Submet Industries

So I guess I’m turning 30 in 5 days. Which is a thing. And so like clockwork, here comes the pledge to start blogging more.

I know. This will all end in tears. Or more accurately, inactivity. But look: there are a few things that I still want to do. In my first 30 years, I got myself born, graduated high school, quit college when I realized it would lead to a pile of debt and unhappiness, built my life to the point where I own a comic shop and write for a reputable comic book news and commentary site, and managed to trick the most beautiful woman in the world into marrying me. So uh… that was pretty great. Now all I need to do is to accomplish something with my writing, and that’s gotta start somewhere. So why not from the wad of fear that’s welling up in my chest as I near a weird milestone on the road to my inevitable demise?

Fuck you, death. Shit is about the get real.

Let’s fucking do this.

Hashtag yolo

So I was so happy when we signed the lease for Variant Edition, because I thought our days of waiting were over. Ha ha. Hhahhahhaaahhaaaaaa. A-heh. No. They are not.

As it stands, we’re waiting anywhere from two days to two weeks to hear back about… everything else that needs to slide into place. I’m starting to get restless. Relying on outside forces has never been my strong suit, and I tend to go a bit stir crazy when I have to, so this has not been fun. I keep thinking about what will come out at the end of all of this, and it calms me. But we’re not there yet.

So what now? Well, I’m spending the weekend getting the full Variant Edition site up and selling, because why not. We have the license, we can officially operate. Why not operate! Soon after that, we’ll announce the official launch of the store and our grand opening day. And shortly after that… well, the first little bit will be a different kind of stress, but at least it will be the kind of stress I can deal with. I know the process of selling comics. I just want to do that.

Come onnnnnn.

Turns out, setting up your own business is hard. Luckily, once we have it set up, we already have a working knowledge of the hows and whys of it all. Variant Edition will be coming soon, announcements will be made, and all will rejoice. Or I guess some. I dunno. Do you like comics? I sure do.

Current status: trying to spin all the plates, focusing on the ones that would be ruinous if they fell. Things keep falling over all around, but at least they’re things like “writing stuff”, which can always be done later, in lieu of “maybe we should talk to the bank about hmm and blah“. Those are technical bank terms. Look it up.

Coming up: I already have my next Retailer’s View done and ready to go. It vents out a few frustrations with the process of setting up, but I think it winds up being hopeful.

Otherwise: things are continuing for the store, and we’re on track for a couple of really big announcements soon. Man, I can’t wait until I can just order comics like I used to.

This week, I’m back on the Taasky train.

Taasky is one of the many task organizers that you can get on the iPhones and whatnot, and if I’m being honest, I can’t quite tell you why I like it more than some of the others. It probably comes down to the fact that it does enough of the things that I like to make it worthwhile to use. I’m often spending half of my free-time organizing what I might do with my free time. Plugging that into Taasky means later, when I’ve forgotten about all the things I planned and decide to make another list, they’re all there. More than that, you can categorize them and work on specific tasks. When I was still working at Wizard’s Comics, I would click on the button that would just give me tasks for the store, and anytime I forgot what I was going to do, I’d take a quick look, and get right back to working on the projects I had made for myself.

After I stopped working at the store, I stopped using Taasky because… well, time went all wobbly on me. Suddenly there was a lot of it, and somehow, also, not nearly enough. I started gathering wool to get my own shop started, and built out a weird structure for getting those things done, but… unfortunately, there was a lot of “hurry up and waiting” involved. I let my task accomplishing skills languish as I met with the unfamiliar. Now? Well, clearly I’m back on the wagon, and two features are helping me stick with it. The first, is the fact that you can mess with the settings so that your Taasky button will tell you how many tasks you have to do for the day in one of those red notification circles – so if you’ve forgotten about something, and grab your phone to screw around for a bit, you get a bright reminder of things that need to be accomplished.

Beyond that, there’s a premium setting (that costs a whole 99 cents, I think) that gives you stats on how much you’re accomplishing – how many things you get done in a day, a week or a month, and from what categories. I like it because it taps into that part of our brain that likes accomplishments – like hitting a new level on a game, and pushing to do a bit better. See my productivity (or lack thereof) measured out allows me to set certain goals in my head, which usually involve doing something each day, instead of seeing the line graph drop to zero for whatever reason. Anyway, great app with a great look. Give it a glance if you’re looking to try something like this out.

Today was a really great day, and a really hard day. There seems to be a lot of hard days lately. I’ve discovered that I’m not built for tedium, that I can’t function well without a structure.

When you work in a comic shop, the days meter out. Tuesday, you process shipment, Wednesday you sell like crazy. Thursday, you clean up and process, and do re-orders. Friday, you wrap up projects and – if you’re a store that runs them – you have a Magic: the Gathering tournament. The weekends, are yours. Or they were. Starting the comic shop means weekends are back on the schedule, but the weekend can still be yours, you just have to know how to work things right. A comic store can be a fun place if you allow it, and if you do the bulk of your work during the week, Saturday and Sunday can be days of relative rest. You get right back to things on Monday by doing your final order cut offs, and preparing for the days to come once more. On and on it goes.

Some people would find the routine strangling. I thrive on it. I know what my time looks like, know where I can slip things in and write or play or vegetate. Today was not that. Today was another day of chaos, punctuated by victories and a weird phone call. The good news? Things move ever closer to getting back into a store, and getting comics into the hands of people. I miss that more than any other part of the process. The connectivity. The shared experience.

Soon. Very, very soon.

I think every blog ever stops posting with the promise of more posts. I think by virtue of the fact that I do that quite regularly here, that will be the case. But until then.

• Variant Edition is coming along quite nicely. We announced last week that we would be located at 10441 – 123rd St here in Edmonton. What everyone doesn’t know, is when we plan on opening. Whelp, the answer is “not as soon as you’d like” and “sooner than you think”, depending on what you’re thinking. I don’t think anyone has really guessed at what we’re aiming for, but even if they did, I couldn’t confirm it anyway. So.
• Now that a few more things are in place, I have more time to devote to getting more retailer articles out – so coming up soon, you’re going to get an earful on just what it’s taken to set up the store, and my take on Marvel and DC both going through relaunches of a sort in the next few weeks.
• What else. Uh… we binged through the first season of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt this weekend, and that was something else. It has that 30 Rock insanity, but with more of a heart, I think. The core of the show basically tells you that you should be proud of who you are, not who anyone else wants you to be. It’s pretty great.
• The internet announced a new dude Ghostbusters movie and hey, I think that’s pretty dumb. Guaranteed, someone got scared and greenlit this to “balance” things out. Because you guys, where are all the movies with male leads. Have the ladies Tak3n them all away? What will the Hemsworths DO.

And that’s Tuesday. Tomorrow, Brandon Fights City Hall, and I may or may not tell you about it. Productive!

Wait, “ides” are a bad thing, aren’t they? I probably shouldn’t have brought “ides” into this. There are no “ides” here. Nor do I seem to have the ability to go back and delete things it seems.

Oh, the things I’ll do for a dumb opening paragraph.

1. I’ve started to make a little schedule for myself, and have made a promise to bag out at least 250 words on nonsense on this blog every weekday. At least. I have the time (sort of) and I’m still trying to train myself to write on a regular schedule. It’s been almost 30 years, and nothing has seemed to take. Oh well. Let’s try this.
2. Tomorrow, I’ll be announcing where Variant Edition will be located. Many have asked, but few properly know. One person got fairly irate about not knowing, and uh… sorry about that, but the lease hadn’t been signed. You understand, right? (You don’t understand, I know, but also, I uh… don’t care. So.) Anyway, tomorrow, if you don’t keep up with any of the Variant Edition feeds I run, I’ll be dropping that information here, because marketing.
3. This past week, Danica and I posted the first part of Doctor Whooch’s 50th Episode, which is crazy for several reasons. First: we’ve done fifty episodes of this, and second? We invited everyone who had been on the show before to go on. It’s a beautiful mess that had to be pulled apart into two episodes. It’s… it’s pretty wonderful.

And that’ll be the that for today. If you want to find me, I’ll probably be screaming nonsense on the internet all day long, so catch me there. Maybe tomorrow I’ll put together something better. Probably not.

Today felt strange.

I’m in a strange period where the old thing is done and dusted and the new thing has yet to start in ernest, so today was… strange. I’ve discovered that a large chunk of my identity has become attached to being a guy who talks about and sells comics, and now that a chunk of that is missing, things feel a bit off. It made for a very weird Monday where a lot of stuff got done, but it didn’t feel like Monday used to feel. I’m looking at tomorrow, and expecting more of the same. I’m looking at Wednesday, and nervously wringing my hands. It will be weird to walk into the shop and peruse the shelves without having had a hand in getting them there.

I want to be at the next thing. I want to be there now instead of working on these secret fiddly bits. Unfortunately, without the secret fiddly bits, the next thing doesn’t begin. So there’s that. Which is fun. Ah well, this period was always going to be a bit weird. I’m focusing on the future, and working towards it. That’s good. It’ll be good. Until then, I still need to get some of my shop talk out somehow so, here’s a few notes from the past week:

• I think DC would have done a whole lot better if they had held off on announcing the end of a good quarter of their ongoing comic line-up in March. I mean, at this point, it’s a bit of an open secret that the company is going to do a bit of a soft reboot in June, so why not do what Marvel does, and hold off on the final issue announcement until March rolls around? By that point in time, they’ll be announcing the new titles they’ll be putting out in June, and they could have squashed a lot of the negative connotations of sweeping cancellations with exciting new books! It would certainly give their PR team an easier go, that’s for sure.
• On the other side of the aisle, Marvel announced a new look for Spider-Woman in March with her fifth issue. It’s a pretty cool move, but I almost wonder if the move would have been better suited for the first issue of the series. As it stands, the first four issue of her new ongoing tie directly into a big crossover event, which certainly gives the series a cheap and easy pop in sales, but I think it hobbles the series’ sales potential in the long run. It’s hard to sell new readers on a series when the first story arc requires a bit of extracurricular knowledge. I think the company could have gotten away with a Spider-Woman mini-series to tie into the Spider-Verse event, leading into a nice, easy #1 in March or April after the dust settles. Give her the new costume and motivation, and start from the ground with something new, and build the foundation of the ongoing from solid numbers instead of inflated crossover interest that will erode at a much quicker pace.

Aaaaand, that’s about it for today. I’m off to read some of the comic industry history books that I’ve been accumulating over the years. I finally have time for them now. It’s a pretty great feeling.

And so the next phase begins now.

My last day at Wizard’s was on the 31st and Danica had me take the 1st and the 2nd off for recalibration purposes. I was a bit squirrelly about that at first because I resented the implication that I have a workaholic problem – but then I immediately tried to bargain with her so that I could get a little bit of work done on my “days off”, which really proved her point. So I took the time off, and it was great. I feel quite energized, primed for everything that’s about to come so… as always, my darling wife was right. She usually is.

So yes. Today is the start of everything. So far, the day has been spent tweaking a new website, cleaning the apartment a little as the support team for a January project the lovely wife is undertaking, and tidying up other bits. As the day goes, I hope to get a bit more writing done, but I really want to focus on working on the aforementioned new website in the background of everything today. It’s going to be pretty great once it’s all put together. But for now? There’s a whole lot of wool gathering to be done, and I’m mostly wasting time meandering during this post. Onwards. Talk with you all soon.