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We had a great time with Robert Venditti for the Hank Howard: Pizza Detective in Caligula’s Safe 24 hour bananza! With Bad Idea involved, you know there was bound to be hi-jinx, the kind that resulted in no less than 20 (TWENTY?!) pizzas being delivered to the Concord location, and a gloating photo (we can only assume since there was a mask involved) of Robert in front of the Papa John's next to the Greensboro store while holding a Marco’s pizza!

Upcoming Bad Ideas include a Christmas comic in July (Slay Bells), Hollywood horror (The Lot), and the continuations of Eniac and Robert’s other book from the publisher, Tankers!

On April Fool’s Day, the fine folks at Bad Idea Corp. announced that they’d be publishing a comic that could ONLY BE SOLD IN ONE 24 HOUR PERIOD, at the penalty of banishment from the Bad Idea community for violating the sales window, and it would only cost a BUCK! Surely, coming on April 1st, this had to be a joke!

But as with all Bad Ideas, they were very serious! Hank Howard Pizza Detective at Caligula’s Safe will be 16 pages, written by Robert Venditti and drawn by Stray Bullets creator David Lapham, costs you just one American dollar, and can only be purchased on Wednesday, May 12th during regular 8 AM - 8 PM business hours, or via the ComicHub portals from midnight until 11:59 PM!

To make it even better, Robert will be at the Concord store from 12-2 PM and the Greensboro shop from 4-6 PM to sign & date your copies for FREE! We’ll also have an extremely limited number of Venditti’s other Bad Idea title, Tankers #1, available for purchase. Despite this banger of a deal, as with all Bad Idea books, quantities are limited to one copy per customer!

Obviously the world was unprepared for the reception of Batman/ Fortnite Zero Point! On our side of things, we saw the lukewarm reception to Marvel’s crossover with the same game in 2020 and DC’s rush-job soliciting the series at the last minute and forcing us to commit our orders for the first four issues of the six part series before it even started, and we went semi-conservative on our orders, but still similar to what we got on Next Batman Second Son #1 and Batman the Detective #1, neither of which sold out.

But this was a different beast all together and we probably could have sold four times as many and the calls keep coming in daily, mainly from kids that we hate to disappoint! Due to this demand, we’re already sold out of first printings of Batman/ Fortnite Zero Point #2 that ships next week, and anyone that doesn’t already have it on order will have to wait for the 2nd prints that ship on Tuesday, June 1st, the same day as the 3rd printing of #1.

First printings of #3, guest-starring G.I. Joe’s Snake Eyes, and the rest of the series are still available for pre-order as of this posting, including the “Premium” variants!

Today marks four years of actual on-time new releases (208 entries divided by 52 weeks is 4)! It’s kinda a non-event because of the shutdown offsetting the actual opening anniversary (April 5th) and our grand opening anniversary (May 6th), but if we were published by Marvel, I guarantee next Wednesday's New Release Day would have at least five covers (these are the thoughts I’m left with when I’m alone at the store all day without even Lois to keep me company).

Here’s the good news: We’ve been spoiled by several fantastic new collections of everything from top-shelf, backwall silver age books to low-production fairly recent Transformers and vintage toys! We’re working as fast as we can to get them processed and put out, but make sure you’re paying special attention to the area inside and behind the counter next time you’re in!

Here’s the not as great news: We’ve done our best to stay ahead of the supply crunch spreading throughout the collectible community, and thankfully you’ve never had to go without current or silver age bags and boards when you needed them, or long and short boxes for less than a day. Unfortunately, the increased demand has caused our distributors to increase their wholesale prices to very close to our old retail prices, so we’ve had to go up accordingly, with new supply prices now posted at all three stores.

Today is Greensboro’s four year anniversary! Just some photos to share from the past pretty good week. The successful Jason Faunt signing last Friday. A COVID kitchen haircut gone wrong on Sunday afternoon. Fantastic Pizza for lunch on Monday. Opening day for the Yankees on Thursday. Time with the family.

It’ll be another one of those surreal experiences tomorrow, going from a kid working on a Power Rangers fan zine in Microsoft Word on Windows 3.1 in 5th grade to hosting a real-live Power Ranger in my very own comic book store! Come out and see my reaction tomorrow, April 2nd starting at 5 PM and get something signed by Jason Faunt, famous for portraying Wesley Collins/ the Red Ranger during Power Rangers Time Force! If you’re searching for the perfect thing to get personalized, we’ll have plenty of Mighty Morphin #1 and Power Rangers #1 from last year’s Boom Studios relaunch and Jason’s Power Rangers Lightning Collection figure available for purchase!

Tomorrow afternoon, I get my 2nd vaccination shot at Walgreens before I come in! I’m not sharing it in a political or even public health kind of way, but anything I can do to not have to wear a mask again for as long as possible, I’ll do it!

Last week, I talked about how Ultramega #1 by James Harren was my favorite single issue of the year, but this spread from Die Die Die #14 by Robert Kirkman and Chris Burnham is my panel of the year. Me and Jay and Kevin had our heads together pointing out characters from Voltron, Metroid, Star Wars, Looney Tunes, Mars Attacks, Arzach, Alf, street art, the Simpsons, the Nameless, Dune, and the list goes on! It inspires childlike wonder that everyone can share the same universe and get along (though I’m sure they didn’t ask any permissions and it’ll probably never be reprinted), it tugs at the heart strings with the homage to Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, sends the mind reeling like the reveal in Secret Invasion #1. So. Good.

I’m very excited about this one, because it marks exactly one year since the last First Look before the shutdown, one year since me, Bret & Colton took this picture on Concord’s second day open, emulating the band playing as the Titanic sank, when we got the word that effectively immediately, there wouldn’t be any new comic shipments from Diamond and due to government decree we had to close our doors for “two weeks”, which became six weeks, seven without a “full” week of new books.

There was definitely a part of me that thought “well, we had a good run” and we’d end up liquidating all of our stock online from my basement, especially as the goal line of our re-opening was repeatedly moved back. But y’all were there with us buying everything you could via Facebook Messenger and eBay and Amazon, and you were there ready and waiting when we were able to turn the keys again! Now April will begin our 5th year in business, and every new comic we read between now and mid-May will be even better, because last year had nothing but back issues!