Bent Corner

Yesterday’s Keith and the Girl podcast featured special guest comedian Christian Finnegan. He has been on before and he is really quite funny. They were talking about the recent Dragon*Con convention where both Keith and Chemda (The Girl) attended for the very first time. They were talking about how funny it was to see all the nerds in attendance when Christian brought up Blizzcon. It’s a convention held by the software maker Blizzard for people that play their games, mainly the popular World of WarCraft.

Christian was hired to do stand up comedy for the people in attendance. He mentioned that Jay Mohr was the guest at the most recent Blizzcon and people heckled Mohr’s act. Some got angry that there weren’t any World of WarCraft centric jokes. Jay Mohr simply did his normal stand up act and some in attendance were not impressed. Christian said that when he did Blizzcon, he “wrote” new material for his act.

Did he write it or did he borrow it?

He said that he included a joke about the women in attendance at Blizzcon maybe thinking that they are better looking then they really are. He told the women in attendance that though they may be hot for Blizzcon, they probably were not that hot in the real world. The world outside of Blizzcon. Just because you are Blizzcon hot doesn’t mean you are regular hot. He said that it went over pretty good and I am sure it did.

It was a funny bit.

I thought it was funny when I heard Christian talk about it and I thought it was funny when I read it back in 2004 in The Onion. It was the basis of a hilarious The Onion story about a mildly semi-attractive woman that attends a Farscape convention and walks away mistakingly thinking she is one hot babe. She is one of the few women in attendance and gets a lot of attention from the horny nerds in attendance.

Does Christian Finnegan read The Onion? I think he does.

• Woman At Farscape Convention Has Dangerously Inflated Self-Image [The Onion]
• 574:The Shitbox MP3 (fast forward to the 14:30 mark)

Oprah Winfrey can tell people what book to read and they turn it into a best seller. Can she do the same thing with a Presidential candidate? She is backing Barack Obama instead of Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. In fact, she held a massive fund raiser for Obama this weekend at her Santa Barbra mansion in California.

Does she risk alienating any of her viewers by backing a candidate? I don’t remember Merv Griffin or Mike Douglas endorsing a political candidate.

Will she actually vote for him in the Democratic Illinois primary? If she does, it will be the first time she has actually voted in an Illinois primary election since 1988. [Link]

I think this is my favorite of the United States Mint’s 50 State Quarters Program. I like the bird (a Peregrine Falcon) and I like all the open space on the coin. Less is more I think.

One of the kookiest moments in DC Comics's recent AMAZONS ATTACK mini-series was when Superman was in Washington D.C. and he could see the island of Themyscira appear some 93 miles off the eastern seaboard. Forgetting for a moment that one does not have a direct view of the ocean from where everyone was standing in Washington D.C, the earth's surface curves making visualizing something 93 miles away all but impossible. 

The rule of thumb is that line of sight at sea level is 12 miles.  After about 12 miles, objects at sea level fall off below the visual horizon.  The curvature of the earth obstructs the view.

Even if you have x-ray vision.   

For being the second smartest person in the D.C. Universe, Batman fails to call Superman on this.  Instead he goes along with what the Man of Steal is saying.  World's Greatest Detective my ass. 

Ever month, ICv2 puts out a list of the Top 300 comics.  They are estimates of the "sales" by Diamond U.S. to comic specialty stores for that month.  Even though they are only estimates, some people take these numbers and make far reaching conclusions about comics that may or may not be true. Specifically, whether a comic book is a success or not.  If it sells a lot of copies or not.

These numbers only reflect what comic book shops are ordering from Diamond Comic Distributors.  That's it.  These numbers don't reflect what is actually getting sold to customers.  With that said, some people still insist on treating them as some sort of comic book best seller list. 

Brian Wood, writer of DEMO, LOCAL, and DMZ responded to one of these sales charts posted to Comic Book Resources:  

I and many others have spoken about the inaccuracies inherent in the comics sales charts that are released - basically they are good for the simplest of general trending and not much else. I've learned to ignore them for the most part.

Then this one pops up on CBR, that is supposedly the cumulative sales on graphic novels to-date this year. Sounds good, right? Well, the only number that I myself can verify is DMZ Vol.2's, which this chart claims has sold so far this year:

5,488

I look through my emails and find the number of initial orders that DMZ v2 got back in early February:

5,489

So it seems like from February to now I have sold -1 copy of DMZ v2.

Somethings fishy, right? So I check my royalty sheets, and the most recent statement I've received for this book reports sales through April of this year. So three months of sales. Wanna know the number?

9,798

Year-to-date my ass. I get so sick of these charts and flawed estimates and subsequent analysis. They aren't just off - sometimes they are WAY off.

These comic book sales lists are simply retarded.   The only thing worse then no information is the wrong information and these lists are always constantly wrong.

Certain comic books are constantly referred to as top sellers even though we have no real way of knowing if they are selling a lot of issues or not.  Just because a retailer orders a certain number of copies doesn't mean anything.  There can be a whole host of reasons a retailer orders a certain number of copies.  Reasons that may or may not have anything to do with the fact that customers are actually buying them or not. 

Maybe a retailer is having a cash flow problem and has to cut down on his or her orders.  Maybe their tax bill is coming due and money is tight.  We simply don't know why a retailer may order fewer comics then they did before.  We shouldn't automatically attribute it to reader dissatisfaction with a new creative team. 

We also don't know how many retailers are ordering comics each month.  If the total number of comic book shops in the country fluctuates from month to month or from year to year, this will be reflected on the comic book sales chart.  We just won't know it. We will look at the sales chart and attribute either a rise or fall in the amount of comics sold not to an increase or decrease in the number of comic book shops ordering books, but to the amount of readers.   

I used to buy my comics at a shop that never ordered enough copies of the type of comics I enjoyed reading.  If I wanted to make sure I got my copy of FABLES or Y THE LAST MAN that month, I had to get over to the store on the Wednesday it came out.  By Thursday, the one or two copies on the shelf would be gone.  Even after I eventually started a pull list it was hit or miss.  Sometimes they would "forget" to put my copy of FABLES or Y THE LAST MAN in my box.  Even though this shop under ordered most of the non-superhero books, they over ordered everything else.  They had copies of WOLVERINE, AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, UNCANNY X-MEN and just about every other mainline superhero book published in the last three years sitting in stacks on the shelves.  

By looking at the charts, these superhero books gathering dust in the comic book shop were all top selling books.  The non-superhero books that were shown to be low selling books on the charts were in fact selling out in a couple of days. 

Eric Reynolds, marketing manager for comic book publisher Fantagraphics blogs about a recent visit to a comic book shop. Eric and his wife were in Pullman, Washington and decided to stop in at 4 k r a z y k a t z to see what the shop had to offer.  Eric writes:

Sadly, they didn’t have a single independent comic at all, despite a captive and diverse student population (none of which were actually in the store when I visited) and plenty of empty space in the store. Their “mature readers” section amounted to a copy of WATCHMEN and a few Vertigo comics. The guy behind the counter could see my dissatisfaction, and asked, “Can I help you find anything?” I told him I was looking for indie comics, stuff like Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly publishes. “Are they still around?” he asked. I assured him they were and then told me, wait, he might have something I want, it was a comic he’d mistakenly received from Diamond. He then went flipping through the back issue bins and pulled out a single copy of Gilbert Hernandez’s SPEAK OF THE DEVIL #1 from Dark Horse. Mind you, this is a brand new comic, which he immediately filed in a back issue bin. What a fucking tool. And this is a comic book shop in a college town, IN OUR HOME STATE, AND NAMED AFTER A COMIC STRIP THAT FANTAGRAPHICS PUBLISHES. And yet the owner (yes, he mentioned to me that he was the owner) didn’t even know we were still in business despite the fact that we solicit books and comics every single month in the very catalog he orders from. And people wonder why the direct market often seems utterly doomed.

I guess Eric could have responded to this situation in one of two ways:

Option #1 - He could have taken the opportunity to educate the comic book shop owner about what a fine and diverse publisher Fantagraphics is and told him about some of the fantastic books Fantagraphics has to offer.

Option #2 - He could have said nothing to the store owner and instead waited to blog about the store and call the owner a "fucking tool".

Unfortunately, Eric chose option number two. 

I went to the 4 k r a z y k a t  website.  I wanted to see if in fact the owner was indeed a "fucking tool".  There are a few things Eric Reynolds left out in his blog post.  First of all, the shop stocks over 1,200 foreign movies in the store.  The reason I point this out is because this store is clearly more then just another small town dumpy comic book shop.  It looks like a interesting place to visit.  I would go there.

Eric said that the shop didn't have "a single independent comic at all".  They publish their weekly shipping list.  There are independent comics on the list.  

The shop didn't get it's name from a Fantagraphics comic as Eric wrote in his blog post.  The before mentioned newspaper article explains the origin of the store's name. 

It doesn't have anything to do with Fantagraphics.

There are photos of the shop on their website.  The shop looked like a nice place to visit.  It didn't look like a dump.  It didn't look messy or cluttered.  It didn't look like it reeked of cigarettes or stale body funk.  I don't think anyone sleeps on the floor in a Wolverine sleeping bag.  

The thing I found the most interesting from Eric's blog post was the not that he would publicly call a comic book retailer and a potential customer a "fucking tool".  No, what I found the most interesting was the implication that since the shop is located in the same town as Washington State University, it was some sort of given that comics published by Fantagraphics would do well there.  The inference was that college kids are the type of people that read Fantagraphics comics.  The type of comics published by Fantagraphics.

I'm not so sure I agree with that.  I'm more inclined to believe that a 20 year old college kid would be more interested in reading the latest Spider-Man or Green Lantern story then something published by Fantagraphics.  Just like I think the typical college kid would rather watch Spider-Man 3 then Ghost World.  Not that 20 year old kids attending college usually have money to blow on comics, especially the higher priced stuff from Fantagraphics.

But that's just my opinion. 

Last year I did some volunteer work for Andrew Duck, a Democratic candidate for the United States House of Representatives. He sought to represent Maryland’s 6th congressional district against Republican incumbent Roscoe Bartlett. Normally I would automatically support anyone running against Bartlett. Duck was different in that I really thought he would make a good Representative. Unlike chicken-hawk Bartlett, Duck served over 20 years in the United States Army, serving three tours in Bosnia and one tour in Iraq in 2003.

I wasn’t voting against Bartlett, I was voting for Duck.

I guess because of my volunteer work, I ended up on a Maryland Democratic email list. Tonight I received an email inviting me to a special Maryland Democratic Gala event in Greenbelt, Maryland. The keynote speaker at this Gala will be Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley.

To be honest, I don’t really know what a Gala is.

If I want to go to this Gala, I have two options. I can pay $250 and be a regular Gala Guest or I can pay $500 and be a VIP guest. As a $500 VIP, not only would I be attending the Gala, but I would be able to attend the special VIP Reception held prior to the regular old Gala.

The $250 guests don’t get to attend the Reception. I guess they have to sit in their cars and listen to Air America Radio.

There is something horrifically wrong with our political system. I volunteer to deliver VOTE DUCK yard signs to old people and now I get emails from my political party offering to let me hang out with them if I agree to pay enough for the privilege. I should not have to pay $500 to listen to my governor give a speech.

This isn’t how the political process is supposed to work. It is broken.

This photo all but destroys a theory of mine. It used to be that when you went to a comic book convention, you would see dozens and dozens of Klingons in attendance. Now instead of Klingons, you see lots of Stormtroopers.

I had a theory that the Stormtroopers killed off all the Klingons. That was until I found this photo on Flickr. This appears to a hybrid Klingon-Stormtrooper. Perhaps the Stormtroopers didn’t kill off the Klingons. The Klingons may have instead evolved into Stormtroopers. Or, when the Stormtroopers started to show up at comic book conventions, the Klingons may have just killed the Stormtroopers with their bat’leths and took their plastic Imperial Stormtrooper armor as their own. That would explain why this Klingon Stormtrooper is not wearing a Stormtrooper helmet. He may have lopped off the Stormtroopers head with this bat’leth and in his battle frenzy, forgot to retrieve the head.

This would certainly explain a lot.

There very well may be inside every Stormtrooper, the beating heart of a Klingon.

Photo by Flickr user carencey

A guy named Michael Righi was arrested after shopping at a Circuit City in Brooklyn, Ohio. His crime stemmed from making two separate purchases while in Circuit City and upon leaving, refused to allow the Circuit City loss prevention employee to search his bags or look at his two receipts. When he left the store and got into his father’s car, the Circuit City employee followed him and would not allow the car to leave.

Righi asked the Circuit City loss prevention employee if he was being accused of shoplifting. He was told that he was not, but that he would not allow him to leave the parking lot until Righi produced the receipts and allowed him to search his bags.

Righi refused and since the Circuit City employee was physically blocking him from leaving, Righi called the police.

When the police arrived, they told Righi that Circuit City had the “right” to inspect receipts and bags of customers leaving their store. They don’t have this right. The police then demanded to see Righi’s drivers license. He refused. He was not driving a motor vehicle. The officer had no right to ask him for his license to drive a motor vehicle. The police reacted to this refusal by placing him under arrest.

After taking Righi into the police station, they realized they had no business demanding that a person who was not driving a motor vehicle to produce a license to drive a motor vehicle. It would be like stopping a car and asking the driver to produce a fishing license. Not having anything to actually charge Righi with, the police found something vague enough to satisfy a reason for the arrest.

ORD:525.07: Obstructing Official Business (M-2)
(a) No person, without privilege to do so and with purpose to prevent, obstruct or delay the performance by a public official of any authorized act within the public official’s official capacity shall do any act that hampers or impedes a public official in the performance of the public official’s lawful duties.

Righi was able to pay the bail ($300) and he was released. His trial will be September 20. He will undoubtedly beat the charge, but he shouldn’t have to. Righi did the right thing in not showing the Circuit City employee his receipts and not allowing him to search his bags. Righi did the right thing in refusing to show the police officer his drivers license.

That doesn’t mean I would have done the same thing. I wish I could say that I would, but I know how I would have responded. I made a vow to myself a long time ago to never be placed under arrest in the United States. Other countries don’t count.

Its important to point out that at no time did anyone from Circuit City accuse Michael Righi of shoplifting. If they had, they could have legally demanded to see his receipts and to search his bags. They had no reason to suspect him of shoplifting.

The reason stores do this type of thing is because they don’t trust their own employees. They lose more money every year to their own employees stealing then they do to shoplifters. Employees have their friends come in and purchase things and they covertly place items in their bags without scanning them into the register. If stores like Circuit City want to stop employee theft, they should hire better employees. They shouldn’t coerce their customers into producing a receipt or consenting to having their property searched.

Its degrading and annoying.

Update: Michael got so many hits to his blog about this story that he had to move his blog to another server. He also has posted a PayPal link if you would like to donate to his defense.

Link (newsite.michaelrighi.com)