5-word reviews: 29.August.2009

Blackest Night Titans #1: Poor BeastBoy. Hooray Ed Benes!

Green Lantern #45: Good! Star Sapphire’s history appreciated!

Blackest Night: Tales of the Corps #s 1-3: Excellent background info for everyone!

Timestorm 2009-2099 #4: Good story, mediocre ending. Sequel?

The Next Generation

The other day, four young men from Jr. High stopped by the store on their way home from school. They hung out for an hour or so, looking at comics and asking questions. They didn’t buy anything, but they were obviously excited about finding a comic book store in the neighborhood, and said they would be back.

They HAVE been back, just about every day after school gets out.

The oldest one of the group is actually an avid comic book fan, and asked us if we were going to be getting in any more of two different series. I told him about pull boxes, and he asked me lots of questions about how they work, including how much they cost. I told him they don’t cost anything. He said he’d think about it, and went back to looking through some back issues.

While he was looking, someone else came in and asked for the stuff in his pull box, which I promptly gave him and rang up for him. He thanked me and left.

A few moments later, the aforementioned young man came up and said that yes, he wanted a pull box, so I set it up for him.

He came in yesterday and asked if there was anything in his pull box, as though he had been doing it forever.

Warms my heart.

Back to School Sale

This weekend we are having a Back to School Sale at the Comic Zone. We are offering 15% off of EVERYTHING in the store.

We want to encourage our young readers so we are also implementing a new policy where we give a $1.00 in store credit for every A they earn on their report card in the current marking period.

We made one young man very happy with that news. He told me he got all A’s last semester.

I don’t know of any other comic book store that does something like this. I am proud of us for taking a stand for education!

Here is our press release about our stand on education: http://www.prlog.org/10317908-comic-zone-cares-about-education.html

Five-word reviews: Everything I read today.

Power Girl #4 – In a single word? Fun.

Daredevil #500 – Surprising. Going to keep reading.

Blackest Night: Superman #1 – Can’t wait for the rest.

Amazing Spider-Man #602 (last week’s) – Loving the current story arc.

Amazing Spider-Man #603 – Didn’t finish. Liked so far.

X-Men Forever #5 – Always get interrupted while reading.

Witchblade #129 – Dunno the story, art’s gorgeous.

Tales of the TMNT #61 – Not bad. Fun Batman-esque panels.

Batgirl #1 – Surprising new Batgirl! Way fun.

Friday Fortunes

Comic Zone is going to venture into the new and unusual….

Starting this Friday, we will be offering Friday Fortunes!

In other words, come on on Friday nights – any time after 7:00 pm, and we will do a card reading for you using the Vertigo Tarot Deck for $20/reading.

The Vertigo Deck works like a regular Tarot Deck, but each of the 78 cards has a story behind it, a story related to Vertigo themes and characters. The images, drawn by comic book artist Dave McKean and published by DC Comics, are somewhat surreal with a gothic feel to them.

Avery will be doing most of the readings, although depending on how popular these Friday Fortunes become, I may be doing some, myself.

So come on by on a Friday night and find out what the future has in store for you.

Quickie Reviews…again?

I’m kinda digging these quickie reviews. I can get more stuff covered, and give out fewer spoilers.

- Gen 13 #31: I guess I missed last month’s issue, ’cause I was kind of confused… But it wasn’t bad. The series definitely has a direction that it’s moving in, but that direction is more of a traditional team book than the quirky, fun, teenage book that the original series was. But maybe that’s what the book needs, in the current market. As a random aside, the Worldstorm Gen 13 title has now lasted about half as long as the original ongoing, and twice as long as the Herod relaunch from 2002.

- Blackest Night #2: More black lanterns! More mayhem and violence! More death! And, for once, I actually find Aquaman intimidating! Definitely sticking with this one through the end.

- Blackest Night: Batman #1: “What’s happening in Gotham during the Blackest Night?” Deadman has both been turned into a Black Lantern, and is still Deadman. But he’s gotta warn the new Batman and Robin about what’s coming! Not bad, but the cliffhanger ending makes me wish I had issue 2 right here. I might suggest waiting until all 3 issues are out, on this one.

- Green Lantern Corps #39: Blackest Night tie-in! Kyle Rayner and Guy Gardner talk about their bizarre lovelives, when the Black Power Rings zing past their heads and start resurrecting even more fallen heroes. Not as essential a tie-in as Green Lantern #44 was, but certainly nothing to scoff at.

- Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #1: Bendis has still got it! David LaFuente’s artwork is a little more cartoony than I think this series really calls for, but it’s still hard to get over Mark Bagley’s 110-issue run. Either way, this is definitely one to stick with.

- Ultimate Avengers #1: Not a bad first chapter, but this had the same effect on me as Blackest Night: Batman, where I wish I had more of the story at once. I guess that’s a good thing, really, since it means I’ll be back next month. This issue debuts the Ultimate Red Skull! OooOOOOoooo!

- Ms. Marvel #43: “War of the Marvels” continues. And the original Ms. Marvel is revealed to be… Catherine Donovan? Wait, that’s not Carol Danvers at all! I’m not sure about this alternating artist thing… I wish they’d just get Sana Takeda doing the pencils all the time.

Putting ourselves out there

Yesterday, Andy and I sat down and met with Gail Keith of Gail Keith Marketing. We had a most excellent meeting. Gail really helped us to get on track with some of our marketing efforts, giving us lots of advice on how to market effectively on a low budget. Today we have already begun implementing some of the strategies we discussed. In fact, one of the strategies was to create a fan page for Facebook, which I did and you can find here .

We will be tweeting a few times a day. You can find us here.

Stay tuned for more exciting news as it develops.

Oh – and sneak previews of upcoming events…..

Back to School Sale on Aug 22-23 = 15% off ALL items in the store
Comics Trivia Game on September 12th
80’s Day on October 10th

and there is a very good chance we will have a Spooky Costume contest on Halloween.

More quickie reviews!

Here’s some stuff I’ve read in the last couple weeks: