For those who haven't seen it elsewhere I have started a new podcast series with my friend and fellow comics scholar, Christopher Maverick. We'll be talking Pop Culture in an informal academic way, which basically means we want to make Pop Culture studies more accessible to Pop Culture consumers. Anyway, the first episode is up. Since it is our first episode we talk about the Origin Story. You can find it at our website. http://voxpopcast.com/wp/2018/04/09/episode-1-origin-stories/
A few
years ago while visiting friends in California I made my first trip
to San Francisco. Mike and I spent the day seeing sights and eating
great food and having fun. Completely fortuitously Cherie Currie,
former singer for the 70s band The Runaways, had announced a concert
in San Francisco the same day that we had already planned on being
there. When I discovered this I called Mike and told him we were
going, then bought tickets online. I wrote about that concert in more
detail HERE, so that isn’t what this is about.
There
were two experiences I had while waiting in line outside of the Red
Devil Lounge waiting to go into the show. We were approached by a
homeless man. He was the epitome of the downtrodden. His hair and
beard were long, dirty and matted. He was thin and filthy, wearing
clothes so ragged I’m not sure how they stayed on him. He came
straight to me and I fully expected him to ask us for money and then
move on.
‟Hey,”
he said to me. ‟Nice shirt. They’re one of my favorite bands!”
I was
wearing a t-shirt with the logo of the Glam Band The Sweet (Ballroom
Blitz, Fox on the Run). Perhaps ungenerously I assumed this was just
his opening line and the ask for money would come next. Nope. He
enthused about The Sweet, telling me about seeing them in the 70s. He
was knowledgable about them and we had a completely enjoyable
conversation, just two guys who shared an interest in a specific
band, swapping stories about favorite songs. For the duration of the
conversation he lit up, happy to be just talking and connecting. At
the end he just smiled and started to go on his way. He never asked
me for a dime (though I did give him some money, which, though
grateful, he seemed hesitant to take).
Just
after he left two couple walked by. Older. Well-dressed. Out for an
evening. One of the women looked up and saw the marquee which
announced, ‟Tonight: Cherie Currie!”
‟Cherry
curry?” she said while scrunching up her nose. ‟I don’t think
that would taste good at all.”
Recently I was asked to participate in Publisher’s Weekly’s annual review of the comic book industry. You can read the article by Shannon O’Leary HERE. I was quoted a number of times in the article, but a lot of people, mainly my customers at Phantom of the Attic, have asked about the whole questionnaire so I decided to share it here. This really only of interest to anyone who wants to know more about the state of the comic book retail industry. My caveat here is that my answers reflect my opinions and observations based on 21 years of experience in one specific store. I don’t claim to have all of the answers or to speak for other stores. We all have different experiences.
1) What were your best selling graphic novels in 2017?
Saga continues to be our bestselling series of graphic novels for the third or fourth year now. We’ve had a lot of success with The Wicked and the Divine and East of West because they are books that a couple of our employees push pretty hard. In general the Image TPs top the list. They are self-contained series without crossovers, so people can get into a series and, quite simply, know what to read next. The introductory $9.99 price point doesn’t hurt either. We moved a lot of My Favorite Thing is Monsters. Though there are few specific standout titles in general we do really well with the FirstSecond catalog. World of Edena by Moebius did extremely well for an expensive HC. We’ve had customers regularly asking for Moebius stuff for years so the prospect of his work finally coming back into print here is exciting.
The DC Rebirth TPs increased sales over DC from the past couple of years. Marvel TPs are mostly dead stock for us. I can’t put my finger on why, other than as another indicator of the downturn in interest in Marvel. There are many Marvel trades we don’t order at all. We only move a couple of each of the X-Men TPs when they come out. The Epic Collections do pretty well with an older customer base.
This
past weekend I was discussing Halloween with my 95 year old mother.
She has never really been a fan. She just doesn’t get the
fascination with the horrific and the obsession with images of death.
The conversation was prompted by her being pretty turned off by a
yard decorated with fake tombstones.
‟Why
would anybody want to do that?” she asked. ‟We'll all be in a
real one soon enough.”
She’s
not wrong, and at her age I’m sure it feels more real than to the
rest of us. I talked some about how it’s psychologically healthy
for people to deal with frightening things in a safe and fun
environment. But, as much as I love Halloween it’s not my place to
change her mind on this and I respect her feelings.
Then,
she told me a Halloween story from her youth. She was a late teen at
the time and she and her friend Vida, who would become my aunt by
marrying Uncle Carl, were out looking for something to do. There was
a party being held but they had not been invited. Apparently the
hostess was a girl they were feuding right then. Mom couldn’t
remember why, but all of their friends were there and they had been
excluded.
Based on
what I know of the personalities of my Mom and my Aunt Vida I have to
assume the next part of their evening was Vida’s idea... but maybe
not.
The two
of them went to the house where the party was being held and soaped
the windshields of every car there. Mom said they were thorough. No
one was going to be able to see to drive home without a lot of clean
up.
They got
away with it. No one ever confronted them. If they were suspected no
one ever let on.
I have
never participated in this level of vandalism in my life. At 95 Mom
giggled gleefully while telling this story that I had never heard
before. Maybe she doesn’t dislike Halloween as much as she thinks
she does.
A
handsome young man came into the store today. Very quiet. Very
polite. It’s new book day here, our busiest day of the week, so he
kind of disappeared into the background noise. After browsing for
awhile he asked us where to find a comic he was looking for. Things
had calmed down a little so a conversation ensued.
He was
in town just for the day. He was traveling on a tour bus as the
opening act for another musician. The name didn’t register with me.
We’re a big enough city that many small name acts pass through here
playing clubs and bars and smaller venues. He didn’t say very much
about what he played, and seemed a little shy when we asked about the
tour, just telling us he had been in Toronto yesterday. He has his
bike on the bus with him, so he was tooling around Pittsburgh on a
cold rainy fall day, just checking out the sights while here. He said
he always tries to find local comic book stores when he’s in a new
city and the internet had pointed him to us. He was very
complimentary of the store (the ‟best one I’ve been to in my
travels”), and before he left he asked us where the closest movie
theater was. Thanked us, got on his bike and was on his way.
So of
course, after he left, we Googled his name to see what kind of music
he played. His name is Clark Beckham and he was the first runner up
on season fourteen of American Idol. We’re listening to one of his
albums in the store right now.
Though
my favorite toys as a child were action figures I did have my share
of cars. Matchbox cars and Hot Wheels primarily. They were relatively
cheap, so I’m sure they were Mom’s default when I wanted
something. But there were a lot of them. I had the Hot Wheels track
with the loop and the jump ramp that I would stretch from the kitchen
table out into the living room. I don’t have any of these left and
have no idea what happened to them.
There
was one toy car that stands out more because I do remember what
happened to it. It wasn’t one of the small cars, but a larger one
called an SSP Racer. SSP stood for Super Sonic Power. Each car had a
large wheel in the center of its body. You would insert the ‟t-stick”
and then pull, making the wheel spin and create sound, then let it
go.
Mine was
called the Laker Special. It was bright orange and I thought it was
the coolest model they made. The others all looked like cars. The
Laker Special looked like a Sci Fi rocket car. When it raced along
the floor it looked like it was floating slightly above the ground. I
have often thought that Luke’s landspeeder in Star Wars was
influenced by this.
Living
in the country I didn’t have lot of places where I could really
take advantage of the full Super Sonic Power. The space in my house
wasn’t really big enough for it to play out it’s full potential.
There were no sidewalks, and even with very little traffic back then
playing in the road was a no-no. But, I took it outside and made the
best of it.
One day
after a hard rain I was in a nearby wooded lot. Crews from the
telephone company had been working in the area, digging holes to bury
the phone lines that up to that point had been stretched between
poles. It was an overall upgrade to the system at the time. There was
a large hole in the ground, filled with muddy water. That’s when
inspiration hit. I yanked the t-stick and put the car in the water.
Just as I thought, the spinning wheel revved and sprayed filthy water
everywhere, soaking me in an instant.
Pretty cool.
The
Laker Special immediately sank out of sight into the brown mud. The
hole was a lot deeper than I thought it would be. I sank my arm into
it, but couldn’t reach the bottom. I got a shovel from our garage
and poked around with it, but no matter what I did I couldn’t find
my racer. I didn’t tell my Mom because I think I was afraid of
getting in trouble for losing this slightly more expensive toy.
Within a day or two the work crews were back and filled in the hole.
Unlike the happy ending of my previous story about Geronimo, the
Laker Special was lost forever.
To this
day I can go to that spot. Somewhere, six feet or so under the
ground, like an ancient artifact of the past, my SSP sleeps.
