Buy two, by the bye

Two things I forgot to mention in my post last week about where to get graphic novels:

1. Edward R. Hamilton is an online remainderer that has recently been offering discounted graphic novels. Currently, there are more than 200 Marvel books and 70 Dark Horse books available. As you can imagine, the selection is a little sparse, but when you can pick up some Marvel Essentials for $2.95 (like both volumes of Essential X-Factor and Essential Wolverine, v. 4), then that’s not something you complain about. Most of the books are more than half off, with some being as ridiculously discounted as the Essentials I mentioned. Other publishers are also available. DC books are offered, but their discounts are generally Amazon level (which is good) rather than a ridiculous 50 to 75 percent off. Shipping is a flat $3.95, whether you buy one book or 100. To find comics, I find it easiest to search for the publishers’ names under their search box (and select the “publisher” radio box as well).

2. Your local library is a no-cost option. Many libraries are adding graphic novels, since people, you know, read them. And more of them are actually adding popular books, as my soon-to-be-released book advises, instead of copying lists of The 50 Greatest Graphic Novels. I am privileged to have access to both a public library and a university library (through my wife, who works at one), and both offer collected editions. Check out your library; check out the books to let the library know what you like. If the library has a suggestion box, suggest other collected editions to buy. If you really want a book the library doesn’t have, ask them to interlibrary loan it for you. (Since it costs them money and hours to ILL books, they’ll get the point even faster through this method). To find graphic novels at libraries, it’s easiest to shelf browse, unfortunately. Some libraries might have standard subject or name headings for their collections, though; poke around in your library’s catalog to see.

Buy, by the bye

So for the first post of the year, I’m going to write about something I had planned to discuss at the beginning of last year: where do you get your trade paperbacks? Or maybe I should say, Where should you get your trade paperbacks?

The answer should be obvious: Your Local Comic Shop is the place to satisfy all your comic-related needs. It supports a local business, it can help center and preserve the local comic-book community, and the proprietor (or clerk) might be able to guess, from your purchases, titles that you might also like but have not read yet. Unfortunately, that didn’t quite work out for me when I tried it last year. I look for three things when it comes to purchasing locally: timeliness, price, and reliability. There are two comic shops in town, so I tried them both in turn.

The first allowed customers to pre-order TPBs and hardbacks using ComiXology’s Web site, which was a nice perk; unfortunately, pre-ordering was allowed only for the current month of Previews,, and books that were already out couldn’t be ordered. Occasionally there were miscommunications somewhere in the line, and I would go in to the shop, expecting to find a book waiting for me, and it wouldn’t be there. Since that shop was on the far side of town, where I had no reason to go, it made it seem like a chore to stop by; also, the store offered no discounts on trades, even when pre-ordered, so I decided to give the other store a chance.

The second store had advantages: it was closer to where I lived; it was in a part of town I often went to, even when I didn’t plan on going there; it was where I went to play Heroclix on the weekends. Comic Shop B offered a discount on comics that, while not reaching Amazon levels, was enough for me to overlook the difference. The problem was that since I did not have regular titles I was buying — I couldn’t tell the owner to pull all the issues of Green Lantern, for instance — I had no pull list, and my comics got misplaced … onto the sales racks, as an example that really happened. It turned out to be more of a hassle than it was worth to get the TPBs I wanted from that shop.

Which meant the Internet was my best choice, and Amazon the obvious option. But when it came to timeliness, Amazon was a bad choice — books were released two weeks to two months after they were available in comic book stores. (I don’t know why timeliness was such a concern to me; I think I had planned to review books in a more timely manner. So much for that idea …). Still, I buy most of my comics from Amazon, and as regular readers may have noticed, this site is an Amazon affiliate. There are other Internet options, but given the delays of buying from the Internet (shipping time plus the grouping of all your order into one shipment), they generally weren’t much better on timeliness, and Amazon’s discounts were as good or better. Still, over the years I have used Dreamland Comics, Overstock.com, Mail Order Comics, Discount Comic Book Service, Mile High Comics, and even Smoky Mountain Books, which had absurdly low prices but limited selection (and wouldn’t combine shipping). I didn’t have a good reason for stopping using any of them — except for Dreamland Comics, who kept getting orders wrong, wouldn’t ship me the comics I had paid for, and generally stopped communicating with me. (Perhaps they’ve fixed the situation since then; that was about half a decade ago.) Now, when I don’t use Amazon, I buy from My Comic Shop.com because they send a discount code for certain types of comics every week and ordering from them allows me to fill in single issues that I’ve missed (mostly from ‘70s and ‘80s comics). Their prices on older titles are reasonable, which I appreciate.

So — that’s my experience with buying comics. Anyone out there have any recommendations or experiences to relate?