No, I’m not talking about the impending change to our clocks that’s about to hit. I mean moolah; dough; coin of the realm. I’m talking saving big bucks, to help ease you and yours through this economic downturn. Just remember; when you see how much you’re saving, be sure to spend a little of it at TwoMorrows, okay?

First of all, with the economy in the crisis it’s in these days, everyone’s undoubtedly going to have to make some sacrifices of their own. We have in our family (both our publishing family, and our nuclear one). But the steps I’m going to suggest here aren’t those dire, severe changes; only you can examine your own personal situations and decide if it’s time for steps that’ll cause major upheaval. Instead, my goal here is to suggest some common sense, easy things you can do, right away, to immediately save you money on your monthly budget (and yield long-term savings), WITHOUT causing any real sacrifice, other than your time to implement them. These may be no-brainers to the more economically-minded of you out there, but even so, with all our busy schedules, I’ll bet few of us have taken the time to do this.

I saw the writing on the wall about the economy over a year ago, and in Summer 2007, implemented a lot of steps that have continued to pay off for us since then. But the first step: AUDIT! (Not anyone’s favorite word, for sure.) Trust me; this is an audit that’s a lot easier to take (and implement) than one from the Internal Revenue Service.

Simply put, you audit your expenses by making a list with two columns:

Column 1: “Expense” (list the name of EVERY ITEM OR SERVICE you spend money on that you can track, using your checkbook entries, credit card statements, and bank statements for the last three months)

Column 2: “Amount” (list how much you spend each month, on average, on that item)

The time-consuming part of this is going over your last three months’ statements and figuring out what you spend money on. If you’re like me, it’ll be a very enlightening process, when you see how it all adds up.

Then, it’s “tough decision time.” You’ve got to decide which of those items you really don’t need. There may be a few or many. There may be none. But be brutal, and if you’ve got a gym membership you never use, of if you’re paying for premium cable channels and you never have time to watch more than the news and a couple of sitcoms, circle them with a big red pen, and tomorrow, call and cancel them. Huge, immediate savings can be found right there.

Next, decide which of those items you simply must keep, and you can’t do anything to reduce how much you’re spending on them. Stuff like mortgages and car loans likely fall into this category, since without the hassle (and financial implications) of refinancing, you’re pretty much stuck with what you have. Hit those with a green or yellow highlighter pen, and leave them alone.

The rest of the items are all fair game, and with a little digging, I’ll bet you can find ways to substantially reduce how much you’re paying for them, and still keep them in your life. Here’s a few quick suggestions of things you can save on if you shop around:

1) Gym memberships (the local YMCA may be nicer, and cheaper, than many local gyms, and there’s no penalties for cancelling your membership)
2) Hair salons (unless you’re sold on your current stylist, there’s likely someone equally good that might be a little cheaper; ask a friend who has great hair who they see)
3) Health Insurance
4) Phone service (more on this later)
5) Car and homeowners insurance
6) Cable TV vs. satellite
7) Life Insurance
8 ) Pest control and lawn services (shop around if you can’t do-it-yourself)
9) Groceries
10) Eating out
11) Gasoline
12) Annual termite inspection for your home
13) Internet service
14) Shipping costs if you mail a lot of stuff

Over my next few posts, I’m going to start offering details on how we saved considerably on some of the larger expenses that we couldn’t get rid of. In all cases, we’re getting the same level of service or product, but just paying less each month for them.

…did you? We have the luxury of three weeks of “early voting” in North Carolina, to cut down on the long lines on Election Day, so I headed to my early voting place today about 1pm. It was packed, but it ended up only taking me about 10 minutes from start to finish. Based on the ticker on the machine that scanned my ballot, that one location has seen nearly 7000 people early-vote since they started 5 days ago, so it looks like it’s going to be a huge turnout this year.

I’m politically active; have been since college, and have done a lot of design work for political campaigns over the years. I’ve also gotten many a paper cut volunteering for candidates who I support. It’s tougher to find the time now that we have kids, but Pam and I still keep our hands in however we can. So I was really annoyed to find that some little weasel snuck in our yard during the night and swiped the political yard sign we’d put up a couple of weeks ago. I’m not sure how this person thinks that’s going to affect the election (I never knew my little sign had so much power!), but hey, Pam was driving near our guy’s local campaign office this morning anyway, so a replacement sign is already back up.

I’m not going to try here to tell anyone how to vote; just vote. If you’ve got early voting, avoid the long lines on E-Day (although my wife won’t vote early, because of an irrational fear that hers won’t count if she does; me, I figure it’s better to get it done, save some time, and make sure my vote counts in case I get hit by a bus before Nov. 4). Once you get it done, it’s amazing how good it makes you feel. And then you can ignore all the last-minute, annoying, negative political ads, and concentrate on more important stuff, like reading comics.

And regardless of who wins in two weeks, let’s all suck it up, get over all the bickering, and see if we can’t do something together for a change, to get our economy moving again. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to offer some suggestions of things we’ve done at Casa Dos Morrows to economize lately; maybe a few will work for you. And just think of all the TwoMorrows stuff you can buy with the money you save! 🙂

Richard A. Scott’s interview with Gary Owens, the voice of “Space Ghost” (and announcer on LAUGH-IN among others), which appears in print in BACK ISSUE #30, may also be heard on the new TwoMorrows Tune-In podcast at:

http://twomorrows.com/blog/tune-in/twomorrows-tune-in-gary-owens-special/

Thanks to Chris Marshall and Richard for posting this podcast — since Mr. Owens is so well-known for his voice, we couldn’t resist letting our readers hear it! And look for BI #30, which is in stores now.

Our ever-able Eric Nolen-Weathington is on his way to Baltimore as I type this, to man our booth for the Baltimore Comicon. If you’ve never been, it’s a great show, lots of guests, fun times galore. If you’re there, stop by and ask Eric to tell you about Diamond Comic Distributors, and why his Modern Masters volumes on Mike Ploog and Kyle Baker were both solicited in Previews the same month, instead of two months apart as we’d requested. (I just love Diamond sometimes…)

Oh yeah, buy some stuff at our booth, before our government spends that $700 billion out of our pockets to bail out Wall Street. That way, you’ll have something to read on your coffee breaks, while we’re all working twice as hard trying to earn the extra money we’ll all need to pay the estimated $10,000 per family it’s going to cost us, all because those morons in Washington wouldn’t regulate the financial industry over the last 8 years.

(Sorry if I sound grumpy; I’m just so ticked off at our lousy administration for allowing this to happen, especially when they were warned this subprime mortgage mess was coming years ago, by the CEO of Self-Help, a major non-profit credit union who’s an advertising client of ours. That, plus my 3-year-old daughter was up all night throwing up, so I didn’t get much sleep.)

Now please excuse me; I’ve decided, for the good of the country, to suspend my blog temporarily while I rush off to focus my attention on the Presidential Debate tonight.

Kirby fans: Really, I’m working on it. Have been since July. So many things have jumped in the way of getting it done, but I hope to have it to press (finally) be the end of next week, and shipping by the end of October. Be patient; it’ll be worth it, I promise!

It’s been nothing short of crazy here the last few weeks, as our “Back-To-School Blowout” sale has been going on, generating hundreds of orders in the space of a couple of weeks. I thought I’d stocked our local inventory with plenty of copies of our sale items, but after the first week of the sale, we ran out of several of the sale items, and had to wait while more copies were delivered from our printer in Canada, where we store some of our books. We also literally ran out of shipping boxes, and had to scramble while waiting for our usual supplier to get more to us. So while the sale’s been super-successful, we’ve had to rely on a few customers’ patience in getting their copies shipped to them.

As of about a week ago, everything was cleared up, and shipping’s back to normal (we usually get orders shipped within two days of when they’re placed, and often the next day). The sale ends September 30, so next few days are your final chance to take advantage of the largest sale in our 15-year history: $2 magazines and 50% off books. Already, several items have sold out (and more are about to), so if there’s a publication you’ve been meaning to buy, this could be your last chance (especially at these low sale prices)!

The complete list of sale items includes:

$2 MAGAZINES:
Rough Stuff #1-9 (edited by Bob McLeod)
Write Now #1-18 (edited by Danny Fingeroth)
Comic Book Artist (all in-stock issues) (edited by Jon B. Cooke)
Comic Book Nerd (by Pete Von Sholly)
Crazy Hip Groovy Go-Go Way Out Monsters #29 and #32 (by Pete Von Sholly)
Wallace Wood Checklist (edited by Bhob Stewart)

50% OFF BOOKS & DVDs:
Alter Ego: The Best of the Legendary Comics Fanzine (by Roy Thomas and Bill Schelly)
Best of the Legion Outpost (by Glen Cadigan)
Best of Write Now (by Danny Fingeroth)
Blue Beetle Companion (by Christopher Irving)
Brush Strokes With Greatness: The Life & Art of Joe Sinnott (by Tim Lasiuta)
Comic Book Artist Collection – Volume 3 (by Jon B. Cooke)
Comic Books And Other Necessities of Life (by Mark Evanier) – ALMOST SOLD OUT!
Comics Above Ground (by Durwin Talon)
Comics Gone Ape! (by Michael Eury)
Comics Introspective: Peter Bagge (by Christopher Irving)
Dick Giordano: Changing Comics One Day At A Time (by Michael Eury)
G-Force: Animated (by George Khoury and Jason Hofius)
I Have To Live With This Guy! (by Blake Bell)
Image Comics: The Road To Independence (by George Khoury)
John Romita… And All That Jazz (by Roy Thomas and Jim Amash)
Modern Masters: In The Studio with George Perez DVD
Modern Masters: In The Studio with Michael Golden DVD
Mr. Monster – Volume 0 (by Michael T. Gilbert) – ALMOST SOLD OUT!
Streetwise (edited by Jon B. Cooke and John Morrow)
Superheroes In My Pants (by Mark Evanier)
The Art of George Tuska (by Dewey Cassell)
THUNDER Agents Companion (by Jon B. Cooke)

SOLD OUT ITEMS:
Alter Ego Collection Volume One (by Roy Thomas)
Wertham Was Right! (by Mark Evanier)
True Brit (by George Khoury)
Secrets in the Shadows: The Art & Life of Gene Colan (by Tom Field) – SOFTCOVER IS SOLD OUT (but we have some hardcover copies left)
Comic Book Artist #9

According to my three-year-old daughter, who just spent close to 30 minutes vehemently fighting against my repeated demands that she go to bed, I am officially a “poo-poo baby”. Gotta say, while I’ve been called worse in my day, I’ve never had quite that combination of astonishment and hilarity from an insult before. It’s tough to discipline your child when you don’t know whether to laugh or get mad.

Although #30 is just on press now (and will be shipping in about two weeks), Westfield Comics has just posted a preview of Michael Aushenker’s “Gerber’s Gruesomes” article from BACK ISSUE #31 preview on their site. Here’s a link.

http://westfieldcomics.com/feature/225

The issue’s got some great tributes to the late Steve Gerber, so check it out! BI #31 ships in early November.

This is it! Starting today, we’re having the largest sale in our company’s 15-year history: $2 magazines and 50% off books, as part of a “Back-To-School Blowout” sale, now through September 30, 2008.

We’ve had other sales, on a much smaller range of titles, but never anything to rival this. I took my 6-year-old daughter back-to-school shopping recently, and was astonished at what the total for a first grader came to. With convention season winding down and school starting up across the country, I thought it was time to offer our customers some relief from high gas, food, and comics publication prices.

So all in-stock issues of Rough Stuff, Write Now, and Comic Book Artist, plus other miscellaneous magazines, are only $2 each. We’re also featuring more than 25 of our acclaimed book and DVD titles at 50% off cover price, including several “Companion”, “Artist”, “Comics History”, and “How-To” titles. This sale is only valid for orders placed at www.twomorrows.com through the end of September, and does not include shipping costs.

Here’s a complete list of sale items:

$2 magazines:
Rough Stuff #1-9 (edited by Bob McLeod)
Write Now #1-18 (edited by Danny Fingeroth)
Comic Book Artist (all in-stock issues) (edited by Jon B. Cooke)
Comic Book Nerd (by Pete Von Sholly)
Crazy Hip Groovy Go-Go Way Out Monsters #29 and #32 (by Pete Von Sholly)
Wallace Wood Checklist (edited by Bhob Stewart)

50% Off Books & DVDs:
Alter Ego Collection Volume One (by Roy Thomas)
Alter Ego: The Best of the Legendary Comics Fanzine (by Roy Thomas and Bill Schelly)
Best of the Legion Outpost (by Glen Cadigan)
Best of Write Now (by Danny Fingeroth)
Blue Beetle Companion (by Christopher Irving)
Brush Strokes With Greatness: The Life & Art of Joe Sinnott (by Tim Lasiuta)
Comic Book Artist Collection – Volume 3 (by Jon B. Cooke)
Comic Books And Other Necessities of Life (by Mark Evanier)
Comics Above Ground (by Durwin Talon)
Comics Gone Ape! (by Michael Eury)
Comics Introspective: Peter Bagge (by Christopher Irving)
Dick Giordano: Changing Comics One Day At A Time (by Michael Eury)
G-Force: Animated (by George Khoury and Jason Hofius)
I Have To Live With This Guy! (by Blake Bell)
Image Comics: The Road To Independence (by George Khoury)
John Romita… And All That Jazz (by Roy Thomas and Jim Amash)
Modern Masters: In The Studio with George Perez DVD
Modern Masters: In The Studio with Michael Golden DVD
Mr. Monster – Volume 0 (by Michael T. Gilbert)
Secrets in the Shadows: The Art & Life of Gene Colan (by Tom Field)
Streetwise (edited by Jon B. Cooke and John Morrow)
Superheroes In My Pants (by Mark Evanier)
The Art of George Tuska (by Dewey Cassell)
THUNDER Agents Companion (by Jon B. Cooke)
True Brit (by George Khoury)
Wertham Was Right! (by Mark Evanier)

Special categories atop our home page link directly to the magazines and books on sale. So head on over, and check it out! If you’ve ever wanted to try out any of these books, I’m certain you’ll never find a better deal on them than this.