Comics are awesome.

[Onslaught Six]

There is one in Indiana--the town, not the state--AFAIK, but I've been all over that place and found no second shop, and...that's it. Nothing in Altoona, or Johnstown or State College. The closest one I know of is in Butler, PA--me and some friends went down for FCBD this year.

[Sparky Prime]

I've got several of comic book stores in my area. Atomic Comics (which has 4 locations), All About Books and Comics, Samurai Comics (2 locations), Hero Comics, Black Dog Enterprises and Grand Canyon Comics. Technically these aren't all in the same city but each of the cities here kinda blend into one so most out-of-towners tend to think of it as all one city anyway.

[Shockwave]

Well yeah, TECHNICALLY not all of mine are in the same city either. 2 are in Elk Grove, 2 In Roseville, 1 in Rancho Cordova and the rest are actually in Sacramento. They're all still in the County of Sac though and I could reasonably be at any one of them within about 30 minutes.

[Dominic]

Plenty of stores in my area, though not all of them are convenient for regular trips. Boston having so many colleges likely helps here.

My regular shop is Comicazi. Oddities of topography and sub-way mapping make it as easy to walk to, (if only on nice days), as it is to take the train to. Harrisons in Medford is pretty good. But, the walk is not at all appealling on cold/rainy days.

Boston itself has 3 stores I know of, 2 being from the same chain (Newbury). Cambridge has several, including 2 more Newbury Comics branches. Somerville has 2, Comicazi and Hub. Finally, Arlington has 2 more. (Distance plays a role here, and I tend to visit those stores rarely.)


None seem to be stocking TF in any appreciable quantity.

Man, you wanna talk about bad signs? We had a storm here in Fresno this week, and my local shop discovered in this unfortunate way that their roof was not up to snuff. A good chunk of their inventory, including most of the stuff they got in on New Comics Day last week, was completely ruined. I'm hoping they can bounce back from whatever financial damage this did to them, but it must've really hurt. It's too bad, because I really like the place.

Ouch. Insurance will likely cover the building repair and lost inventory. But, the lost sales are simply not coming back. All it takes is a few bad weeks to fatally wound many comic stores. The new books are going to sting especially hard.


Dom
-well, at least they *order* books.

[Shockwave]

I've also found that most of the "comic" stores in my area also sell toys, essentially making them toy stores as much as comic book stores. I can't help thinking this is what keeps most of them afloat.

[BWprowl]

Man, I didn't even know there was such a thing as chain comic book stores.

My store sells plenty of toys too, but it's mostly DC Direct, and other stuff they would likely get through Diamond and the like. And they don't seem to go through them particularly quickly. I'd buy more if they were in my budget; I still really want that Alex Ross Flash figure.

[Dominic]

Most of the stores around here have more than one branch actually.

But, for some reason, if I miss an issue, I have a hard time finding it.

Harrison's is as much a toy store as it is a comic store. Newbury is more an pop-culture/entertainment store. They sell comics as much for the sake of tradition as any other reason.

Comicazi has mostly older toys, and incomplete case assortments of newer toys. (Truth be told, many of the older toys are incomplete.)

Another story, The Magic Dragon, has a fantastic selection of "GI Joe" figures.

Dom

[Dominic]

From the AHM thread: O6

I can too, but this is the kind of thing that's never going to work in 'any' kind of medium. Some fans disagreed over the gung-ho executioner portrayl of Prime in ROTF, and that it disagreed with Traditional Optimus Prime and also the way Prime was portrayed in the '07 film, and that movie had *the same* writers writing it. Different writers will portray characters in different ways. And partially, it's the editor's job to take the writer aside at any given point and go, "No, Shane, Megatron wouldn't say that," or "Prime wouldn't do that, you need to change it."

Or the editor can be a guy who goes "Yeah, Megs *would* do that in this situation, go right ahead." Which is likely what Tipton was thinking.

Okay, lets start that continuity talk.

The writers of the TF movies are middling at best, and have no incentive to put any effort into TF as a whole. The deviance from the '07 and '09 movies is completely their fault.

In other cases though, I will say some of the blame rests on editors. The real problem here is that the comics industry as a whole may not have the institutional ability to edit for cohesion any more. There were so many retcons and fixes in the 70s and 80s that they not only became accepted, they became expected. DC has several characters that are recognized in context as being mistakes. Ambush Bug is the least of them.

In addition to weak editors, self-indulgent writers are a problem. They may simply decide to write something a certain way, and there it is.


On top of all this, there are still honest mistakes. The original "War Within" had a few of these. Some were fixed in reprinted editions. Some were hastily papered over later with throw-away dialogue in sequels. The longer a franchise goes, the more of these sorts of mistakes will crop up. In the 80s, the big 2 did a good job of managing this. But, I would argue that the main factors for both do not apply.

Marvel had Mark Gruenwald. He died in '96. And, other guys from his generation are getting older and writing less.

DC had "Crisis on Infinite Earths", which gave them a chance to fix many problems with editorial mandates. Of course, since then, a combination of accumulated baggage and editorial bungling has made things as bad as, if not worse than, they ever were pre-CoIE.


Dom
-lets see how many posts this thread gets.

[Shockwave]

I think in the case of comics at least some of the problem is stagnation. You've got characters like Superman that have been around for almost a century and has had almost every story told that can be told. If you're a writer who gets told to do a Superman book, you've got a tough job of trying to come up with something new and different and interesting that hasn't been done before for a character older than you are. Good luck. Especially good luck writing something that doesn't inherently or automatically retcon something else. And in the case of the "big 2" it's further good luck writing something that wouldn't automatically retcon some other book in the same universe just on a conceptual level. The only way to really avoid it at this point is for the big 2 to do the major reboot every couple of years just for that reason.

As for mistakes, or retconning, this reminds of season 4 of Buffy. They basically retconned her a sister. While I wouldn't cite this as an in continuity mistake, even the characters recognized in continuity that it had been retconned.

Then there's the whole thing where writers just come up with a concept of "hey what if we did blank with character X?" and getting so stuck on how excited they are about what they just came up with that they don't even bother to think about whether or not it retcons or contradicts something else. I think the only way to really avoid retconning or continuity problems is to have the same people writing and to keep that staff small (1-3) people. It definately worked for Star Trek up until Enterprise and a 30 year run without any "real" continuity issues is nothing short of impressive.

[Sparky Prime]

The writers of the TF movies are middling at best, and have no incentive to put any effort into TF as a whole. The deviance from the '07 and '09 movies is completely their fault.

What "deviance" between the movies exactly? The continuity between the two are actually pretty solid (each movie's internal continuity on the other hand might be another issue). Really the only thing I can think of is the NEST teams using small-caliber weapons against Decepticons rather than sabot rounds, but it was the Autobots who actually took out the Decepticons so it's not like that really mattered. How does movie continuity even factor into comic book continuity anyway? There is a huge difference between what those two mediums have to deal with when it comes to continuity....


Anyway, as Shockwave said, they've got stagnation to deal with in comic books especially when you've got stories that have been running for decades. You can't just keep telling the stories the same way all the time, you have to be able to change things up once in a while. Just as people grow, change, adapt, so to do characters in these stories. However, different creative teams do sometimes have a difference of opinion and/or interpretations of characters. The results of which sometimes can be fairly jarring. A good writer though will try to find a smooth transition.

Also, when it comes to long running comics, you need to keep the character perpetually young, or replace them or rejuvenate them somehow. Characters like Superman or Captain America who were in WWII need some explanation as to how their still young and fighting crime today. Different companies have handled this differently. Marvel for the most part seems to make "minor retcons" to create the illusion characters haven't aged that much. DC is a bit more extreme either with "Crisis" events to rejuvenate characters or replaces them with former sidekicks or their own children.