Elfsar Comics & Toys Blog

Talk about some sweet editing and attention to film grain.

Check this out.  This is what the other Batman’s feel about being over shadowed by the current Batman.  (No Adam West though)

********************************************************

IMPORTANT ORDERING REMINDER!
-Did you get your June order in?  They are due this Thursday the 26th!
Did you forget to look through this month’s Previews Catalogue?
Tisk, Tisk… but never fear, Elfbytes http://www.elfsar.com/Elfbytes%20Articles/Elfbytes.htm is here!
Not sure yet about a series, give us a chance to help you decide. You can find this months review here:
http://www.elfsar.com/Elfbytes%20Articles/June_2008.htm

********************************************************
WANTED MOVIE ADVANCE SCREENING!
Anyone who has a saver file at Elfsar and buys a WANTED TP, will get 2 advance tickets for the upcoming film Wanted.  Yes, before you ask this means we are not saving these for anyone.  Quantities are limited and are on a first come first serve basis. 

********************************************************
YALETOWN SUMMER BLOCK PARTY
This Friday and Saturday there will be a party on the streets of Yaletown.  You can find more info here:  http://www.yaletowninfo.com/events/blockparties.aspx

Other events include:
July 20, 2008 - OUTDOOR SCI-FI MOVIE NIGHT IN THE PARK
July 19, 2008 - VANCOUVER COMIC JAM!
July  6, 2008 - HERITAGE HALL SHOW!
July  1, 2008 - YALETOWN GRAND PRIX
********************************************************

Stan Winston passed away late on June 15th.

This man helped create the visuals of some of the biggest movies that had an impact on me.  Aliens, Predator, Terminator, Small Soldiers, Jurassic Park…etc. What a big blow to the industry.  I actually just saw Aliens again last week, with his commentary on it.  I also just got in a batch of books from his Studio that he signed!  I’m definitely keeping one of those.  Check out his studio website:  http://www.stanwinstonstudio.com/home.html

More…
http://www.newsarama.com/film/080616-WinstonRIP.html 

Heads up… Spoiler Warning!!!!!!! If you want to be completely surprised throughout the film then forget reading the following.  Read after you view the film.

Well if you don’t succeed at first, then try… try again.  Marvel Studios decided to give their potentially lucrative Hulk comic book franchise another shot.  There second film is following the success of Iron Man and the new movie is simply titled The Incredible Hulk, hinting that this time around the movie has more in common with the popular late-1970s TV series.  However, I think comic book fans will be generally pleased with the film this time around.

Louis Leterrier, the director of Transporter 2 takes over at the director’s chair from Ang Lee who attempted and oddball art house flick meets superhero comic book that was 2003’s Hulk.   The screenplay is by X-Men: The Last Stand and Fantastic Four scribe Zak Penn along with actor Edward Norton (writing under a nom de plume). Note that Penn is a busy guy as he has already been signed to script 2011’s upcoming Avengers and Captain America movies for Marvel Studios.

The Incredible Hulk assumes that audiences already know the character and his back-story: following an accident involving gamma rays, scientist Bruce Banner becomes the raging green-skinned monster The Hulk whenever he gets angry.  Of course the U.S. military in the guise of the corrupt General Ross - who also happens to be the father of Banner’s girlfriend, Betty - is interested in getting their hands on the Hulk and using his blood to manufacture a new breed of super soldiers.  Banner becomes a fugitive, hoping to find a cure for his condition and rid himself of the Hulk before Ross and the U.S. military industrial complex can get their hands on him.  In that sense it is more of a sequel than a remake than some of the “let’s give it another shot” talk may have let on.

Anyway, I think this is the movie that audiences wanted to see back in 2003.  There was a brilliant use of what I would like to call the Hulk cam during the opening credits.  No dull existential angst and weird split screen film techniques.  No mutant Hulk poodles either.  Instead we get a kind of sneak peek at what a Captain America movie might be like as Tim Roth’s character get’s injected by the super-soldier serum and is shown running faster than a normal man and performing super human like feats.  He meets the Hulk 3 times in the film, each time further on his way to becoming The Abomination, an over-sized monster against which the Hulk faces off in a no-holds barred epic battle at the movie’s climax.  We are also treated to some nice comic asides, including my favorite cameo by Stan Lee so far and a riff on those mega-stretchy purple pants Banner always seems to wear.

Overall I was entertained, however I was left with the feeling that this was all something I had seen before.  The plot was pretty straight forward from A to B and was ‘formulamatic’ in it’s development of the antagonist.  I am sure if I saw this at a 12 year olds perspective this would be the greatest movie of all time, but this film was not nearly in the same class as Iron Man.  By comparison to the 2003’s Hulk, this was a good movie for comic book and TV Hulk fans alike.  It’s a good summer movie that won’t bore you.  Lots of action, a few lighter moments here and there, and you see the hulk smash stuff.

************* Small Spoilers**************

As a comic book and TV Hulk fan this movie was a perfect amalgam of both without straying too far from it’s comic book roots at any point.

TV References

1. Appearance by Bill Bixby on the television Bruce Banner is watching.

2. The familiar piano tune of the “lonely man walking” theme song we always heard at the end of the Incredible Hulk TV show.

3. Lou Ferrigno cameo as a over-pumped security guard who can apparently be bought with pizza. Lou also does the voice of the Hulk as he did earlier in the 90’s Hulk cartoon show.

4. Jack McGee appears briefly as a student newspaperman.

5. Paul Soles appears as Stanley.  Paul Soles did the voice of Bruce Banner in the 1966 cartoon series. He also did the voice of Peter Parker in the old 1967 Spider-Man cartoon series.

6. The beginning sequence featuring a quick glance at the Hulk’s origin features a lot of scenes similar to those used in the Bill Bixby TV series such as the radiation chair.

Comic Book Favorites

1. The Hulk thunderclap was used to perfection in once scene. The Hulk claps his hands together with such force as to put out a fire instantly. 

2. The military uses some classic comic book sonic cannons against the Hulk.

3. Use of term, “Hulk Smash!”

4. Tony Stark meets with General Ross. This happens right before the credits. The audience went crazy with applause when he appears. Everybody stayed around till the end of the credits, but unfortunately there was nothing tagged on at the end. Tony makes a remark about forming a new team, the Avengers obviously.

5. Stan Lee makes his usual cameo. He drinks from a bottle tainted with Bruce Banner’s blood and winds up sick from it.

6. Samuel Sterns appears aka the Leader.

7. Doc Samson (not the suped up version with the long green hair).

8. Of course you all know the Abomination is the big villain of the film.

Note:  This was totally taken from the Canadian Geek Blog.

The point of “Behind The Counter” is to give you an insight as to how a comic shop works, so I thought I would share some more of the process of running the store.  This time around, we’ll deal with the love/hate relationship retailers have with Back Issues.

On several of the industry blogs and forums, there has been recent discussion on the usefulness and profitability of back issues.  As a touched on a dog’s age ago, Chuck Rozanski of Mile High Comics believes that any retailer who does not carry back issues is doomed to fail.  (Easy for him to say as the primary objective of his online company is to supply back issues). But not every store WANTS to carry back issues or NEEDS to carry back issues and the reasons for those would fill another column.  Here, we just want to get into how retailers decide what collections they will buy and why they pay what they do.

Let’s set-up a scenario to help things along.  Mary, after kicking her mousey, insecure, $8/hr Subway working boyfriend to the curb, decides that the best way to get back the money she loaned him for Cirque du Soliel tickets was to sell his comics.  Mary has heard that comics appreciate in value and are good potential retirement assets so she calls around to the local comic shops to see who’s buying.

The first question Mary should reasonably expect to get is “Do you have a list of the books?” It’s not likely that Mary does, nor does she know who many are even in the collection.  She’s got several boxes of varying sizes and the books are in no particular order so, over the phone, there’s little to no chance of moving the collection as the retailer will have no idea what’s s/he’s getting into.

Now Mary will be inclined to say things like, “They’re all in their original wrappings/plastic.” which is a bad thing to say since very few to any comics ever came in “plastic”.  Retailers will know that she means they are in comic bags but even that could be dubious.  I have bought collections where the issues were in their original “plastic” only to see a ton of books wrapped in plastic kitchen wrap.  Also, just because a comic is in a plastic sleeve doesn’t mean it didn’t get read repeatedly before getting there.

With little knowledge of what Mary is selling, the retailer may offer a blind, low amount ($.10 to $0.15 per book) or just not bother, the latter more likely. As in any medium, 90% of everything is crap and in a blind collection, hoping for 10% of anything good enough to get a return on the purchase is slim, especially in such a chaotic collection.

Aside from the gamble of quality in the collection, there are several other factors that play into purchasing a comic collection.  Most sellers only consider the upfront cost of the collection and often get offended when a store owner offers $200 for 1500 comics.  However, from the owner’s side of things, there will be;
1. the amount of time to sort through the collection, culling out the heavily damaged books, removing any outdated or improper storage material and alphabetizing
2. the amount of time to catalogue the books, update inventory both existing and non-existing items to the (POS) point of sale system.
3. the amount of time to grade the books if damaged, which is almost always the case.
4. the amount of time to calculate the values of the books
5. the amount of time and costs to bag, board and tape the books.

So let’s say we bought Mary’s 1500 books at $0.15 each.  Right off the bat, we are out $225.  Now to go through the process above (which we have just done recently with several collections we have bought), a total of about 15 hours of staff time is required for steps 1 and 2, another $150-$275.  Now, steps 3 and 4 are normally done by “the boss” and, depending on the collection, can take from 2 to 10 hours.  (or put aside to be done at a later date) Let’s say Mary’s collection is mostly all newer books so they can graded fairly quickly in under 3 hours, adding another $100 (yes, that’s conservative) to the total.

For the final step of bagging and boarding, we’re going to say that out of the 1500 books, only 1000 were worth converting to back issues and to clean those up, that would take about 4 hours of staff time ($40 to $60) and the cost of supplies ($45 to $60).  So, now the final cost of each of those $0.15 books is an average of $0.72.

On the surface, that still seems pretty good if each book retails on an average if $3 to $4.  But the real question still remains; how many of those comics are sellable?  If we take the “90% of everything is crap” adage, then the retailer is only going to make $300 to $400 from a collection that cost him $720 and there’s no telling how long it will take to recover that money.  A few books may sell right away if they are lucky but in reality, it will take a several years to recover the cost.

There is not a lot of data (if any) on the percentage of sales a typical comic shop does on back issues.  Some stores specialize in them while others won’t go near them.  They require space, time and capital.  They are a long term investment and, increasingly with the competition of high discount/no overhead online sales, more of a good will gesture for a shop’s regular clientele.

Of course, things also change dramatically with smaller collections containing key books, older collections and larger collections, all of which will increase the amount of time involved in grading.  When selling your collection, especially a big bulk one, do not expect a generous offer from your local comic shop guy.  There’s a lot more on the line for him that just cutting a cheque to you.

We at Elfsar Comics & Toys are big believers in being proactive and spreading the word that comics are a truly a unique form of entertainment and that our medium that we love so much is constantly reinventing itself.  Although, the evolution of the comic book art form is changing almost every year, certain elements of what makes up a good story essentially remains the same.  These elements share a common ground with novels, movies and even video games.  We are working everyday to spread our infectious love for comics and we believe nothing seems to spread it more than Free Comic Book Day (FCBD).

It is now one month after FCBD 2008 and I have had time to reflect on the day itself.  FCBD has been the most successful event that Elfsar hosts and 2008 proved to be no different as we greatly exceeded our expectations. On May 3rd, Elfsar Comics & Toys gave away over 8,000 comics to a count of over 800 people within only 8 hours.  But we did not stop there.  We made a large impact on our community by raising food and money for the Greater Vancouver Food Bank. (The result was an overflowing amount of over 3 times of what we generated the previous year).

To get the word out about FCBD we did everything that we had done in previous years by sending out media kits, mailing flyers, posting interior and exterior posters, using bag stuffers, posting on message boards, providing additional info via our website, Myspace & Facebook, and most importantly had staff tell everyone who came into our location about the event (starting roughly 2 months in advance). 

But just like last year there was a missed opportunity with the “Marvel Marketing Machine” and the traditional superhero movie that has annually been linked to FCBD.  It is disappointing that one of our industries top publishers still made no attempt to link the premiere of Iron Man to FCBD, even if just for the one day before (May 3^rd).  Unlike the premiere of Spider-Man 3, this time we were better prepared and took on the responsibility ourselves to get the word out about our annual international geek holiday.

We felt compelled to reach out to our local theatre in downtown Vancouver where two things stood out to provide a fantastic amount of exposure for our store and FCBD/fundraiser. First, Elfsar participated with the pre-screening event that was held on Wednesday, April 30^th where we set up multiple signs and a table promoting the FCBD event. (These signs and table were up until the end of day May 3^rd) We donated prizes to be given away and had a crew there on the night of the prescreening telling the public about what FCBD was and what we were doing for the fundraiser for the Greater Vancouver Foodbank.  We provided flyers telling the public the same information and organized the theater hand them out after each screening of “Iron Man” up until late afternoon on May 3^rd. 

Second, we also created a coupon that was given out on FCBD from our store location that was for a free draw to win a $250.00 Shopping Spree at Elfsar Comics & Toys.  All the public had to do was drop off the coupon at the Scotiabank theatre, thus providing an effective bounceback promotion that the theatre was very pleased with.  Although we were disappointed in Marvel for the lack of any mention of FCBD, It did not hurt that “Iron Man” was truly a fantastic film and that Marvel had released two new well written Iron Man comics (Invincible Iron Man & Iron Man Viva Las Vegas) that the newly inspired public could jump onto.

The FCBD day itself was not only a celebration of comics or to shine the spotlight on what we do; it was also an opportunity to throw a mini in-store-convention for the public.  This year, we had artist Steven Sadowski (Avengers/Invaders, Project Superpowers) doing free sketches and giving fans a sneak peek at some of his future work. We also had donations from Team Epic (a Toronto based free webisodes site) and the Vancouver based Zeroes 2 Heroes also known as the Peoples Publisher.  What convention would be complete without costumes?  We had several costumed Superheroes & Villains who were on hand all day,  we had a store-wide Buy 2 get 1 free sale, Heroclix gaming demos & tournaments, raffles, charity food drive…etc. All of this, made it more than about just giving a free comic away.  FCBD at Elfsar was an experience.  I personally can not fathom or understand how a few other stores seem to participate year after year simply out of a sense of obligation and not embrace the fact that this is the best time to shine. 

Anyone who came to visit Elfsar on May 3^rd got to select from five different comics and for those who also donated to the Vancouver Food bank were allowed to select an extra 5 plus have access to our selected private backstock which consisted of selected books that we felt truly represented good comics.

The number of new faces and the amount of children that came out to this year’s event made it all worthwhile. It is a month later and we are still seeing the benefits from FCBD as we continue to see the number of returning faces grow.  I still don’t understand how anyone would purposely choose to skip this event.  Whether you are a creator, publisher, retailer, collector, reader or fan, we feel everyone should love comics and as an event it is an especially momentous experience.  Speaking as a retailer, just the amount of return visits and the number of people who have recently joined our monthly file saver program alone has been staggering. Equally surprising was the amount of web traffic this event has generated for us.  In the future, I would like to see more product tie-ins jump on board FCBD. It would be nice to see more toys, novelties, games, posters…etc.

My only complaint was with the 2008 FCBD promotional bags.  Don’t get me wrong, the bags themselves are great and the advertising of FCBD on them is highly effective. But this year’s bags only promoted the event on only one side.  (The 2007 FCBD bags had promoted on both sides) Instead, this year’s bags had advertising for the New York Comic Con & New York Anime Festival. Being on the west coast; this was something that I feel we did not benefit from, yet paid for.  Promoting the San Diego Comic Con I guess I could understand, however I still feel a little cheated.  As a retailer, I paid for the bags in full with the intention of promoting FCBD and not the NYCC. If the price was being slightly covered by the New York City Comic Con than I could understand, however the FCBD bags were never solicited as such and the price was not less than the ones offered for the 2007 event.  So I feel that I only got a little more than half the value of what I paid for.  Mind you, a bag is still a bag and my disappointment is not with the function of them.

Regardless, FCBD 2008 was the biggest success for us to date and we look forward to FCBD 2009!

If you would like to see more pictures from our 2008 FCBD event CLICK HERE. Or Join our Facebook Group HERE. To See our short FCBD video CLICK HERE.

-Ethan Peacock

ELFSAR COLLECTION LTD.

I opened the store on Friday morning to find that there was a thick musty smell in the air.  Upon looking at the floor I saw a rather large brownish puddle near the mini Coke fridge and I first thought the fridge was either leaking or the pop had strangely exploded.  It didn’t take me long to realize that there was far too much water for that.

Apparently, someone had broken a pipe on the 2nd floor (either moving or bumping into their air conditioning unit) and it had been left running all night.   It came down thru Shoppers Drug Mart (located above us) who suffered an unknown loss of vitamins due to the moisture and then traveled past the large wood beams and  finally pooled to the floor of Elfsar.  Now it dose not take genius to figure out that water and comic books do not agree we each other.  We were fortunate that a majority of the products lost were not that of our saver file customers, however a lot of our product near the wood beams were hit hard.  Anything that was made of cardboard or paper was in some cases mushy to the touch and not restorable.

The store was closed on Friday until around 2:00pm so that we could get the water off the floor and customers could walk through without the danger of anyone slipping.  We reacted fast to minimize as much of the damage as possible.  The total loss is still being tallied but we roughly calculate that the water damaged around 10K (cost) worth of goods. 

Not to worry, we have insurance.

So if you come in to the store during the next week and see the big noisy dehumidifier machines, this was the reason why. Yes, combined with what happened to me on Tuesday, I have had better weeks.