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We have been very fortunate to luck into several amazing collections over the last two weeks, an embarrassment of riches as Jay called it earlier today, and you can share in them by bringing a piece (or several) home today! I’ve posted over 50 books on our Instagram and Facebook to give you just an idea, but there will also be several short boxes of Silver & Bronze Age back issues making their way into the bins in the next week, and a few currently at CGC that will straight up knock you on your coal-mining @$$es!

At this point, the only Penguin Random House wrinkle that still needs to be ironed out from the last two weeks is four copies of the Amazing Spider-Man #75 Webhead variant (these are additional special orders, with main covers already having been replaced)! Everything looks good for next week’s order (see below), so hopefully it’ll be smooth sailing from here on ::knocks on wood::

By now, it’s become pretty clear to the comic world that Marvel’s transition to their new exclusive distributor, Penguin Random House, as of October 1st didn’t go as smoothly as anyone hoped. Some stores had boxes showed up unsellable, necessitating immediate redesigns. Lunar Distribution didn’t received anything. Here at Ssalefish, Concord and Winston had some nicks and dings, and in Greensboro we received dozens of ratio incentive variants instead of the regular issues we actually ordered. At this point, on Thursday afternoon, everyone that pre-ordered Amazing Spider-Man #75 now has it on hold in their folders, and replacements for our missing Captain Marvel #33, Eternals Celestia #1, Excalibur #24, and Hellions #16 are on the way. Next week, according to our pre-delivery report and providing we continue to escape the damage bug, the only title affected should be Star Wars War of the Bounty Hunters #5, and we’ve gotten out ahead of that to insurance copies already en route. We hate for any problems on our end to directly impact you guys, be it the leaky roof, the collapse of the comic supplies chain, or anything else, but we’ll always keep our heads up and make every effort to get you exactly what you want!

Last weekend, I got a guitar I’ve had my eye on for a while, a Fender Acoustasonic Jazzmaster. Check out that tone switching!

New phone, who dis?

Sometimes it feels like my entire inner dialogue and relationships are devolving into nothing but quotes from I Think You Should Leave and What We Do In The Shadows, but is that such a bad thing?

”I don’t even wanna be around anymore.”

”’Bazinga’ is the war cry of Sheldon, their tall leader.”

”Triples makes it safe. Triples is best.”

"I did apply for my American citizenship back in 1992 for 5 reasons and 5 reasons only - Johnson, Jordan, Bird, Barkley, Ewing - the starting lineup for the 1992 US Olympic men's basketball team. The Dream Team Baby!"

This Disney trip was probably the most stressful of the three I’ve been on in the last two years. We crammed in 18 rides across three parks in one 12-hour day on Thursday (the Mouse feels if he can get you on 7.5, you’ve got nothing to complain about), which was probably a little too much straight out the gate. Then the Florida sun got the best of us on Friday morning, but we booted and rallied back at the campsite and retook Hollywood Studios that evening. I didn’t get a boarding group for Rise of Resistance this time, but there will be plenty of other opportunities in the future.

I’ve watched the first two of the four episodes of Y the Last Man that were released as the premiere. It seems like they took fewer liberties with it than other recent Vertigo adaptations like Preacher and Sweet Tooth, but overall it seems like they’re going for a very Walking Dead feel with the gore and cinematography, which I guess will have to get better the further they get from the event, but still isn’t what I’m in the mood for at the moment.

Coming to you live from Disney’s Animal Kingdom (after hopping over from the Magic Kingdom at 2 PM)!

If you’re someone that’s very plugged into the comics world, you might already be aware that this is the first week that we’ll be ordering our Marvel titles from Penguin Random House instead of Diamond Comic Distributors, where the House of Ideas has been exclusive since the late 1990s. While we hope this doesn’t effect you guys in any way, shape, or form, it does mean we’re adding a third new comic distributor in less than 12 months and this one, despite being one of the top 3 book distributors in the world, has no experience dealing with comics, so there will certainly be a learning curve involved for us and them! We’ll find out just how steep together on the first Wednesday in October.

To say that the balance of power in this industry has been completely turned on its head since the pandemic started is in no way an understatement.

On Saturday, I finished my first marathon! I woke up one day in March and just decided it was something I could probably do and got after it. 21 weeks of training on a 16 week program because I had to reschedule at the last minute around Free Comic Book Day and at one point I got bit by a bug on my ankle while mowing the lawn and it swelled up like a grapefruit for two weeks. Now it’s done, 400+ miles under my belt. I was a little disappointed in my time, I thought my training runs had prepared me to get in under five hours for sure, but I hit the wall at mile 18 and everything slowed to a crawl. Then I googled the average finish time of the Disney Marathon in 2020 (it was 1.12 before the pandemic and I’m already registered for 2022 in January) and it said it was 5:48, so I still would be in the top half and that made me ride a high the rest of the day.

On the comic front, I started re-reading James Robinson’s Starman, inspired by the compendium that came out last week. Any fears about how the 27 year old series would hold up (I was recently jilted by Justice League International) were assuaged in page one, panel one. It’s such an amazing, grounded survey of the entire DC Universe and I’m already more connected to everything of himself that Robinson put into Jack Knight than ever before.

Things have been pretty standard for me since FCBD, just counting down the days until Disney. I’ve been outfitting the fam in preparation, using my Cricuit to make iron-ons for the first time.

I went a little crazy on Reb Bubble buying up I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson stickers. Karl Havoc is my spirit animal.

The Yankees have won 12 straight, but now they’re on a west coast trip and I go to bed waaaaay too early to stay up for any of that.

I finally beat Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword with the HD re-release for Switch, so I guess it’s time to dig up the WiiU and unwrap the HD copy I’ve been sitting on for five years.

I’m down a bit of an Expanse rabbit hole, watching the show on Amazon Prime and listening to the audiobooks.

Thanks to everyone that came out and made our first Free Comic Book Day in over two years a big success! Our sales were about 80% of what they were in 2019, but given the extreme heat, the change of date, no Marvel movie to make a comic-themed day of it, a threat of rain, and it being the weekend before school started back, we’re very happy! Concord also did just $300 less during their first FCBD than we did here back in 2017, more proof that they’re heading in the right direction despite literally opening on the worst day possible, and their Power Rangers guest Rorrie D. Travis said he’d like to come back again!

Personally, this one, my 15th, meant more than usual because not only having my parents on hand to help out as usual, this was the first FCBD that my brother has been to, and he got to bring his whole family along! I’m also floored that Miranda has them watching all of the Star Wars movies in order of release, including the prequels, before our trip to Hollywood Studios together in two weeks with the same enthusiasm she had for rewatching the Harry Potter movies before we went to Universal in January.