff, like comics and magazines, and save the warehouse space for big ticket books, which bring more profit. To do that, they’re moving into the retailer mentality of only ordering what’s preordered, so they don’t get stuck warehousing a lot of lower priced material. That’s a great short-term practice to cut costs, but a lousy long-term policy for growing (or even sustaining) your business.

Or at least, that’s my $.02. Your mileage may vary.

Anyway, the moral here is, be sure to pre-order our stuff (especially magazines) at your local comics shop, or from our website, or there’s no guarantee you’ll always get it. (But use your local comics shop if you have one; we want to keep all the remaining ones in business.) And our books should still be readily available through Diamond. But particularly for magazines, don’t expect your local comics shop to be able to get our older issues for you, unless they’re willing to order directly from us.

…and TwoMorrows took SIX of the Top Ten slots on Diamond/Gemstone’s “Best of 2008: Publications About Comics, Characters, or Collectibles” SCOOP Awards. You can see all the winners here:

http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/public/default.asp?t=1&m=1&c=34&s=265&ai=78506

Congratulations to all our editors and authors whose hard work made the list:

Eric Nolen-Weathington
George Khoury
Roy Thomas
Michael Eury
Fred Perry
and Keith Dallas

And thanks for all your support of our publications in 2008!