I was part of a frenzy!
Despite my cool-guy demeanor and generally beach-bum attire, I still nerd out on all sorts of weird stuff. Like language. Like, here I've been spending actual time trying to figure out how to alter a narrative and tweak it into the style of a different language in how their language reflects their thoughts... Um, so...
Imagine a regular story taking the approach of the English-language sentence "I've lost my car key(s)." Now, imagine the tweaks necessary to turn it into something like "Of car my key have been lost happened to me." Hard to imagine? Tell me about it. I know. I'm living it. Or trying this same exercise with sentences that come from languages that don't use tenses?
See? Nerding out...
I also kinda nerd out on comics. Not like the early to mid '90s, or even 2014 to 2017. In fact, the main company I nerded out for was sold to an investment firm, and the main bosses were asked to leave. Fans think the quality has gone down in the years since our own Stan Lee, Dinesh Shamdasani, was forced out.
Some things have been decent, but I can attest to this fact: "quality" may have gone down, but my excitement over the content and new stuff most definitely has. I refuse to blame the company, even if some things are obviously of different quality. I also don't await the new releases like a kid in September eagerly waiting for Christmas anymore.
But Dinesh and some of his buddies got together to create a new type of comic company. They would release only at most two books a month. They would only make a single cover. They would never release them digitally, and they would never collect them into trade-paperbacks. They also would refuse to distribute them using the main distributor, Diamond Distribution. This is like telling Ticketmaster to GFY.
They would allow comic shops the ability to apply to sell their books, and then hand pick the shops. They mandated that each shop needed to agree to their selling rules: ONLY ONE FIRST EDITION PER CUSTOMER and MUST SELL AT THE COVER PRCE FOR 30 DAYS.
They called the company Bad Idea Comics.
I asked one of my local shops if they were going to apply. It was on a day where I was actually talking to the owner of the store. He couldn't understand what I was telling him. Near the end of it, you could tell it was dawning on him..."Well, I guess that would create a kind of specific demand...but why would the artists agree to do it?" That was what he was focused on.
The artists they attracted are some of the most critically acclaimed workers in the field. They aren't the talented youngsters doing the forty-three Marvel comics each month, rather the older heads who win awards and are the standard by which we judge other work. Why would they agree to work for...what, NO money? SOME money?
Maybe being a part of something crazy appealed to them, I answered. To make a living in the comic industry is HARD. Matt Kindt, one of the premier writers in the industry today, writes something like 8 separate titles a month for different companies, all with different sets of rules, guidelines, and expectations for his submissions.
The next time I saw that owner, he told me he'd applied, and was waiting to hear back. The store, Pulp Fiction, hasn't been picked yet.
As gthe names of the stores began to trickle out, the online community of fanatics (of which I am a member) was freaking out. Will I be able to get one, comment after comment worried. Not me, never for a second. Which is honest. I live in the greater metro LA area. There would be at least one store within driving distance, and once the name dropped, I was sure I would be able to call them and get my name of the list.
It's like Chicago Blackhawks fandom: there are only an arena's worth of them, but they are batshit crazy for the team.
The first name I saw within driving distance was in Anaheim. I called and had myself put on the list. Then the pandemic hit and the May 2020 release date was wiped away.
Time passed. More time passed. New release dates were announced. New titles were announced. Excitement grew. The online community, small as it is, was batshit crazy. Then: the day!
March 3rd: Bad Idea Day!
I went to pick Cass up early from pre-school. He was surprised and excited. I'd been explaining to him the concept for months, and he was excited to go, and I thought it could be a cool adventure we could do together: drive down to Orange County and get some special, limited comics.
In the runup, news was spreading that stores would be shorted about 50% of their orders. Panic spread through the community. Not me, but still.
I thought, if I missed out...well...bummer, but at least it was something to be excited about (besides my kids and career and hobbies of novel writing, blogging, and painting). But...I live in LA metro, so, I just always assumed the books would make it here.
And they did. Pop Comics used to have two locations, but the downtown Anaheim store has since closed. I was heading to the warehouse district store. And the term "warehouse" only describes the district, not the 20 square foot shop with Bad Idea comics, other high end comic fare, and some statues for sale.
I love the place, but our Ronnybrook dairy-shilling tents were bigger than this comic "shop."
But I got my book:
ENIAC #1, written by Matt Kindt and penciled by Doug Braithwaite (the combo that gave us one of my favorite Dinesh-era Valiant series Divinity, about a black Soviet cosmonaut who returns with powers), is about a world where the Nagasaki bomb was dropped by the sentient-ENIAC computer, the first AI accidently created. It seems to have decided over the decades since to take over the world.
There is a second story, a so-called B-Side. The product is pretty stellar.
So, the Frenzy...
The online community is going crazy. First editions in some places are being hoarded by the owners. Some purchased their books and immediately put them up on Ebay for, in some cases, $800 (!!!).
It was so nice to be a part of something crazy. Like driving across town when Pynchon's Bleeding Edge was released.
I have no interest in selling my copy, not for eight-hundred bucks, or anything.
