Well, the week certainly started off with quite the burst of content. We’ll get to that in a bit, though.
Next weekend, I’m going to be taking part in this year’s 24 Hour Comics Day challenge – which means I’ll be attempting to create 24 pages of a comic – story, art, lettering, the whole works – in just 24 hours. I’m notoriously bad with these challenges (see any comma all NaNoWriMo attempts) but I think doing that in a room full of people is going to help. I have a vague idea for what I want to do, and that takes the form of a webcomic I may or may not start running early next year. I always have ideas for various bits of fiction floating around in my head, but never the time or the means (or let’s face it, the discipline) to see those ideas through. Can this work? I… I really hope so. I’d love to have a way to release various pressures by retreating into a world that I create and control. We’ll see how that all goes, though. It’s not as though I’m not attempting to spin a million plates all at once as it is…
HIT THE LINKS
As promised, yesterday was a pretty big day. First up, I posted a brand new edition of The Retailer’s View over at Comics Beat – and this time, I started talking about the various ills associated with variant covers.
In the current order book, Marvel alone are offering 134 variant covers (this doesn’t include a few announced retroactively, which I’ll be adjusting during the final order cut-off period). Each and every one of these variants comes with a qualifier. Sometimes you just need to order ten copies of a certain book to get the aforementioned cover. Other times, you have to order 100. Then there’s the ones where you have to exceed 150% (or whatever number they’re using) of a different comic you ordered in order to unlock a particular variant. After you meet that qualification, you can order whatever you want. You just have to spend a lot of money for that “privilege”. The problem with that is simple: whereas the variant should be treated as the means for a customer to further connect with the product, it’s usually treated as collector bait, or worse: blackmail.
You can read the full article here where – yes – I explain how I can be so against variant covers and call the store I co-own Variant Edition. Because you know someone was going to ask.
And speaking of Variant Edition, the new season of blog content running there began strong with our regular Incoming post, and a brand new edition of #PickThree, where I find a comic series that intersects between Pushing Daisies, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Pride and Prejudice. I’ll give you one hint, and one hint only: it’s a super weird love story. Go ahead and take a look.
STAY TUNED…
The store is announcing our next two Gender Is Not A Genre events later today, and they are pretty rad. Oh, and ahead of our big Geek Swap next weekend, Danica has a great post going up about some easy steps to take towards decluttering. So many things. SO MANY THINGS!
Also, hey! Want to find Variant Edition at this weekend’s Edmonton Expo? Wellll… you can’t. Sort of. We don’t have a booth this year, but I will be moderating a couple of panels and will be doing some brief loops of the convention floor before getting myself back to the shop, for work purposes.