Is TV Dying?

Inspired by Heather Massey's "Are Comic Books Dying?" post:

I don't know if you guys have noticed, but it seems to me like there are a whole lot of ways to watch television these days. You can buy it on your XBox, on iTunes, on-demand through your cable box, you can watch a lot of it (legally) for free on sites like Hulu or almost all of it (illegally) via Bit Torrent. And lots of folks are skipping past commercials using DVR, and lots of folks are not even watching episodes anymore, they're just "waiting for the DVDs."

These people are killing the industry, right? "Waiting for the DVDs" just tells the people making TV programs that you don't care about their shows, and if your favorite shows get canceled, it's all your fault. Also, Best Buy, that chain of specialty stores that sells DVDs and TVs, is almost certain to go out of business because their product mix is changing, and they're probably too dumb to adjust.

Ridiculous, right? Is there anyone out there who really believes that television (the medium, not the current industry as it stands) is going to go away? Does anyone really believe that the network/cable structure, despite undergoing huge upheavals in advertising streams, programming and other long-held business models, are going to vanish or go into bankruptcy in the next five years or so?

Then why is everyone so willing to believe it about comics? I've been a comics reader for 25 years, I've worked in comics retail for about 9 (1 in college, 8 more recently) and for as long as I've been keeping up with comics culture on the Internet, there have been people loudly predicting the death of: A) the direct market B) independent comics and C) the comics medium as a whole. That, btw, was about 15 years ago. The direct market is still here. The comics medium is sure as hell here. The independent comics? Weakened, but still here. Look at the graphic novel side of the independent comics scene and they're flourishing, especially compared to about 10 years ago.

There are many challenges. The increasingly visible $4 price point is a huge looming problem, yes. The difficulty in selling independent comics that aren't graphic novels (I refuse to call them "pamphlets" or "floppies" because unlike so many, I don't have an active disdain for that format) is a big problem as well. And what the future holds as far as digital comics is a big question mark as well.

But any halfway decent shop is already doing a fair amount of business in graphic novels, original and collected both. Any intelligent shop-owner is thinking every day about digital format, price increases and the diversity of the product and how their store can deal with the changes. This notion that the specialty market, or worse, the entire medium, is some kind of outmoded dinosaur ignores two important things:

1. Comic Book Store owners aren't, as a rule, entirely dim. Some may be, but anyone who has been able to keep their store open and profitable has probably already survived the harsher culling of the market in the '90s, or is well aware of the pitfalls of retailing at the very least, since they all probably existed when they opened their store.

2. Comic books, and the direct market, have been around for quite some time now, and every year, people are loudly predicting its death. Every year, they're wrong.

There seems to be an industry-wide inferiority complex combined with some strange sort of self-directed schadenfreude wherein everyone must constantly expect disaster. Price increases have happened before. Webcomics have been around for quite some time. Graphic novels have been around even longer. Digital comics, I'll grant you, are a newer wrinkle, but as has been pointed out (and ignored) ad infinitum, there is a big difference in mediums between comic books and music, where you can make a strong argument that digital distribution quickly and radically changed how the medium reached its customers, to the arguable detriment of the industry.

Jesus. How the fuck did I become the optimist in this particular room?

New Year's Resolution #1: Freak Out Less

I think I make this one every year. But I'm starting early with this one, because Diamond has, with the help of UPS, managed to turn a Friday comics delivery day (already a recipe for reduced sales) into a following Monday comics delivery day (a recipe for apocalyptically bad sales).

Here's what generally happens. On a late release day, which happens seemingly every couple of months thanks to various holidays, and pushes comics to Thursday, we generally lose about a grand in sales. Where do they go? I don't know. But mostly it seems that folks who are more casual about their comics buying, or who might have picked up a few extra books, don't come in that week at all, opting for a "double helping" on the next Wednesday (which, due to budget realities, usually means more of a "helping and a half", and a bunch of add-on comics that might have sold don't sell) or they come in.

A Friday, when the next comics day is looming closer, is even worse. A Monday, when there's a new comic day two days later? I'm gonna guess that a large majority will go ahead and wait it out, and we've effectively lost a Wednesday. Worse, we get pick-up sales on those books on Thursday, Friday and the weekend. Those are now gone as well. Now it's not like we have nothing to sell... we'll still sell graphic novels, comics that had already come in, games, etc... but as with everything, the new is what drives things, and a bunch of books that would have sold on Friday may not sell at all. Crazy as it is, every day a new comic is late, it's value decreases.

Especially in a town where two other comics shops are chains, and thus get the benefit of early shipping, so they *will* have their books on Friday.

Diamond "regrets the error" but isn't offering anything to make up for this money loss, not even free shipping on the books that are now shipping out three days late.

Diamond and UPS are two of the most important parts of my business... I interact with each of them at least twice a week, and one of those times (the weekly comics drop) is literally life-and-death for the business. And if they screw up, as they do on a monthly basis (in small and sometimes big ways), my only recourse is... to get frustrated. Which earns me nothing, and hurts them not at all.

Thus the resolution to freak out less. I'm not going to let the fact that I probably just lost a couple grand in sales kill my enjoyment of my New Year's Eve party, and I'm going to try real hard not to worry about it all weekend.

But if all of you could spare a moment or two over the four-day weekend to mutter "Fucking Diamond" under your breath, you'll probably be syncing up with me at some point. ;)

Brandon Graham is awesome - Tokyopop is teh suck

So I read this over at Blog@Newsarama - apparently, Tokyopop isn't releasing the rights to King City to Brandon Graham, which is of course lame. The good news is, Graham is posting it online, the first 12 pages are up at his site (this link also has new pages from color Multiple Warheads!) and they are, as expected, quite awesome.

I very much doubt anyone from Tokyopop reads this blog, but on the off chance you do: We sell a fair amount of manga in my store. And I make a lot of decisions every month about what books to order in and take a chance on, and what books go to "special order only." This kind of shit factors into my decisions, just so you know.

Free Comic Book Day thoughts

We had a pretty good Free Comic Book Day at the store this year. Last year was only two months after I bought the store, and we had a huge event, with two writers and two artists in attendance, and we had the best day of sales the store has had since I bought it, not to mention having (I'd estimate) about 600-700 people walk out happy with handfuls of free comics.

This year, with CAPE getting bigger and bigger, both the writers decided to head up to Dallas, and one of the artists had moved, but Scott Kolins was kind enough to come in and sign and sketch for us for more than three hours. We had him set up at a table up front, and there was always a big crowd, as he sketched, signed and showed off super-cool prints of his covers for Rogues Revenge #1-2, upcoming Brave and the Bold issues and other stuff. He sold a few prints, signed several comics and did lots of free sketches, and that was great.

At the back of the store, as always, we had set up two tables and broken up the comics into categories of "All Ages," "Ten and Up" and "Mature Readers." I was kind of pleased that this year, the Mature Readers section was less than a half-dozen books, but the "All Ages" section was near overflowing. We had ordered heavily, as always, but we started off with a three per person comics limit (more on that later in the post). At the store manager's suggestion, we bumped to four later on. And we weren't diehards about it. If someone found four or five they liked, they were welcome to take that many. Nobody got greedy and asked "Can I just have one of everything?"

It was a busy day, finally slowing down at around 5:00 or so, at which point we condensed what was left onto a table up front so that the decreased number of employees (we were down to two, and occasionally one) could make sure everybody heard the deal when they came in.

One of the high points was having a young girl come in who used to shop with us buying Crossgen. She had dropped out because Crossgen went under (a fear we'd always had), but now that she was a back, and a little older, we suggested Mouse Guard and Fables and a few others, and it looks like she might find some comics to like again.

We didn't hit the heights in sales that we did last year, but we still had a very good Saturday. We had also made flyers with "What's Cool in Comics," one all-ages with Iron Man, Mouse Guard and a couple others and another with Fables, Walking Dead, Buffy and Dark Tower, which we gave out to everyone, and I'm hoping that'll lure some new readers back in.

I worked a 15 hour day, from 9 AM to midnight (since we do all our reordering on Saturdays), and although I was tired, I felt like we'd put on a pretty good event. I was pleased with the turnout, pleased with how everyone seemed to be happy.

Then I get online a couple days later and find folks complaining about how they *only* got three comics at their local store (happily, nobody seemed to have that reaction to us, but they easily could have, since three was our general limit). One even went so far as to gripe that he went to Austin Books (one of the best comic book stores I've ever been to) and was unhappy with the treatment there, where he was allowed to pick 10 books. Somebody else posted rather proudly (although he disingenuously claimed not to be proud) that he had stolen 20 books rather than stick to the limit of three at his shop. There's even a well-known blogger and retailer who is griping about how so many stores "fucked up" Free Comic Book Day. I know he's not talking about me in particular, I know that he's not entirely wrong, but seeing it from someone who understands the pitfalls and balancing act was just... draining.

I thought I'd gotten to the point where Internet stupidity and the sense of entitlement that often comes with it doesn't bother me, but the aftermath of Free Comic Book Day online has left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. I'm still pleased with how it went for us, but it makes me sad and angry to see folks complaining because they didn't feel that a few free comics were enough, and that somehow retailers owed them a free copy of each book, a sale on everything in the store and maybe a free pony too.

Hibbs Brings The Statistics Hammer to the Fight

There are those on the Internet who, despite never having worked in a direct market shop and quite possibly having dropped off even shopping in them for quite some time, feel qualified to make assessments about the health of the direct market, how much better the bookstore and Internet bookseller market is and how the direct market is a dinosaur on its way out.

Brian Hibbs, a longtime retailer in San Francisco, brings out the Bookscan charts to put the lie to this particular fallacy. This is pretty intense number-crunching reading, but if you want to see just how well graphic novels do in bookstores versus the direct market, check out this article.

Here's a hint: The Direct Market sells more than the bookstores in just about every category. And the art comics that some like to claim are what more folks want to read don't sell any better in bookstores than they do in the Direct Market. And superhero continuity books seem to do pretty damn well in the bookstore market and the direct market.

And... well, just read the article. Suffice to say, some Internet pundits (I won't name any names or drop any initials) don't really know what the hell they're talking about.

Retail Woes: Shoplifters

Anyone who has worked retail (or especially owned a shop of any kind) knows that shoplifting is part and parcel of the experience. Generally it's called "shrinkage," like the inventory magically shrunk rather than being carried off by thieves.

It's an annoyance, but it's one I haven't had to deal with too much, because of the nature of our business. While we do get a lot of casual traffic, most of the people who would be interested in having our product enough to steal it also have enough of a fondness for the store to pay for it instead.

Most.

We've had a couple of packages of dice go missing lately. We know because we find the empty boxes stashed somewhere in a display, the dice obviously slipped into a pocket and carried out. Annoying, but relatively minor.

Then today, my manager and one of the employees noticed that some of our Battle Royale was missing. Notably, the first three or four volumes, and our inventory indicated we had one, and in some cases two, of each volume. Later tonight, a group of four teenagers who have been semi-regulars (although they've rarely purchased anything) came in, and while the manager was busy, they stole three more volumes of Battle Royale. He knows this because they were there when the teens came in, gone when they left, and there were no other customers in that time.

So we know who they are. We know what they look like. And the next time they come back, they will either be read off the property or arrested for shoplifting. Which isn't much comfort as I go to buy about eight or ten volumes of Battle Royale that I already bought, but it will be if we catch them in the act.

The Perfect Storm of Inside Joke Theatre

Well, it was a pretty big weekend for me, and there are new things to talk about in comics, TV, movies, videogames, family and politics. In other words, every single thing I write about on this blog will be contained in this post. Feel it's mighty (yet inconsequential) power!

So TV, first off. I watched the second episode of The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and I'm pretty much convinced that if the strike wasn't on, and there were a lot of shows competing for my time, this one wouldn't make the cut. The cast is a little bland (even Summer Glau, who shines in her brief moments, is not getting enough chance to show off) and the stories seem a little low-key for a story about the end of the world. I love the idea of using time travel to place agents on key missions, but so far that idea has shown a lack of imagination in execution, and worse, I get the sense that they're not thinking all the implications through, which is death for a time travel story.

It's not a bad show, by any means. But it's up against my fondness for Terminator and T2, and even the things I liked about T3, and that's a pretty rough bit of competition. I'll probably give it a couple more episodes to hook me on the same level The 4400 did (decent, not great, good for filling time), but I'm not dying to watch the episodes or anything.

In politics, the big news is that Clinton won the Nevada primaries, another disappointment for us Obama supporters. Obama's camp is saying that they actually won the primary, with more delegates, so it's not over by any means, but we're starting to get into that "Well, to understand who won you need a doctorate in American political machinery" territory that's just frustrating to follow. Suffice to say, I'd been hoping that the Iowa victory was a signifier that he was going to have the nomination sewn up, and it still looks like a pretty serious fight. I think the Democrats may yet again take an election that should be a cakewalk (if they'd run Obama or Edwards) and turn it into another stunning snatch of defeat from out of the jaws of victory (I don't think Clinton can beat McCain, who is showing surprising strength in the Republican primaries).

I still believe in Obama, and he's still the only person I *want* to vote for. I'll hold my nose and vote for Edwards if he's there instead, or McCain if he's up against Clinton, and if none of those choices are available, I'll probably be voting independent and nursing an even more shattered faith in our electoral system.

In videogames, I've been downloading new songs for Rock Band, and wow is it dangerous how easy it is to get new content for the XBox 360. I bought a bunch of new songs, they're all a lot of fun (my favorites are the Police three-pack and "Gimme Three Steps" by Lynrd Skynrd, but Blink 182's "All the Small Things" is quite fun too) and I keep watching for new songs, which seem to appear about every two weeks. I'm already looking for the next opportunity to throw a Rock Band party. Best videogame ever.

This weekend was the 1st anniversary of my owning Rogues Gallery. Well, technically, I signed the check and ownership papers on February 19th, but we jumped the gun by a month for scheduling reasons. To celebrate, we had a party on Friday night and Saturday afternoon, which featured game demos, creator signings and lots more. It went very well, and I'm pretty proud of how the store has developed. Some highlights:

*On Friday night, I got to play Zombie Fluxx with several of my customers and friends, and we had a lot of fun. Fluxx, for those unfamiliar, is a card game by Looney Labs wherein the basic rules are "Draw 1, Play 1" but there are Rules cards that change that (and many other rules) throughout, and Goals that generally include having two or three "Keeper" cards on the table. The goals, rules and Keepers change throughout the game, and it's a fun bit of chaos. Zombie Fluxx adds zombies to the equation, and is even more fun than the original.

*Also on Friday, I had organized an expedition to see Cloverfield with guests Greg Pak and Scott Kolins (and his wife), several of my staff and a couple of my customers. I got about 30 minutes in (right about when the monster shows up) and had to leave the theater, because the jerky camcorder filming style was about to make me sick. This is the second time this has happened to me, the first was with the Bourne Ultimatum. So now it's not just first person shooters I can't see, it's some films. Stupid motion sickness. At any rate, everybody else seemed to enjoy the movie, and there were a few good trailers, which included the Star Trek teaser (pretty effective, and I'm not a huge Star Trek fan in general), the Iron Man trailer (again, I love this trailer) and the Jumper trailer (looking forward to this one as well). Kind of surprised there hasn't been a Hulk teaser or trailer at this point, though.

*On Saturday, we had a signing in the store with Greg Pak, Scott Kolins, Matt Sturges and Paul Benjamin. And for part of the time, we also had The Defuser, the winner of the second season of Who Wants To Be A Superhero? and an Austin local. It was a lot of fun, and Scott drew a sketch of The Flash for my daughter Katy, which she loved. Greg, despite being a writer, likes to draw Hulk pictures with his signature, and so he drew a backer board sketch of Hulk for my daughter as well, and she loved that too. She also got a picture with The Defuser, and she was just elated to meet a real live superhero.

*We had a good event, which also included our "Hulk Smash" sale (wherein everyone who bought something smashed one of four styrofoam cups, Hulk style, to win something written on the inside), our writing contest to start defining our roguish mascot, Maximillian Larch and our second miniatures painting contest.

With the anniversary event done, it's time to start looking forward to our next store event (probably Free Comic Book Day in May) and throw myself a bit more into my duties on STAPLE!, the independent media/small press comics show that is having its fourth year in Austin on March 1.

And now I leave you with three trailers that I caught last night, all of which I thought were pretty good.

This was my favorite. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler? That's enough right there. Holy crap, Maura Tierney is in it too? And Romany Malco? And guest spots by John Hodgman and Sigourney Weaver? Promising.


This also looks like fun, and I'm really intrigued the notion of John Krasinski and George Clooney playing off each other. The fight scene at the end cracked me up.


I love Judd Apatow and his production company, and I'm a big fan of both Kristen Bell and Jason Segel, but this didn't crack me up like the trailers for 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up or Superbad.

Adventures in Retailing: Discounts

I've always wondered why so many comic shops only carried Marvel and DC, and maybe a smattering of Image.

There's so much good stuff at Dark Horse, Oni, Boom!, Archaia, and that's just naming some of the bigger small publishers. Were they just not noticing this stuff? Did they not look past the first half of the catalog?

And then I discovered my discount for the initial six months at Diamond for everything except Marvel, DC and Image. The discounts for those three are less than they were at my previous three-store operation, but they're within striking distance of it. A reasonable speedbump.

But my discounts on indy books? On manga? On Dark Horse? Ridiculously low. Much lower than I'd originally thought. And so, when I'm looking at initial orders for these first six months, when cash flow is king and Diamond is giving me C.O.D. terms, guess what the first fat to be cut from my budget is?

I can understand, to some extent, the smaller publishers. But the manga publishers? Tokyopop and Viz can't afford to get better terms with Diamond? Dark Horse, a premier publisher, can't at least offer something equivalent to Image? I don't know if the fault lies with the publishers, with Diamond or (more likely) with both, but I will say that the ridiculously low discount on these publishers makes the previous mystery of why so few stores order outside of Marvel and DC a little less mysterious. After six months of establishing your business on the comics that are actually profitable for you to sell, it's going to be harder to suddenly retrain your customer base to look for the indies you haven't been carrying. And as much as the financial burden of comics is already on the retailers, it's even moreso when the margin on comics is as low as it is with this initial discount.

DC and Marvel offer Final Cut-Off ordering, allowing us to adjust orders within three weeks of publishing instead of two months. Image offers up a big initial stock of trade paperbacks to new accounts. Dark Horse? Nothing. Tokyopop? Nothing. Viz? Nothing.

Guess who I'm feeling more loyalty to as a retailer right now? Now as a reader, I'm all about the small press, and as a retailer, I feel a certain responsibility to give my customers a selection, so I'm going to have to suck it up and take the hit. But I'm certainly not feeling warm fuzzies about it, and it is going to make me more gun shy about books I'm not personally interested in, or that I don't already know a customer or two who might be interested.

I don't understand the logic of it. I know where my sales are going to be, and where my discount for the indies will wind up being. After six months, I'll be right back to a more reasonable level. Why cripple new retailers in this way, when their cash flow and available cash is at its lowest? I understand requiring C.O.D., because Diamond doesn't want to get stuck holding the bag when over-ambitious and under-capitalized hobbyists (or even just good businessmen with bad luck) go out of business... doesn't mean I like it, but I understand it. But I don't understand why you'd go with such a ridiculously low discount, as it seems like sacrificing long-term profits (a successful store ordering every month) for potential short-term gain (more money coming in from new accounts that may not be able to ride out the six month period).

Adventures in Retailing: Sickness

I think I might be a little bit sick.

No, not physical illness, although with both my daughter and wife having some kind of stomach bug, that might come at me at the worst possible time as well.

No, I mean mentally ill. Beyond the obvious indicators (I bought a comics and games shop rather than investing in something sane, like real estate or ferret farming), I worked seven of the last seven days, and when I finally get a day off, what do I do?

1) Sent out emails for a promotion for the store in June
2) Did a profit/loss estimate for the next month on the store
3) Paid bills for the store and for our personal finances
4) Set up an ebay account for the store
5) Emailed another distributor to set up an account on Monday

What's kind of sick is that I enjoyed it. I'm enjoying the hell out of working right now. There's a definite reward to owning your own business, even with the worry and the stress and the sleepless nights and mornings that come from that. I feel like I'm accomplishing something, and that's nice.

Maybe I'll relax a little bit later in the day and write some comic reviews. Which is also rewarding, but also work.

Hmm... might have to watch The Illusionist on DVD or some more of the How I Met Your Mother on Tivo to balance all this out.

The Secret Project

Back in late December, I posted about a secret project that was taking up a lot of my time. That secret project has also been the cause of my frustration and tension over the last couple weeks. Now it has been completed, and I can reveal it on the blog, for those who care.

I bought a comic book store.

More specifically, I bought the comic book store I've been co-managing for about six years now. Dave and I, the co-managers, had expressed to the owner a couple years back that if he was ever thinking about selling the store, we'd appreciate the right of first refusal. In November, he contacted me about buying it, I was interested and I've been putting together the deal ever since.

There has been much talk online lately about comic book stores in general, especially with Riot Comics closing down. But there are some pretty significant differences between me and Jason Richards, owner of RIOT, not to mention significant differences between Riot Comics and Dragon's Lair Comics & Fantasy, which I'm buying.

For one thing, Jason had this to say: "Don’t get me wrong. I still LOVE comic books (and will continue to buy them by mailorder so I can be a geek in the privacy of my own home), but I’m not sure I was ever in love with selling comic books. There’s a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes that I was so blissfully ignorant about, from scheduling problems to freight charges, marketing gimmicks to creator meltdowns, that I’d much prefer to just be a reader again."

Oddly enough, I'm not as in love with comics as I was when I began working at the store, but my love for selling them has only grown. I love the business problems and marketing challenges presented in comics. Yes, I'd be happier with a healthier, bigger market and several distributors operating at the top of their game, but I've been dealing with Diamond for six years now (plus two years during college), and for all the shit that they get, they actually provide a pretty solid service 90% of the time. And I love selling comics to people who are getting back in or looking for something new. Even if I'm not into Civil War, I get a certain joy at seeing someone get just totally hooked on a comic series like that. And when I get to sell someone on, say, Queen & Country or Bone, or when a kid picks up Owly, that's a good feeling that's hard to beat.

Also, Dragon's Lair is a comics and games shop, about 50-50. I know some purists look down their noses at that kind of shop, but I'm pretty happy with the niche we've carved out. We've got the indie guys, the mainstream superhero readers, the kids (we've got a great level of family and kid readers) and we've got the role-playing gamers, the boardgamers, the CCG guys, etc. It's a diverse and pretty great customer base that Dave and I have cultivated over six years, and I'm really pleased to be able to continue with them.

We will be changing the name over the course of the year to distinguish ourselves. Because Yellow Pages advertising is done so far in advance, and because a new neon sign is gonna be pricey, and also because we want to avoid confusion, we're doing a slow transition. For the rest of the year, we'll still be answering to Dragon's Lair Comics & Fantasy as well as the new name.

The new name is Rogues Gallery Comics & Games. We open at 10 tomorrow (that's Monday) as we do almost every day, so if you're in the area, come on by and say hi. And maybe buy something... I've got to send my kids to college someday. ;)

Solidarity for Dummies

ComicsPro, the nascent comics retailer organization of nearly 100 members, has come up with a solution to the recent problems with Civil War mis-shipping from the Los Angeles warehouse due to weather difficulties. (If you're unfamiliar with the situation, here's a rundown at CBR.)

The organization has released an open letter, which Johanna Draper Carlson of Comics Worth Reading has reprinted at her site.

Now, I'm one of the managers for a comics shop that was not affected by the delay. And here's my thinking: "Screw this." I'm not entirely sure how my losing out on a weeks' worth of sales (and make no mistake, not getting Civil War would have cost at least half of the customer base on this particular, relatively slow-shipping Thursday) helps anyone on the West Coast out. If I get Civil War in Austin, am I going to undercut sales to someone who usually shops in San Francisco? Or is this just a "We're miserable, we want everyone to be miserable together" kind of thing?

Seriously, I have sympathy. Had things been different, and my shop hadn't gotten Civil War last week, I would have been pissed. But I wouldn't have demanded that everybody pretend like the book wasn't available anywhere. Unless it's shipping to my local competitors and not me, I don't really see a huge problem with uneven shipping. Yes, it's unfair and yes, it sucks for those in the affected region. But requiring Diamond to not ship the books to every region for a week, undercutting everyone's sales? That would be kind of like your buddy cutting his thumb off and so you cut your thumb off in a show of solidarity. It makes you a *great* friend, but kind of an idiot.

But maybe I'm being short-sighted or selfish. Or both. My initial reaction here, though, is that this is that rare comic book screw-up that is actually nobody's fault. You can stretch and say it's Diamond's fault for not having a better contingency plan in place, but beyond being willing to airlift the comics from the trucks caught in bad weather for a huge sum of money, I'm not quite sure what satisfactory contingency there could be. You could stretch really, really far and blame it on Marvel for not having the book on time in the first place... if it had shipped in December, it might not have hit the bad weather. But really, the blame lies with bad weather. Emotionally, I get that retailers who didn't get their books would be steaming... but I would think that intellectually, they would have to realize that this was an unfortunate accident, not one of the many broken things about the direct market that needs fixing.

If ComicsPro needs a cause, how about getting Diamond to ship all accounts (not just the multi-store chains) on Tuesdays so that the books can be prepared Tuesday nights for sale instead of in as rushed a manner possible on Wednesdays? That would also have the benefit of building in more lead-time if a weather delay like this happened again.