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As with most other things this year, this will be an Independence Day unlike any other, and we don’t even get cool alien dogfights with Will Smith! I’ll probably just stream the fireworks from Disney and grill myself a burger.

But we’ve gotta do something to celebrate while we’re open regular business hours this weekend, right? How about Buy 2 Get 1 FREE Graphic Novels since we didn’t get a chance to do it during Free Comic Book Day back in May? You got it!

A year ago we would have considered next week’s release slate anemic, but it feels pretty normal at this point with DC taking the week off to officially switch to their new distribution partners and Marvel only putting out trades, so here’s Robert Kirkman to the rescue, debuting both his new series with Chris Samnee, Fire Power, with both a prequel original graphic novel and the FREE first issue AND a brand-new Walking Dead story with Charlie Adlard, Negan Lives!

It’s Thursday, so I’m in that Concord frame of mind! We hung some letters this morning to indicate the new release wall from a mile away, and I like how they turned out so much and I might bring the idea back to Greensboro!

Robert Kirkman has just announced that they’re doing a special brand-new Walking Dead one-shot, Negan Lives, by Kirkman and Charlie Adlard, available Wednesday, July 1st! We’ll automatically pull the regular cover for any subscribers that purchased the final issue of the ongoing series, but anyone else that wants in on the action can let us know via our usual channels. The language was a little vague on how the gold and silver foil variants will be distributed, so we’re not taking any pre-orders or quoting any prices on them at this time.

It was SO good to dig into a BIG stack of comics this week from so many different publishers! It’s wild how Alan Burnett, Paul Dini, and Ty Templeton were able to fall right back to 1992 and make me feel 8 years old again in Batman The Adventures Continue, Die Die Die had one of the craziest first pages I’ve ever read, and Craig Thompson keeps putting out one of my favorite books even though it’s a study of the cultivation and history of ginseng! People keep asking and I’ll keep saying it’s good to be back!

And next week is Dark Nights Death Metal! I talk more about it below, but we’re going to reserve the official announcement of a midnight release on Monday, June 15th because we’ve never done one that early before! So once books are safely in hand to make it happen, we’ll shout it loud and clear!

With Batman #92 hitting next week, I wanted to reiterate a couple of points.

The three covers above are the only three editions of Batman #92 available for general sale, the full trade dress Yasmin Putri “A” cover, the Stanley “Artgerm” Lau cardstock “B” cover, and the 1 for every 25 copies ordered Jorge Jimenez “Punchline” variant. Anything else you see online is exclusive to another store and you’ll have to order them directly from those retailers.

DC new releases are available on Tuesdays now! You don’t have to wait until Wednesday to get Batman #92! Barring a cataclysmic event that affects both Old Dominion & UPS, we’ll have the biggest book of the year ready to go when we open at 11 AM on Tuesday, June 9th!

There is NO LIMIT on the number of copies you’d like to get on either of the open-order covers! Buy one for your kids, your parents, you buddies, one to read and one to put away, whatever you want!

It was surreal getting to sit down and eat at the Cracker Barrel across the street from the Concord store this morning. Now if we could just get Marvel back to shipping new single issues weekly, we’d have ourselves a stew going!

The following titles are scheduled to ship on Wednesday, June 3rd (Tuesday 6.2 for DC books) excluding some re-orders and providing nothing changes by the time the final invoice arrives on Monday:

I never buy myself clothes, but when I saw this shirt while ordering all of those Ahsoka Pops on May the 4th, I had to get it! Babu Frik is my constant source of fulfillment and positivity, and now he can be yours, too, whenever I wear it!

Today’s my first solo shift down in Concord, and despite almost dying in the rain on the way here and looking up to see the opposite wall from the counter, it feels just like home, dog and all!

We’ve all been patient, we’ve made the best of the limited DC new releases that have been available from our alternate distributors, but it’s time to get back to New Comic Book Day, amirite?! Many publishers are throttling their publishing schedules to accommodate stores that are experiencing financial hardship or still unable to open due to stay-at-home orders in their states, but Diamond is back in business and shipping for all publishers except Marvel, who will be restarting on the 27th!

We’re ready to re-open tomorrow, Friday, May 8th at 5 PM!

From that point on, we’ll be observing normal business hours, except that we’ll be opening at 11 AM on Wednesday, May 13th instead of our usual 8 AM because there won’t be another full week of new releases until Wednesday, May 20th.

We’ve got a completely refreshed backwall, new Black Widow and Gamerverse Marvel Legends, the first wave of G.I. Joe Classified, a case of Empire Strikes Back 40th Anniversary retro carded 6” figures, the Black Series 6” scale The Child (Baby Yoda), the deluxe Probot, more than two dozen never-before-seen Funko Pops, a display case full of Star Wars LEGOs, and over 1,000 back issues that we just put out today!