Comics Weekly
By Pete Kilmer
November 28, 2007
Pete Kilmer has been in the comics retail industry for ten years as a member of Downtown Comics in Indianapolis. Downtown Comics is one of the Midwest's largest comic retailers with over four locations in Indianapolis. All opinions are his own, and they cannot be bought with free swag. Beer and a walk on role on Chuck to steal Sarah from Chuck and I'm bought...
So the big news this past week was Marvel and DC issuing legal letters to Z-cult FM comic torrent site to cease and desist the file sharing of comic torrents. Of course, the Z-cult FM fanbase and a segment of the online community then bashed Marvel and DC for protecting their copyrighted material. Go figure, you knew they were going to bash the corporations for protecting what is legally theirs in the first place. And yes, I read a majority of posts of at Z-cult and at Newsarama, and I read the excuses that comic fans have for illegally downloading the comics. Reasons such as "I hate what Marvel and DC are doing so I won't spend money on their product", "I only download the old issues so I can archive them", "The Masterworks and DC Archive's are too expensive", "I hate the new Marvel Digital Comics program as I can't download them" and the one I seem to read a lot "By downloading comics, it's gotten me back into reading comics again and now I shop at my local LCS". Look let's be honest, most of the reasons are pure BS. No two ways about it, if you download a comic off a newsgroup, from Z-cult or any of the other torrent sites, you are stealing. Period. You're not making any sort of protest statement by doing so, what you're doing is hurting the local comics shops and yeah, sure, maybe in a couple of years you'll hurt Marvel or DC. But in the short-term it's the local comic shop owners that you hurt, that will cut back on ordering certain things. Look, the back issue market for local comic shops has radically changed over the last seven years with the rise of selling on Ebay, mycomicshop.com and other various online retailers; it's taken the work of hunting for back issues away. You can find whatever you need to fill your collection online easily. I know my back issues sales have dropped over the last five years dramatically. What I do move in my back bins are $1 and .25 comics...I can move those all day and I can never have enough '90s glut of Image and Marvel crap in quarter bins. And I do get people who come in specifically for those two sections and a lot of those people have moved onto the new comics and trades, which is great. But the online file sharing of comics is not something that is healthy for the industry at all in its present state.
That being said...Marvel and DC are missing the boat, at this time, with their lack of online issues. There really is no reason for them not offer some kind of download and I mean a real download service for people that want high resolution images of classic material and no reason for both companies not to offer some kind of royalty program for the creators and families of said works. Comic Fans tend to be early adopters of new technology and as more avenues open up for them to read comics, the big companies and the small ones have GOT to get on board or be left in the dust and alienate the fanbase. One of the few things I'd ask the companies to do is put an embargo on the new material that they put up, I think a seven month window would work out, but that's just a quick idea.
Anyway, it's not an easy topic to tackle right now and the comic companies have huge problems like late books....I'm looking at you Joe Quesada, for the ridiculous scheduling of Spider-man One More Day story without ANY sort of explanation for retailers to our customers. That's just poor customer service on your part, Joe. And the funny thing is, you've done this before with your Daredevil Father series. Can you please make a promise not to touch a series at all for the next five years? Because you've shown you can't get it done on time even with the lead time. Now to be fair, Joe, you're outstanding Editor-in-Chief and the revolution you've led at Marvel over the past seven years has been nothing short of brilliant. But you can't do a monthly book anymore.
Whoa....to quote Dennis Miller: I didn't mean to get off a rant there. Sorry, let's get into it...
52 AFTERMATH THE FOUR HORSEMEN #4 (OF 6)
ALL STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN THE BOY WONDER #8 (more of the Goddamn Batman, look for this series to wrap up sometime next year)
AMERICAN VIRGIN #21
ARMY OF DARKNESS FROM ASHES #4
AUTHORITY PRIME #2 (OF 6)
AVENGERS INITIATIVE BASIC TRAINING VOL 1 PREM HC
BATMAN #671 (GHUL) (This Ra's Al Ghul story has been a blast!)
BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS #2
BLACK PANTHER #32 (The Black Panther led Fantastic Four continues to dimension-hop to a gangster world that The Thing has been to before)
BLUE BEETLE #21
CABLE DEADPOOL #47 (The Merc with the Mouth and Agent Bob of Hydra continue with their trek through the dimensions, I really hope Marvel has some plans for Deadpool, as it's one of their best books right now)
COUNTDOWN LORD HAVOK AND THE EXTREMISTS #2 (OF 6)
COUNTDOWN TO ADVENTURE #4 (OF 8)
COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS 22 ( Ok we've spent two issues of Superman-Prime proving how powerful he is...can we move on?)
CRIME BIBLE THE FIVE LESSONS OF BLOOD #2 (OF 5)
CRIMINAL MACABRE MY DEMON BABY #3 (OF 4)
CROSSING MIDNIGHT #13 (MR)
DAN DARE #1 (OF 7)
DAREDEVIL #102 (Brubaker is writing a great story, but Michal Lark and Stefano Gaudiano are really showing how important they are with their tremendous art)
DEATH OF THE NEW GODS #3 (OF 8) (I know people are knocking it...but I like this story a lot, it's been quite good)
DEATHBLOW #8
DOC FRANKENSTEIN CVR B #6
DOCK WALLOPER #1 (OF 5)
FIRST BORN CVR A #3 (OF 3)
FOOLKILLER #2 (OF 5)
FREDDY VS JASON VS ASH #2 (OF 6) (This again will be the book of the week)
GAMEKEEPER VOL 1 TOOTH & CLAW LIMITED HC
GEN13 ARMAGEDDON #1
GOTHAM UNDERGROUND #2 (OF 9) (the tie-in series for Salvation Run continues)
GREEN LANTERN CORPS #18
HAWKGIRL HAWKMAN RETURNS TP
HIGHLANDER THE COLDEST WAR TP
JACK OF FABLES #17 (MR)
JLA CLASSIFIED #47
JSA CLASSIFIED #32
MADMAN ATOMIC COMICS #5
MAGICIAN APPRENTICE #11 (OF 12)
MARVEL ADVENTURES IRON MAN #7
MARVEL ATLAS #1 (OF 2)
MARVEL ZOMBIES 2 #2 (OF 5) (More Zombie Madness in this fun series)
MERCENARIES #1
MIDNIGHTER VOL 1 KILLING MACHINE TP
MOON KNIGHT ANNUAL #1
RED SONJA VOL 2 ARROWSMITH JIM
SAVAGE DRAGON #134
SENSATIONAL SPIDER-MAN #41 OMD (only about two months late. Shameful)
SHOWCASE PRESENTS TP SUPERGIRL VOL 01
STAR WARS KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC #23
SUB-MARINER #6 (OF 6) CWI (wow...great issue that completely changes the status quo of Atlantis and the Sub-Mariner. Will be interesting to see where they go from here)
SUPERGIRL AND THE LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #36
SUPERMAN ANNUAL #13
SUPERMAN BATMAN #43
TEEN TITANS #53
TEEN TITANS GO #49
TERMINATOR 2 INFINITY #5
TESTAMENT VOL 3 BABEL TP
TRANSFORMERS DEVASTATION #3
TRIALS OF SHAZAM #10 (OF 12)
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #116
UNCLE SAM AND THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS #3 (OF 8)
WARREN ELLIS BLACK GAS TP
WORLD WAR HULK FRONT LINE #6 (OF 6) WWH (I really liked this series a lot as it showed how these big slugfest really effect the man on the street. Plus we get some answers as to who funds the online paper!)
X-MEN #205 (The next part of the Messiah Complex)
X-MEN FIRST CLASS VOL 2 #6
That's it for this week. I hope you all have a great week!
If you would like a complete list of the new releases that actually ships for the week please head over to Downtown Comics and check out the Shipping This Week section!
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