Thursday, December 11, 2003

Market Crash

Each year at the Comic-Con International in San Diego, I host this fun panel called "Quick Draw." We get Sergio Aragonés up there and Scott Shaw! and two other swift cartoonists and I throw challenges at them. It's kind of like Whose Line Is It Anyway? with drawings and without Drew Carey, Ryan Stiles, Colin Mochrie, Wayne Brady and a very large staff of comedy writers billed as "Creative Consultants." Anyway, the cartoonists in the "Quick Draw" panel have overhead projectors putting what they sketch up on large screens so everyone can see. This year, kidding around during set-up, I started sticking items from my wallet under the lens and I projected my Ralphs Club card. For those of you who don't have the privilege of membership in this esteemed organization, it's a card you flash when you go to a Ralphs market. You get a few items at a discount and they get to chart a profile of your buying patterns. Deep within the Ralph's corporate headquarters, there's a computer that knows exactly how many Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches I've purchased there and what flavors.

Sergio, being Sergio, grabbed my card and in about 1.8 seconds added the little editorial cartoon you see above. Since then, when I hand the checker my Ralphs Club card, I've gotten a wide array of snickers and giggles, plus some odd reactions. One checker actually asked, "Is that the guy from Mad Magazine?" Another insisted on calling the Manager over and showing it to him to make certain that we had not voided the card with Sergio's enhancement. (The Manager laughed out loud.)

It turns out Sergio was anticipating my recent experiences with Ralphs. There's a supermarket strike on in Los Angeles and it's not going well for anyone, except maybe the markets that aren't on strike. The union struck the Vons chain which is part of a coalition with the other two major retail outlets, Albertsons and Ralphs. The latter two locked out the union workers and the strike was on. After a month or so of no progress, the union withdrew its pickets from Ralphs, figuring that it would put pressure on the other two markets if their main competitor wasn't suffering as much. The move does not seem to have made much of a difference. A month later, the strike remains deadlocked and Ralphs has lost $145 million in third quarter sales because of the strike. This may be because even without pickets, customers don't want to go to a non-union market...or it may be because they've gone and discovered that Ralphs is now a terrible, terrible market.

I've always done most of my shopping at Gelsons anyway, but Ralphs is handier for a few items. Last week and today, I stopped into different outlets and found, first of all, that the shelves were only about half-filled. The Ralphs I went to last week was out of most kinds of bread. The one today didn't have any carrots. These are not exotic items. At the one last week, I bought a chicken and while the date stamped on it was still in the future, the chicken turned out to be seriously past-tense and went into the garbage as soon as I got it home.

Today, the checker mixed up my purchases. I bought one can of cranberry sauce and was charged for two. But then I also bought a can of soup for which I wasn't charged, so it almost balanced out. I bought twelve packages of luncheon meat, got down to the car and found they were not in my bags but about six items I hadn't purchased were. I took them back and the bagger realized he'd mixed my purchases in with the lady after me, who went home without her flour or her dishwashing liquid but with a dozen packets of honey-roasted turkey she may not have wanted. There were a few other screw-ups but basically, it was a pretty unpleasant place to market. No wonder they're down $145 mil.

While I'm at it, I might as well mention that I have a pre-strike bone to pick with Ralphs. Last July, I won a prize in their "Great Escape" promotion, which gives me two free nights in a hotel in one of 38 cities. I was given a voucher and told to either mail it in with my choice of city or phone the "Reservations Center." The voucher told me I had to do one of these two things by August 15 and I would receive my prize. It further said, "All travel must be completed by December 15, 2003." So I tried phoning the Reservations Center for two weeks and received naught but busy signals. Finally, around August 6, I got a recorded announcement that said they were no longer processing vouchers via phone and that I should mail it in. I mailed it that same day and that's the last I've heard of my free vacation. When I called the Reservations Center throughout September and October, I got a new recording that said that prizes would soon be mailed out. Mine has never come, the Reservations Center number is now a disconnect, and when I recently called the main Ralphs office, I got a lady who said she didn't know anything about any contest and that everyone there who might was too busy because of the strike to talk to me. I'm hoping they're out stocking the shelves with bread and carrots.

• Posted at 8:20 PM · LINK

The Unknown Comics

Recently, a comic book company called Crossgen announced the cancellation of many of its titles and the delay of the rest. Prior to that, there had been reports that some of its artists were having trouble getting paid. I think it's fair to assume that the company is in some amount of financial trouble and that this flows from insufficient sales.

Yesterday, an e-mail from a reader of this site asked me for my view as to why their books haven't sold better. I'm afraid I can't advance any sort of theory. You see, despite the fact that I am an active participant in the comic book community, including going to conventions and comic book shops, I have never seen a Crossgen comic book. I couldn't name a Crossgen comic if you pointed a howitzer at my vitals and I only know the names of four people who have worked for them...

I know Barbara Kesel was involved in some sort of editorial capacity. I know this because at some convention a few years back, Barbara handed me her business card and it said "Crossgen" on it.

I know Mark Waid wrote some scripts for them. I know this because Mark told me this over lunch one day.

I know George Perez drew something for them. I know this because I ran into George the last time I was in New York and when I asked him what he was up to, he said he was drawing something for Crossgen.

And I know Robin Riggs was inking for them. I know this because several Internet message boards erupted with tales of Robin allegedly not being paid, or not being paid on time or something of the sort.

That is everything I know about Crossgen. I couldn't tell you what comics those folks, fine talents all, did for them. Couldn't tell you who else worked for the firm, and obviously I wouldn't even know that the four above-named people had worked for them if I had not spoken personally with the first three and if Robin had been been paid on time. I know absolutely nothing about Crossgen via the usual means by which potential customers hear about a comic book company and its wares. When I've gone into a comic shop the last few years, there may have been Crossgen books available there but if so, they were not prominent enough for me to notice. When I've received fanzines and read comic news websites, I've seen the name of Crossgen whiz past but never in a context that caused me to actually read the item. If any of my friends have read Crossgen books the last year or three, or however long the company's been around, no one has mentioned them to me.

Now, I'm sure this bespeaks volumes about my naivete. Perhaps I had to walk through cons with blinders on not to be overtaken by the Crossgen Age of Comics. But it must also say at least a little something about the importance of another comic book company that published whatever it is they published, which I'm guessing were books designed to appeal to the superhero and s-f crowd.

I am absolutely not putting down the creative content of those comics. Since I haven't seen them, I have no opinion of how good they were. There have been plenty of wonderful comics done that I've never read and maybe these books should go on that list. But given their reported problems, I'm obviously not the only person out there who wasn't paying attention. That might be a function of insufficient promotion. It might be a function of the quality of the books. Or it might be that they were offering a product for which there simply was no demand, or a demand that has already been quite satiated. Sight unseen, I'm guessing the last of these.

• Posted at 6:51 PM · LINK

Funny Presidents, Funny Candidates

The other day, I linked to this Mad Magazine piece about a George W. Bush action figure. A lot of message boards and other weblogs have linked to it and discussed it, and I'm amazed how many folks didn't realize that there really is a George W. Bush action figure of him in that flight suit. In fact, I think Mad got hold of a real one and photographed it to make their ad parody. Some also wondered if Mad had been that hard on Clinton. The answer, I think, is that they've been getting a little tougher on each succeeding president but, yes, they were pretty rough on Bill and Hillary. I can't think of anyone anywhere who's even vaguely in the business of political humor who didn't rip the Clintons. They made it pretty easy.

It almost isn't a matter of liking or disliking a politician; it's a question of access points, and eventually all public figures provide them. Right this minute, if someone hired me to write jokes about Howard Dean, I don't know what I'd write. He hasn't done anything egregiously stupid...yet. He seems to have flip-flopped on a number of issues and he seems to be a bit reckless with what he says, but he hasn't done enough of that for people to laugh in agreement if you write about those things. Same thing with Gephardt, same thing with Kerry or whoever. At some point, we'll decide that the Democratic nominee, whoever it is, has certain flaws that are exploitable for humor, the way Dan Quayle was dumb, Bill Clinton was horny, Al Gore was dull, Bob Dole was ancient, etc. For a time, it looked like the prevailing caricature of George W. Bush was going to be either of a Word Mangler or a Drunken Frat Boy, but it seems to be edging towards Phony Macho.

Some say that whoever the Democratic nominee is, the Republican machine will leap to portray him as weak, dishonest and, if possible, unpatriotic. I just hope, if they succeed in convincing America that the guy has negatives, they're not those. It's going to be a long, nasty campaign and it would be nice if the late night shows didn't wind up just recycling old Al Gore jokes and changing the names.

• Posted at 12:59 AM · LINK

December 12, 2003 • Current • December 10, 2003