Ugly American Report Column 6: Disengage Auto-Pilot!

This week I’m going to talk a little about “next level” comic book collecting, and some ways to squeeze the most out of your hobby. Human beings are creatures of habit, and on the whole this is a good thing. If you actually had to burn mental calories figuring out how to tie your shoes, and what to eat for breakfast, or the correct route to get to work…you’d be ready to collapse inside of an hour. Your patterns help you reserve energy for situations that demand it.

The danger, of course, is that if you spend too much time in baseline zombie mode you’re no longer living your life but simply going through the motions on a rote program. And when habits get too far embedded, they can also prevent you from optimal results, because as new information and scenarios arise, you aren’t adjusting to them. You’re just running the same old program. These are bad things.

As I was listing out my little tips for maximizing comic book pleasure, it became clear to me that really what I was advocating was a quick “time out” from auto-pilot to assess how and why a comic collection gets built. And here’s how it works:

Grab a Previews Every Now and Again
For better or for worse, your comics are largely coming through Diamond, and they are all available for consideration in the monthly Previews catalog. I don’t care how big or high-concept or progressive your local shop might be, you aren’t seeing everything available to you because they aren’t ordering everything. They just can’t, it would be fiscal suicide.

I promise you, if you look through the Previews, you are going to find things you absolutely must have that you never knew existed. For some, this might actually seem like a curse rather than a blessing! And it’s not just comics in there – Diamond carries toys, and statues, and magazines, and trading cards, and Walking Dead zippo lighters, and a host of other wonderful trinkets you don’t need but certainly will order when you see them.

If you’re not occasionally perusing the Previews catalog, you are at the mercy of other people deciding what you get to see. Take control of your collection and look at what’s available to you every now and again.

Pre-Order Your Comics
Pre-ordering you comics and related items is good for everybody involved.

It virtually guarantees that you’re going to get the products you want. (sometimes items get allocated or short-shipped, but this is rare) It instantly makes your retailer more profitable, because now he or she is not guessing about what you want as a customer, you’re putting yourself down as locked in sale. And the more people announce ahead of time what they actually want, the more accurate the retailer orders are, and therefore a more accurate message is sent to the publishers about what products customers actually want.

Let me be a bit more clear about that last point. Let’s just use Uncanny Avengers as a hypothetical example. I think most retailers are going to order pretty heavy on that, it’s a high profile title with pretty big creators and kind of the face of the Marvel NOW! initiative. But it’s no guarantee – it’s possible to mega-order books that don’t actually sell to real, breathing people. So if the retailer orders 120 copies of Uncanny Avengers # 1 and they only actually sell 22 of them, that’s a problem. Now, eventually the retailer is going to cut orders to reflect the actual sales they can close, but in the interim, the orders make it look to Marvel like they have a huge hit on their hands, and they’re going to plot out other comics accordingly.

Pre-ordering means less guesswork for the retailer and more accurate information about what kind of material publishers should be offering. And you get your stuff instead of hoping that what you want will be on the rack for you on Wednesday. It’s a win-win-win.

Consider All Your Supply Options
If you haven’t, you should take a moment now and consider your digital options and an online pull. To be clear, I am a staunch defender of the brick-and-mortar comic book shop. I have at times in my comic collecting career had mail-order pull subscriptions from Westfield Comics, (old school represent!) Lone Star Comics, and DCB Service. I don’t do that any more. I buy all of my (floppy) comics from local comic shops.

The reason you need to consider an online source is price. Different publishers offer different discounts, but if you’re ordering from a giant like DCB Service, you can pretty much chop 40% off the cover price of anything you’re now collecting. There are monthly sales and specials where the discounts can get up to crazy 75% levels. That’s powerful.

There are some downsides, though. Online ordering means your comics get shipped, and that costs money and time. If your monthly pull is a half dozen books, your shipping charges are going to negate most or all of your savings. If you’ve got a forty book pull, that’s significant. Or if you’ve got a twenty book pull and you’d like to add about ten titles, you can probably do that at DCB Service without adding to your monthly budget at all.

That shipping lag does tend to take you “out of the loop” a bit, though. I always feel a bit out of it when I’m on an online pull. I have to avoid comics news sites and other humans until my books arrive to avoid spoiling everything, because I’m always behind – my comics haven’t arrived yet when everybody is hot to talk about the Next Big Thing.

The larger issue for me, though, was the fact that I was paying up front for everything I was ordering. Now, if you’re just collecting Amazing Spider-Man, an online subscription works just fine. Spidey is going to come out like clockwork for the most part. But if you want indie titles, or statues, or signed material from Dynamic Forces….there are problems.

Sometimes Infinite Vacation doesn’t ship for nine months. Is it ever coming out? I certainly paid for it! There are rules that say late books are cancelled after a specified period and need to be re-solicited…but sometimes that happens, and sometimes it doesn’t. And if the book is cancelled, did I get credited for that money? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Sometimes that Walking Dead lighter I bought never showed up. I bought it six months ago, it was supposed to ship three months ago, but who can keep track of that? Well, if you don’t keep track of it by the moment, even the best online source can’t help you with it.

For me, I came to the conclusion that I simply can’t get involved like that. The savings weren’t worth the headaches. If I could have worked out a system where I pay for product when it shipped only, I might still be doing that. I don’t know any online outfit that works that way, though. I get all my comics from local brick-and-mortar shops.

Here’s something else you need to consider on that front, though. Your LCS has many benefits, and you should consider carefully about cutting support from them, because once they’re gone….they probably 'aint coming back. And while online subscriptions are great resources for cheap prices on stuff you know you like, they’re kind of terrible places to find new stuff you don’t know you like yet.

And here’s another thing – I’ll share with you an anecdote about why I do most of my business with Hot Comics & Collectibles. There’s a manger there by the name of Mike. Now, I come across as a gregarious jackass when performing on the air, but in real life I’m a wallflower. I’m basically polite, but I give no indication that I’m interested in human interaction when I’m in that store. Mike greets me, by name, every time I’m in the store. No matter how cold I am, Mike is always going to be friendly with me. That impresses me.

But there’s more. One time I decided that I just had to have a NM copy of Suicide Squad # 6

from the New 52. It was a Harley Quinn origin story that snuck up on me, it was criminally under-ordered, and I simply could not get my hands on it. It was trading for around $25 shortly after it hit stands, but by the time I decided I needed it, it simply wasn’t available anywhere, at any price. (it’s settled down considerable since then)

So I stop into Hot Comics and tell Mike my story, and I explain to him that if he can dig up a copy of that book for me, I’ll be happy to pay him $10 for a junk copy or $15 for something in NM. He walks into the back room, and 30 seconds later I’ve got a NM copy of Suicide Squad # 6 in my hands, a book that I just announced I would gladly pay $15 for. He charges me cover price and says he’s happy to help.

Now whatever positives an online subscription service might possess, that’s never happening online. That’s the magic of the local comic shop, and that’s why Hot Comics gets the lion’s share of my business even though there are two other comic shops just as near to me.

I’m running way long, so I’ll be brief with my digital bit. There are comics that are important to me as physical artifacts. My Scott Snyder Batman books, as an example. I can’t imagine a world in which I don’t have them physically in a long box. But then there are books like X-Factor, that I dearly love, but they are not artifacts of importance to me. They’re like a really good friend that stops by monthly, or lately quite a bit more than that. I can imagine a world in which I check in with those friends on my computer, and they aren’t piling up in my spare bedroom. It’s worth thinking about once in a while, again factoring in that support that I want to extend to my local retailer. There are programs now where your LCS can partner with the publishers on digital content and get a cut of the proceeds if you go through their digital portal. Think about it, and ask about it.

Read This Week’s Books Before Next Week
Stop buying books you don’t really like. Stop it. Now. It’s not doing you a lick of good, it’s sending a malignant, false message to the publisher of that book, and it’s keeping you from spending that money on books you will like. Stop it.

Here’s my tip for you on that count – if you find that on Wednesday there are comics from last week you still haven’t read yet…you probably don’t really like them. If you find that you pick up an issue of a comic, and then realize that you still haven’t read the last issue from a month ago? The odds are staggeringly good that you don’t actually like that comic.

If you’re buying a comic and fully recognizing that you have a stack of seven unread issues of this title at home, punch yourself in the face and do not buy another issue of that comic. Ready for a secret? You absolutely, positively do not like that comic with seven unread issues in an unkempt pile by Mr. Whiskers litter box. You don’t. Stop lying to yourself, and stop buying that comic.

Those are my tips for hitting that next level in enjoying the world of comics. Find that auto-pilot switch and turn it off for a moment. Grab a Previews, page through it, see what’s actually out there. Figure out the best balance for you on price, convenience, and supporting your local retailer. Take a look at what’s piling up in your reading room and make some cuts…then make some additions! You’ll be happier trust me.

And speaking of assessing the quality of comics, I’m gearing up for one of those inevitable, lame, “Best of 2012” columns. If you’re interested in sharing, send me your Top 10 favorite books of 2012, or your Top 5 mini-series, whatever. Send those to ryanleeisamonster@gmail.com, because it will be fascinating to me generally, and help to keep me from forgetting things.