It's Begining To Look A Lot Like November 4th

Halloween is behind us. The little ones are still in a diabetic coma from all the sugar they managed to loot from their neighbours three days ago, and so it's a perfect time to begin looking to Christmas.

Yes, it's that time of the year again, November. This can only mean that shops have removed all their skeletons and cobwebs and replaced them with elves and fairy lights. I still there is money to be made in reversible decorations for these two holiday seasons. Think about it, on one side is a terrifying skull, rotting and empty eyed; then on November 1st you flip it over to reveal the rosy cheeked face of a man whose life goal is to sneak into the bedrooms of children across the world and leave them gifts. The perfect dichotomy.

Admittedly, certain stores need to start the push this early. If your sole purpose for existing it to sell Christmas decorations, or novelty Santa lawn gnomes, then your window of opportunity is pretty tight. You need to have your product out there for people to use as soon as they're ready to decorate their dwellings in the festive cheer.

But if you're a normal, everyday store, then do you really need to have the fir tree adorned with colourful lights and a star in your window before December 1st, or the last week in November at the earliest? Toy stores sell the same stuff at Christmas as they do the rest of the year, they just stock more around now. We don't need to have Let It Snow or some sickly rendition of Jingle Bells blaring into our ears at this stage.

Yesterday morning when I went to get a banana from Starbucks I was shocked to find their Christmas gift displays up already. In hindsight of course I shouldn't have been surprised at all, but it just reminded me that the most wonderful time of the year is fast approaching. Don't get me wrong, I do love Christmas. I can't wait to buy all the lights, a tree, random, brightly coloured decorations and put them everywhere in our apartment. I just want to enjoy Christmas at, you know, Christmas.

And I feel that Christmas starts on December 1st.

You Are Number One

My mum and sister were visiting for a day yesterday, and inevitably, we ended up in Argos at some point in the day. While there, we had the rare pleasure of seeing the customer order number roll over from 999 to 001. In fact, because we had to change one of the things we bought for a similar item in a different colour, we had the order number 999! Sweet!

Get Your Comics

As anyone that knows me will attest, I like comics. A lot. I have a substantial collection, though nothing on the scale of serious comic collectors. Currently, my collection stands at 12 standard comic boxes, sorted and labelled to an almost OCD degree. It's impressive, and has stuff from Marvel, DC, Devils Due, Top Cow, and loads of independent publishers. The box I find myself most proud of is a single box full of G.I. Joe, though within the other boxes, I have some amazing treasures and collections, as well as all of my paperback graphic novels. One box holds my bagged and boarded collection of signed or otherwise special comics, as well as a tonne of various Marvel Handbooks that I intend to use some day for a Marvel Universe based super hero RPG.

But this mighty collection was not a thing of ease to accumulate. Many random issues here and there were retrieved from ebay after a certain comic supplier randomly never got it an issue, or stopped halfway through a series, or got issue one and two, and then stopped. I've ended up moving most of my collecting to graphic novel format, particularly for Marvel comics, as Marvel are excellent at publishing almost everything in collections.

For a while, I availed of the short lived and long missed GetYourComics.com, a site owned and run by a good friend of mine. Conveniently, while the site was based on a postal delivery system for most, the fact that both of us lived in Cork meant that my comics were delivered direct to me. It also meant that I could just ring my friend and get him to order a single issue, or know that he'd hold special covers or limited editions of issues from series I liked. I was even able to order clothing through his service, a feat I couldn't manage even while I worked in my afore mentioned local comic store!! It's a pity the business never took off, and more of a pity that it eventually folded, but it was great while it lasted.

It was fantastic, then, when the owner of GetYourComics pointed me toward a U.K based site that was doing similar, and succeeding. He had been using it, and thought I might like to give them a go. Even factoring in the cost of shipping that has to be included, getting comics through this supplier works out cheaper than my LCS.

Economic Comics has been serving me well since before Christmas now, and I've received, quickly and without error, three orders through them to date, the most recent of which only arrived today, prompting me to write this blog.

It's a simple system; you send them the comics you want, and the issue number to start from, then they hold them for you. Every week you get an email updating you of what is now on hold, and depending on how often you like to get your comics, you'll get a regular order email with a PayPal link. Hit that, and the comics are posted within a day or two, arriving shortly afterwords. I get my orders on a monthly basis, as I only have one or two comics a week to collect. However, during a quiet month, the site kindly allows me to wait a week or two before taking my comics together, helping spread the cost of shipping over more issues. Because of this, I actually only receive comics every six to eight weeks, which suits me fine.

If you're living far from any comic stores, or even if you have one nearby but they charge a bit too much, give Economic Comics a look. Good service, friendly staff, prompt response time. You won't regret it.

San Diego- The First Day

First thing we did Monday morning after SDCC was move accommodation to the USA Hostel on 5th Street. That's where we started meeting new people and got to see our first ever baseball game, which was great.

But before that, we went out shopping! This pretty much consisted of heading out to an escher-esk mall near the hostel, Horton Plaza. It's really worth seeing. Stairs and escalators criss-crossing each other, needing to go up to get down, seeing places you want to get to across the plaza, but not immediately seeing how to get to them, all sorts of crazy! But there are, like most American malls I imagine, a lot to see and do within it's boundaries, which covers the best part of two whole blocks.

In fact, it's pretty crazy. There was a Panda Express and Panda Restaurant, and two GameStops that I could see! Panda, by the way is a chain of Chinese food places, and the restaurant in Horton Plaza is really nice, with great, friendly staff.

Anyway, we spent a while shopping and eating. I picked up some nice t-shirts in Hot Topic, a store I've heard about many times, but never seen. Claire spent some time in Macy's. But generally, we just hung around and wasted time until we headed back to the hostel, where we ended up meeting three Irish guys, and joining a group for a baseball game!

*Although the image accompanying this post shows me drinking coffee, it is taken inside Horton Plaza, thus the relevance! It is also the first cup of Starbucks I ever drank. A moment worth capturing... sorta...

Him

I really dislike seeing Christmas advertising when it's still early November, and worse if we haven't even had Halloween yet, but sometimes someone comes out with an advert that is simply inspired! This year, everyone will be hard pressed to do better than the genius piece created for Marks & Spencers. An absolutely stunning ad that actually works! There are a tonne of great ads for which I can't recall the brand they were selling, but even a week after seeing this, I was still able to find it on a single search of YouTube.

Well done M&S. Simple, elegant and completely free of the usual Christmas schmaltz.

Know What You Sell

What does it take to work in a specialist store? Any kind, I’m not fussy here. I saw recently that a local bookstore was hiring, and part of the notice in the window read “Applicants should have a love of books and reading”. Seems fair to me. If you’re working in a book store, you should enjoy reading. Similarly, if you’re working in a leisure centre, you should enjoy swimming, or working out in some way. People working in a music store should have an interest in music. This all goes without saying. I thought.

I went in this week to pre-order my Wii in a local computer game specialist store. While there I spoke to the two females behind the counter about the machine and it’s possibilities. One of the two was the manager, by the way. Neither had a clue about the new console! They were surprised when I explained about the unusual controller design and the motion sensor technology. The manager of a computer game specialist store didn’t know about the new console being released for Christmas by the one of the Big Three! I was... well... amazed! I mean, the Wii has been getting more coverage over the last few months than any of the consoles, if only for its crazy, crazy risks to reach a wider customer base!

Not that that will stop me buying my Wii there. There are three places in Cork I would even consider buying a console. Two are specialist stores from different chains and one is part of a large toy store chain. There is also HMV and Virgin, but I don’t usually buy consoles from them as they rarely have very good opening offers. So that leaves me with the three I’ve previously mentioned. The toy store is a possibility, but they can’t guarantee an adequate supply of the machines to meet orders. The two specialist stores support two very different strategies regarding employment. The previously mentioned one employs lots of pretty girls in a “car show” kind of way, that look good selling stuff, and lonely geeks (not me, thank you very much!) like talking to them as it’s the only chance they get. The other one employs said geeks, who know just as much about computer games as the customers, and are happy to debate the pros and cons of one console versus another.

So which strategy is better? Pretty, girls who only have a cursory knowledge of the product, or people who can discuss the product with confidence and almost (sometimes only) geek-like detail? Appealing dimensions or knowing the consoles dimensions?

I shop in the first one. The one with the pretty girls. It’s a nicer, cleaner, brighter store. The offers are generally better. And yes, it has pretty girls. So sue me. I’m a red-blooded male. Though I am also one that is happily engaged, so... um... you know... don’t tell Claire!