Category: Rants

Dave Cockrum passes away

Cockrum was the artist behind the X-Men revamping in the 70s, turning a moribund title into the blockbuster franchise it is today. He created Nightcrawler, Storm, Colossus, the Starjammers, and the Imperial Guard, among others. He suffered from diabetes, and passed away Saturday at the age of 63.

This is really an awful story in some regards. Until three years ago, Cockrum was broke despite his contributions to what at one time was the biggest franchise in comics. He received no royalties for his work despite frequent reprintings of the X-Men comics. When Clifford Meth of Silver Bullet Comics started publicizing Cockrum’s plight, Marvel did come to a settlement with Cockrum that at least gave him the chance to move to a warmer climate in South Carolina. He spent his last years talking with fans on the Internet, never sounding bitter, glad for whatever attention his fans gave him.

I always thought of Cockrum as the eternal teenager. His designs were always so youthful and energetic, it seemed that he had tapped into some sort of Fountain of Youth for his art. It’s jarring and upsetting to hear of his passing.

Clifford Meth writes about Cockrum’s last days, and I think it’s the best tribute on the net I’ve seen. If you’ve never read any of Cockrum’s work, the best place to see his work is in the Uncanny X-Men Omnibus published last year by Marvel. It’s pricey, but it’s the best reprinting of his work I’ve ever seen, and for the size of the book, it’s a real bargain.

Heaven’s getting a heck of an artist today.

Memo to Amazon: I’m sad

ITEM! My good friend Glenn apparently didn’t get the memo that November is “Let’s All Stop Writing Our Blogs For A While” month, and sent me an email asking for updates.

Of course, it’s my own fault. I’ve spent the last week building a new desk. Part of the problem of buying and loving oversized comics is that you need a big reading surface for them. I read everything at my desk, and my current desk, a fiberboard construction I’ve had since the late 90s, just isn’t big enough. It had no open “real estate” to place anything but a small manga book, making reading a challenge. One night two weeks ago, I broached the topic of getting a new desk to my wife, and she agreed with me. Rather than wait for her to change her mind, I rushed out and got a much bigger desk at Staples.

This desk is, as the Swedish would say, Yuge. Therein lies the problem- I live in the upper floor of a two-family home. The package weighed too much to be carried up the stairs, so I did what I normally do in these situations. I opened the package in the car, and made a few trips up and down the stairs bringing up pieces of the desk each time. This worked until I got to the final piece, the desktop itself. I failed to adjust for its size and awkwardness, and pulled a few rib and back muscles in the process. Ouch! I also had some problems with the actual assembly of the desk; I had to contact the manufacturer to replace parts that were damaged when one of the two desk hutches tumbled over in mid-construction.

I finished the desk last night. Tonight, I have to move everything off the old desk, move it out of the space, clean up the area, and then move the new desk in. I’ll take photos and share. Woot!

ITEM! Amazon.com has betrayed me this morning. I feel a loss.

Amazon’s Gold Box program used to heavily rely upon the favorites list generated by your browsing and purchase history on the site. This meant that if I spent time cultivating my favorites on Amazon, ranking books I liked highly and ones I didn’t poorly, I ran a good chance of getting a book I wanted at a lower-than-normal price. Each day was like pulling a slot machine- ten items would be presented at random, each carrying a larger discount than normal. Sometimes it would be wonky (apparently, it thinks I have a thing for out-of-stock purses. No wallets, just purses. Scary.), but you could get some great deals on occasion.

Apparently, that day has come to an end. Now, everyone gets the same item in their Gold Box. I’m heartbroken; Amazon now knows everything about my book preferences, but refuses to reward me for that information. The item for sale today is a Coleman 54-quart cooler. It’s a brisk autumn in New Jersey; I don’t think I’m really in the market for such an item.

It’s my own fault, really. I’ve been abusing Buy.com‘s Google Checkout promotion that ended yesterday. I was getting $10 off every $30 I spent. It was a weird deal, because you couldn’t get the deal if you were logged in to your own account. Instead, you logged out of your Buy.com account, shopped anonymously on the site, and then checked out using Google. I was getting a discount without providing Buy with the critical information about myself that it really wants.

Last night, I tried making one last purchase, since the plan was expiring. But Google Checkout seemed to crash, and I couldn’t purchase that last Krazy Kat book needed to complete my collection. Of course, I can purchase it at Amazon for a low price, and they’ll ship it two-day for free (I was granted a free month of Amazon Prime, their promotional shipping discount program). But I won’t get a super-low price like I would have gotten at Buy/Google.

I feel like I’ve been dumped. Today, neither site truly “wants” me. Buy.com isn’t offering me $10 off $30 anymore, while Amazon will no longer reward me for all those times I spent whispering in its ear about my love for Essentials and Masterworks. I’ve been jilted by two lovers, it appears.

Good thing Tales of Wonder has a big sale going on…

Errata

1. I’ve been told by my e-mail host, Fastmail, that there’s a catastrophic disk outage that’s playing havoc on their site, and I’ll be unable to access the ray@raycornwall.com email for at least a day. So I’ll be slow to respond to emails this weekend.

2. I’ve changed some of the tags around on the sidebar.

3. I owe everyone articles on Luke Cage, a few Masterworks, and Iron Wok Jan. I should make some headway this weekend. The Iron Wok Jan reread came out of the last attempts to revive 35-30, which I’ve decided is just not feasible anymore. One thing I’ve definitely picked up on the second time around is the extent of Jan’s physical abuse at the hands of his grandfather; it changes the whole tone of the story. It’s still a fantastic story, but it’s a little disturbing.

4. Comics shopping goodness: If you shop at Buy.com until 10/31 and check out using Google Checkout, you’ll save $10 off a $30 order. The discount can be used repeatedly, so you could buy, say, $210 worth of books for $140 by doing 7 orders. The deal doesn’t work on pre-orders, and they seem to be slow on updating new books; I noticed Ode to Kirihito and the Ivan Brunetti anthology were not in their warehouses even though I saw the books on the shelves of Barnes & Noble last weekend. And if you’re meticulous about the condition of your books, I don’t recommend the service; they don’t pack books anywhere near as good as, say, Mailordercomics.com. But if you’re just looking for a few graphic novels to read, you can’t go wrong.

KA-BLAMM! And Other Sound Effects

We blew up the blog real good, didn’t we? I’d like to thank Omer Kakarca for designing the theme. There is still some work to be done (the logo’s pretty hideous), but I like the new layout, and I hope you do too. Drop a comment if you see any bugs.

eBay policy on pre-orders detrimental to comics retailers

eBay announced last week that it’s clamping down on pre-order sales on Playstations 3s and Nintendo Wii consoles. Last year, when the Xbox 360 came out, numerous eBay buyers were hurt when they tried to buy consoles through such auctions, only to suffer when sellers couldn’t deliver the product.

This is a responsible move on eBay’s part. No video game reseller can guarantee you a Wii or PS3 at this time. You can pre-order a console from a retailer, but because supply issues are never resolved at a console launch, the retailer can’t guarantee it will be allocated the number of pre-orders it took. And most of the pre-order sales on eBay are actually individuals who made a pre-order at a retailer anyway, so they can’t guarantee the sale. It’s too disruptive a business for eBay, and they outlaw such business with this policy.

"The seller must guarantee that the item will be available for shipping within 30 days from the date of purchase (i.e., the day the listing ends or the date the item is purchased from a store front listing)."

However, since this policy is uniform across the eBay site, I suspect a lot of comics retailers are about to run into trouble with this policy.

There are a number of listings each month on eBay for pre-sales of comics merchandise. Here’s one as an example. This is for Marve Masterworks Avengers volume 6. Marvel is listing the shipping date as December 13, 2006. The auction expires October 19, well before the 30 days that eBay mandates for such auctions. Technically, this auction is not in compliance with eBay’s policy on pre-sale transactions.

But there’s a big difference between this listing and a listing for a console that hasn’t shipped. The retailer is utilizing the Direct Market to secure the Avengers book. He’ll place an order, and Marvel will fulfill it through Diamond Distribution. In fact, Marvel will create as many books as needed to fulfill the needs of Diamond’s retailer customers. Unless the retailer makes an error with his Diamond order or Marvel unexpectedly allocates the Masterwork (and I don’t think they’ve ever allocated such an item), the retailer will easily fulfill this order when the book comes out. And this retailer has done this transaction many times in the past; he’s got a 99.0% positive feedback rating on nearly fourteen thousand transactions. (I’m not endorsing the retailer at all; I’m just rattling off his eBay numbers. I picked this transaction solely because it’s the first one I found.)

Clearly, this sort of transaction shouldn’t be treated in the same way a console pre-order is. But the polciy doesn’t distinguish between the two; it treats both the same, and I suspect at some point comics retailers are going to be punished for the sins of the video game industry.