Let's Talk Shop With Alan Taylor From Coffee And Heroes

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[00:01:29] Head to 2000AD.com and click on subscribe now or download the 2000AD app and why wait? Start reading today. I'll put links in the show notes for you. Hello everybody and welcome to Lets Talk Shop, my sidecar companion to the normal Cryptid Creator Corner podcast where we talk to the people in the trenches selling you the books that you love. This marks the first of hopefully many opportunities to take the show beyond our own chores and as a standard formatting, I ask creators who have been on which shops they recommend.

[00:01:56] A while back, comic star artist PJ Holden said to look no further than his local Belfast hangout, Puffy and Heroes. So it is my pleasure to introduce owner Alan Taylor on with me today. Alan, welcome. Have you recovered yet from last week's free comic book day festivities?

[00:02:11] Alan Taylor Oh, first of all, thank you for having me on. Yeah, free comic book day was crazy. It surprises me every single year just how busy it is. I have to hire extra staff. We order in every single title possible. We do lots of discounts. So yeah, we open an hour earlier for it just to deal with the demand. So it's a crazy day. But it's also the kind of day that as a store, it gives you a really good feeling to know so many people want to come to your store. They know about the store. They're going to be a good day.

[00:02:40] Alan Taylor We're about to the word spreading. And that hopefully set you up for a good year for the rest of the year. So yeah, it was busy. It was busy to say the least. Alan Taylor Do you guys do a lot of cosplay or anything for it or? we don't specifically know it's an interesting thing with our store so we are 100 these days about the books we don't branch out much from that when we first opened we used to do lots of

[00:03:04] merchandise and you know pop vinyls and and different things and i found very quickly that's not where my passion lies i'm i'm a born and bred comic reader um i love the industry i love the creators i love the the breadth of storytelling across it all so very quickly we've become over time i've brought the amount of merchandise down and down and down i think part of that as well is

[00:03:28] you can't compete with bigger companies you know if you know hmd are selling pop vinyls these days and you know other local stores are selling them who aren't even you know really attributed with the comic industry but people come to us because we specialize in the comic side of things they come for our knowledge our passion and uh yeah so when it comes to free comic book day we it's a weird thing in a way we don't do a lot of bells and whistles but we have every single free comic book title we

[00:03:54] order hundreds of each we do discounts on graphic novels on omnibuses on you know on single issues and so on and so forth so uh yeah and and by i think it's the right time as well that i've went straight into just comics as well given that uh everything going on with the tariffs and so on and so forth so i think i may have chosen a good time because comic books seem to be exempt from all of that so um long may that continue yeah mostly i saw a thing from uh i think it was cbr today that

[00:04:22] was talking about how backboards are getting hit by tariffs now so that's i guess not unexpected but disappointing thankfully i did a massive top-up on bags and boards because bags and boards we bag and board everything in our stores so every single new release gets bagged and boarded every pull list gets bagged and boarded so i always order and you know the thousands every time they're in stock so uh i think i have a good back matter of that so hopefully that won't affect us too much

[00:04:51] oh that's good well the doors of coffee and heroes have been open since 2017 i know you came from a hospitality background and we're working in a two-star michelin restaurant when you lost your mind and decided to open a comic book shop so why did pairing the two you know coffee and comic books make sense as a business battle so yeah i used to work in so the store set is in belfast in northern ireland but at the time i lived in cambridge in england and i worked at a two michelin star restaurant called

[00:05:20] midsummer house it was uh i was manager of it it was a really intense job it was 80 hours a week it was 16 hour days it was high intensity high pressure a lot of rewards a lot of good times there as well but i was always a comic fan so what i used to do every wednesday i would get a two-hour break on a wednesday i would go to my local forbidden planet i would pick up my pull list and i keep in mind i'm fully suited and booted full suit and tie you know everything and you know you walk into a comic store like that

[00:05:49] you get a few looks so the first thing i would do is go to starbucks to read them and i and i'd be getting these funny looks from people sort of like you know oh nice man sitting reading funny books you know over in the corner there um so i always thought why is there not somewhere where you that combines both you know somewhere you can buy your pull list sit down in the same place have a coffee read and and hopefully engage maybe in conversation as well because what we found certainly from our time is community is a

[00:06:16] huge thing if you go into a comic store you can probably strike up a conversation with someone else there if they're not in the dc and marvel they might be in the doctor who they're not in the doctor they might be in the star trek feel always find something but uh it's a bit of a tortured uh road to us getting open because i saved up quite a lot of money i started getting takeaway cups made i started getting uniforms made i opened an account with diamond this is all while still working in the

[00:06:43] restaurant and i gave myself six months where i said right i want to be open in six months so i gave six months notice to my job which is probably the longest notice period anybody's ever given but we were all set up to open in cambridge uh it's a student place you know it's quite affluent there's a lot of sort of money in cambridge there was a forbidden planet there so it was built an audience and literally the day and i mean the day we were going to sign the lease for the unit we found uh we were on the

[00:07:11] way to sign for it we got a phone call saying we're sorry subway have usurped your offer thank you for your interest and then they basically hung up so at that point i was out of a job i had a stock of around 20 000 comics everything made everything ready and you know i just turned another half mickey who you know co owns the store with me and um you know all the rest and just was like it's over like it

[00:07:35] just like that it's over so we we worked in cambridge right after that yeah it was honestly we were on the way to sign the lease with the idea we were going to open in a month and in a way looking back it's the best thing that ever happened because cambridge is expensive you know when it comes to rent and rates and and all that kind of stuff so eventually a few years later vicky she's english i i met her at the

[00:07:59] restaurant she's a chef and uh we're together you know 13 14 years now but uh we decided we'd move over to belfast i hadn't been home in a few years so we moved over to belfast and i found a unit that wasn't too expensive and i just went look we need to do this if we don't do this now i'm going to regret it the rest of my life it broke my heart a little bit i had to sell my dgc walking dead number

[00:08:23] one uh at time which was the hottest comic in the world i think i sold it for around maybe the equivalent of three thousand dollars and that paid rent for the first six months and i paid that up front and i said if it's not working by six months you know it's not going to work so we we opened we had a bit of a slow start but again costs were low um you know we had a big back stock because we've been doing it

[00:08:48] for years and uh it just grew and we were lucky enough to find an audience within one year and a friend who worked with vicky again it's weird how these things all fall into place but a guy who worked in the restaurant vicky was working in his best friend was closing a comic store well an online comic store i was looking for someone to take their stock and their stock was around 80 000 comics

[00:09:14] so i knew we didn't have the capital in place but i said well look let's go have a look and we walked into this warehouse it was my idea of heaven it was white boxes everywhere it was graphic novels everywhere it was comic supplies and we got chatting to them and they were really nice people they were looking to maybe strike a good deal i didn't get the feeling they were trying to ask too much or anything but i said to vicky like we this could be the next 10 years of

[00:09:39] the business we need to find a way to buy this and uh i borrowed money from my mom and dad i borrowed money from friends i took out a small loan at the bank and we bought the stock and we therefore were able to double the size of our premises so we moved into a bigger unit and uh and again that that set us apart in belfast we suddenly out of nowhere had the biggest back catalog of comics and this was just a small independent setup you know there's a forbidden planet belfast there's another comic book

[00:10:08] store called comic book guys none of them could touch us within one year because our back stock was incredible and uh yeah the people latched onto it we made the money back we paid everyone back within a year you know the risk was worth it but uh yeah there's definitely been a few bumps along the road get to where we are um but you know my mom says everything happens for a reason so it was meant to be that way so vicky was the chef i was looking at midsummer house's website the other night

[00:10:36] and was blown away is can we blame her for whatever this weird salmon and white chocolate monstrosity is i don't know i'm here for it i've never had salmon and white chocolate together so um that was uh the weirdest thing i had sure the weirdest thing i ever had when i worked at midsummer was a dish that was coffee chocolate mushroom and it somehow worked and it sounds horrible but somehow worked um yeah i

[00:11:02] mean the thing about it is what i will say about those years working at midsummer it instilled a work ethic in both of us you know we were working as i say 14 16 our days but the thing with the hospitality industry is unless you're going to set up your own place you're essentially working yourself into the ground for someone else because they own the place and it's their success and i always wanted something of my own and you know i was front of house manager so i'm used to dealing with people i'm

[00:11:29] used to setting up relationships at tables striking conversations that kind of thing so that hospitality background definitely helped me with coffee and heroes because community is so big in our place you know and every single person walks through the door it's eye contact it's hello how are you you know but it's not overbearing it's not you know straight up and what can i help you with and what are you into and this and that they know i'm there yeah chat away to me if you need something but you know otherwise you know have a look around but yeah no the hospitality background it definitely helped

[00:11:58] for setting up the store definitely because i was so used to dealing with the public and you do get some strange requests when you own a comic book store so patience is a good thing sometimes well how much of the business is actually in the coffee i'll be honest the coffee side of things accounts for five percent of our business maybe but the thing is that the whole idea with it was like the business definitely shifted so when i first opened we used to open at 8 30 in the morning

[00:12:27] and i thought you'll get the casual coffee trade going through people on their way to work take away coffees you know we have our own printer cups made we're we made sure to be the cheapest coffee anywhere in belfast like we'll do the equivalent of a caramel macchiato for 40 cheaper than what starbucks sell it at for example but yeah the first year taught me a lot because we weren't getting that walk-in business and i was sitting there from eight o'clock in the morning and maybe not getting the customer until 10 a.m and i'd start doubting myself you know what am i doing wrong you

[00:12:56] know no one's walking through the door so i made the decision after about a year to start opening at 10 instead of 8 30 and therefore but i could still access the unit for me it's so i i could go down if i needed to do some paperwork i need to do some inventory that kind of thing but the coffee thing is just it's a way that it's a way to grow the community so in our in our store behind our counter we have maybe four really long shelves and all the regulars

[00:13:24] have their own coffee mug so when they come in they'll say oh cappuccino yep no problem you get their mug they feel part of your community straight away because they have it's almost like they have an investment in the business by that sitting there so coffee i always look at as a bonus coffee is just a reason for people to stick around i think and you know we we don't get a lot of people coming in and getting coffee and leaving the store straight away they only come into us if they're comic fans so

[00:13:50] you know at first i thought i'd get the casual people who just like coffee but it just never happened but you roll with the punches and you learn as you go with it and uh as i say it's there primarily just as a as a community thing now okay well i never get to ask people this i'm always talking about what their favorite comic books are so this is a rare treat for me tell me about your personal favorite coffee i am a man of simple pleasures uh i'm a black americano all day long i'm a huge

[00:14:20] i'm a huge twin peaks nerd um so as black as the sky on a moonless night as the great deal cooper would often say um every so often i'll have a little gingerbread latte i'll use it around christmas but i'm a black coffee guy all day long so yeah nice amount of simple pleasures okay okay well i i haven't had coffee i haven't had coffee in nine years now but i like my coffee like i like my wine i like heavy

[00:14:48] mineral forward stuff so central south american roast where you have really you know volcanic soils and then you whip up a good turkish with that and i i'm a happy camper i love a turkish coffee nice very nice yeah we we do actually have there's a really good coffee shop in belfast called established and they're they obviously specialize in coffee and uh yeah they'll get beans from all around the world so that's where i would go if i'm buying coffee for home that sort of thing but

[00:15:17] otherwise we we actually use believe it or not in our store we use nespresso so when i worked in the michelin star restaurant that's what we use was nespresso and i always had the opinion of if it's good enough for a two-star restaurant it allows you to control your budget it allows you to control there's no wastage because it's not like grinding beans and another thing i think with coffee shops as well can be a little bit frustrating is sometimes it depends who makes your coffee if it's nice or not with nespresso it's the same every time so it's a consistent product

[00:15:46] as well um i promise i'm not sponsored by nespresso the amount of praise and keep it on them here but uh that was always my thinking but it makes it easier too because you don't actually need to hire a barista you know you can have somebody who's working in the shop who's helping you out that knows comic books but doesn't have to know the difference between uh ecuadorian or uh ethiopian roast yeah so no definitely yeah well that was always my train of thought you know if

[00:16:12] you have staff it's the same product every time so you know when i worked in other restaurants and we had you know beans and grinders and all that even then i could see it depended who made the coffee what product was going out to people so i didn't want to compromise with that yeah that makes sense well part of your outreach beyond just the shop itself is for coffee and heroes is the podcast and the youtube show in an era where we are increasingly reliant on the holy algorithm how do you feel like that's

[00:16:42] helping the business yeah it's interesting i mean the the podcast started like any other podcast in the last 10 years it started through boredom through kova let's be honest um sure uh one of my my best customers who has become one of my best friends keith is who i do the podcast with you know there's a running joke i'm mr dc he's mr marvel ironically we both read more independent books than we read either of the big two but uh yeah it started through that as a way of connecting with your friends chatting

[00:17:11] comics um doing everything obviously online and then we were determined once covid was you know under control and warriors are turning to normality we were determined not to as keith puts it pod fade so we kept it going we do previews for the store i mean the thing with comics is it's the most relentless industry in the world it you know you look at the amount of movies or albums or anything

[00:17:36] else that comes out nothing touches comics i mean i every week when i'm doing the new releases for the racks there's anywhere between 70 to 90 titles a week you know it just does not stop so um we we do a previews one so we go through the previews catalog we point out the things we think are you know the the the best for best value for people coming up you know get your pre-orders and don't miss out on this we do a review show and uh i was chatting to you a little bit about it off air just before but we

[00:18:06] made the decision very early on that our podcast was going to be a celebratory podcast not a negative one uh if there's things we don't like we just won't talk about them um i think there's enough negativity and podcasts and youtube land and people who do things for clicks and you know all the rest and that's fine that there's obviously a market that kind of stuff but we wanted to be a positive one so when we talk about what we enjoy as we do a review show for that uh and then yeah with

[00:18:33] youtube i i just started doing it again for in the store new releases coming out each week uh what was new into the store uh that kind of thing so i feel they're they're all free tools to help you when you own your own business you look at every tool you can possibly utilize to get your information out to people i resisted tiktok for about four years i finally gave in about five months ago um i make

[00:19:01] sure i'm never on it it's only really videoing stuff in the store but it's scary um the the upturn in business i've seen since i started using tiktok is incredible um really you know oh it's unreal uh i mean a youtube video i'll be lucky sometimes to get 150 views on a youtube video but at the same time i do still have people coming in saying oh i saw no youtube this was in do you have any left so at

[00:19:25] least i get enough back from people that i know it's worth doing but like i put up a video on tiktok the other day and it was a minute long it was literally just me walking around the store with the the camera hey guys been working really hard for free comic book day we've got tons of new packs ready we've got tons of new graphics tons of new omnibuses we hope to see you then very simple video it got over 20 000 views and that and then i put the same video up on youtube as a short

[00:19:54] and i got like 200 views you know it's tiktok's incredible you you you kind of got to realize just the market you're aiming for if you want to grow in the comic industry and you need to try and get younger people into it and certainly things like the mcu have helped over the years with that tv shows have helped with that invincible walking dead uh etc etc so there have been other things that have got people into it from a younger age but tiktok's incredible it's scary i still don't know an awful

[00:20:22] lot about it i'm a i'm definitely a complete novice with it but i don't let a week go by i don't put up at least two or three videos in the store okay yeah i'm i'm constantly beating the drum about trying to get and figure out how to get younger people hooked because it really is the future of the medium if we let but we let two generations slip away we're done yeah at least in in the in the way it is currently

[00:20:47] and i was watching an april go ahead no no please no i was watching i was watching an april youtube release and you were talking about how the absolute and ultimate lines were almost on a weekly drop schedule and how that made the ecosystem healthier from what you're seeing are those books drawing in the younger audience or what what is pulling in the younger audience well i think the absolute and

[00:21:10] ultimate lines have been incredible uh they have i think ultimate spider-man when it came out surprised a lot of people uh going back i mean i always look at it from it's hard for me to judge what works for other stores so when i say all this this might be what works for my store but it might not work for other people but uh in my experience like so a lot of people slept on ultimate spider-man uh because it was the first of the books and obviously people remember the much revered bag liam bendis run from

[00:21:37] years ago and thought i really need a new version of this and then it got an audience and then within two issues it was our highest pull list title uh batman had been constantly our highest pull list title for five years probably you know ever since tom keen was doing it and then obviously it went on to tinian and um and then on to joshua williamson for like six issues then chip sadarsky but ultimate the ultimate

[00:22:03] line just came out of nowhere and the big thing i think that is it's so important for getting younger people into it and this is what both the ultimate line and the absolute line have both been doing it's two things one clarity of a starting point you do not need to have ever even picked up a comic before pick up this number one and you will be brought into it and two new printings there is nothing worse

[00:22:28] than issue three being out of something and you cannot get people issue one and two because secondary market is too expensive uh it's out of print um you got to be lucky and and maybe pay over the odds for it online ultimate spider-man one i think went to eight printings um absolute batman has went to six printings absolute superman's went to three or four printings absolute wonder ones went to three or four ultimates went to a couple and even outside of those two the energon universe has been massive as well

[00:22:58] you know transformers void rivals gi joe transformers one went back to 10 printing you know people were coming in when issue seven was like going can you back source me all of these i'm like yeah absolutely they're all in stock and new printings um i remember when transformers came out i we were in the top five stores in the whole of the uk for how many we ordered we ordered like 150 copies which is massive for us i never i never order that amount of titles for anything well until

[00:23:26] ultimate absolute came along but i just took it's knowing your audience and a lot of people were coming and asking about transformers and the idw run was very convoluted it was hard to find a starting point it was hard to find graphic novels that were on print it was hard to find a compendium and then suddenly simplicity number one it's by this guy daniel orren johnson have you read do a powerbomb have you read better a bill have you read murder falcon um so the fact it was a number one

[00:23:52] it had the robert kirkman machine behind it uh with image skybound and the fact that it was dino warren johnson told me order big on this and i had maybe 40 people with a pull list i was like i'm ordered 150 of these we sold out of all of them within a month um people were just coming and coming coming to it so i think word of mouth's a big thing i think the fear of missing out can be a powerful tool sometimes but actually missing out is the worst thing um like i have still people

[00:24:20] coming i mean absolute batman the eight or nine's out next week i think it's eight it is it i still have people coming in now seven issues in going can you give me this one to start my mates were talking about this to say it's incredible and i every time i get new printings and they sell out they sell out they sell out so absolute and ultimate i think and and i do want to include the energy online in this as well transformers has been incredible i think they've really reinvigorated the industry in the last

[00:24:46] couple years just through that simplicity of starting point and making sure printings are kept in print to make sure people can get it when you're a few issues in so um i i really can't underscore i mean absolute batman is our biggest full now and it has double the amount of people on it the ultimate spider-man has the ultimate spider-man still our biggest marvel pool you know it's those books and the quality of them is great as well that's the other key part it's not just all

[00:25:13] height you know even though batman is my favorite character of all time i actually think absolute superman is the best title and i think i agree i think what jason iron's doing with that is just tremendous just um i mean absolute batman is every bit as good as i thought it would be but that was expected but absolute superman has just caught me off guard and every book that that comes out i think is tremendous although all of them are good you know and that that's the key they've put great

[00:25:37] creative teams on the ultimate line and the absolute line and just to finish off a really long train of thought on this very conscious of how much i'm talking but just to finish off a good train of thought on this they've both been sensible marvel and dc with not flooding the market with too many titles um the xbooks at the moment are a really hard sell from a store capacity because there's too many titles they did the same thing with kokoa they're doing the same thing now and then they're starting to

[00:26:07] cancel titles 10 issues in which is not a good look but with dc it was like here's three books give it six months here's another three books marvel ultimate tiles there's five ultimate wolverine's the only one that's been added since they all launched so long may that continue because you've got at least one new ultimate book every week at least one new absolute book every week and that keeps people coming in every single week so both companies are knocking it out of the park with those

[00:26:33] two but there is an argument to them be made that are they maybe neglecting their legacy lines a little bit so it's it's it's a tough balance you know certainly yeah yeah absolutely as a you were talking about being a reader of a lot of indies yourself so as a storefront how do you balance what you put on the shelves is it do you order what you know you can sell or do you order stuff with the anticipation

[00:26:57] of being a fan of indies and stuff well i think i think i can i can move this i can get enough people who who are into this because one of the refrains i've heard from a lot of retailers is all these variant covers are just taking up so much shelf space you know yeah when it comes to indies so in our store i have like an old school sort of attached to the wall rack so it's like an old magazine wire rack

[00:27:23] situation there are six columns and there are eight rows each column the first two columns are dc the next two columns are marvel the next two columns are indy i give indy books equal shelf space which i think is important first of all it doesn't make it seem like it's an afterthought pardon me um it's the same with graphic novels we have two huge bookcases of dc two huge bookcases of marvel two huge bookcases

[00:27:50] of image and then i have bookcases around the store of dark horse boom idw so it's important to give these things shelf space i think if they look like an afterthought people will treat them as an afterthought the other thing is and i'm sure loads of stores do this but this is like one of our mantras is follow creators not characters um don't just blindly buy a batman book because batman's in it or spider-man book spider-man's in it you're really enjoying you you enjoy the last couple years of batman

[00:28:18] that guy chip sadarsky he did this great book called still water through image comics you should really give that a try he was the artist on a great book called sex criminals great sense of humor to it very adult but a lot of heart to it as well um oh you're reading ultimate spider-man jonathan hickman have you ever tried east of west you know with nick dragota oh nick dragota he's the artist on absolute batman so these two guys have done east of west so i think the key to it is is um educating your audience as they come in you know anybody who comes in will ask me my recommendations and

[00:28:47] and i won't always recommend everything but what i'll always say is i'm quite diplomatic with this i'll never say something's bad i'll just say look it's not for me uh you know because that's the thing i'm not a huge rick and morty comic fan but there's a lot of guys come into our store to read rick and morty comics for example so independent i think it's it's becoming less less of a tag to call it because let's be honest image is image is almost as big as the big two now you know all the best creators

[00:29:16] now that's where you get the best deal you get the most freedom to tell your stories and you know you look at someone like james tinian so tinian came through scott snyder's writing class moved on to do backups and batman co-write batman eternal worked his whole way up to detective comics onto the main back title and then went i'm gonna go over here and set up my little thing word of tree apartment of truth something's killing the children something's killing the children sells as much in our stores

[00:29:43] amazing spider-man but you know so wow people will follow quality stories and they're doing that because they're following creators they trust creators so if i say to people when it comes to me doing ordering just go back to your original question so say for example i've got 10 people on tinian so exquisite corpses here's a good example i may be dating this slightly by you know whenever you release it but exquisite corpses is out next week so it's a new james tinian book i've got 12 people with it on

[00:30:10] their list i've ordered 40 copies because i know that will sell because tinian number one unfortunately there's the investment side of things where people go well something is killing the children number one it goes for silly money now maybe i should pick that up but i try to encourage people to pick it up because of the quality of the storytelling not because this might be worth x amount in years um you know we're very story driven store you know retails because they're good not because you think you know like a sprawl number one they're going to put your kids

[00:30:39] through college you know we we've we've all seen the x-men number one jim lee stories and the spawn number ones and etc etc but yeah no bottom line when it comes to the indie stuff give it equal space in your store and it will thrive because you know i i will say with back issues that's not the case quite so much we do we actually do afford almost equal space but people very seldom come in

[00:31:03] for indie back issues unless it's a franchise so they'll come in for transformers or thundercats or power rangers but they probably won't come in for that wee six issue mini series that we have three issues of or that kind of thing but when it comes to new releases and graphic novels yeah equal space in the store i think is is the key yeah with the indies you can always just point them to the trade anyway so yeah i mean don't get me wrong it's a vicious circle because you know some people come in

[00:31:30] and they'll say oh wait for the trade for that but maybe if it doesn't sell enough in single issues will it even make a trade is that on you know the customer should they have to buy it twice to get a trade you don't get a bad single issue on the trade so it can be a vicious circle and again it's an industry like no others um you know it's it's full of snap decisions and titles maybe not selling enough within their first three issues and things like that like a good example is recently there was uh

[00:31:57] the book came out uh two-faced from christian ward thoroughly excellent only lasted six issues he was on the record saying he wanted it to be 12 but it all depended on sales so based on the first three issues not even with the trade out dc cancelled it now poison ivy is on issue 33 but it has variants that maybe attract a certain audience so that's why it's kept going whereas two-faced doesn't so it's it's a strange industry i thought dc would have waited until the first trade came out because they

[00:32:27] learned that the hard way with um hellblazer from cy spurrier and iron campbell and then went uh maybe we should get these guys back that sold really well but they canceled the singles after seven issues so um yeah it's a strange industry when you start talking out loud about it so much it really is i was listening to the podcast recently and you were talking about the challenge of getting single issues in from smaller indie publishers like mad cave what what's going on with that yeah so diamonds uk

[00:32:56] is a separate company from diamond us so obviously diamond us is going through you know administration they're looking to they're looking to sell off all their assets it looked like they had it all set up with a company lance entertainment and that fell through so diamond uk essentially works as a middleman so they buy i know in the u.s it's a different distribution network so lunar publishing take care of pc

[00:33:19] penguin random house to image and idw and marble but in the uk it's one supplier you've no choice it's diamond uk but they have to set up deals from lunar and from penguin random house to then supply the uk so they came to terms on agreements with uh diamond or with lunar and penguin random house but i think with some of the smaller companies they couldn't come to an agreement with them on discount percentages so they basically just said look we can't stop these titles

[00:33:49] and it's a frustration uh certainly i mean we we like to push every publisher where we can you know mad cave we had guys in the store who were on flash gordon we had guys who were on dick tracy there was a phantom one coming out that people were excited for uh but we're really at the best in the uk of what diamond uk can set up and source uh but it was interesting because not long after diamond filed for its chapter 11 is anything uh not long after they filed for that uh we got an

[00:34:19] email from penguin random house that they're looking to set up international distribution for comics so there may soon be other alternatives but uh for the moment where our hands are tied slightly i have managed to source a couple of titles for people because i i want people to trust us as a store like if we get them five issues of a six issue mini series i don't want them to then not get the last issue so even at expense to myself i've got in that last issue by importing from the states

[00:34:48] i pay the extra i don't charge the customer any extra but i just wouldn't want that to be unfinished but again that's that's all about setting up a trust network with your customers and that's why they come back so i see that as more of a long-term investment in people rather than oh can you pay that extra four pound i had to pay for that issue not gonna do that so uh yeah it's it's definitely an interesting time in the industry the whole diamond thing i thought people have been expecting it for a while but it's still maybe a hard thing to take

[00:35:14] when you see them black and white yeah for sure all right everybody we're gonna take a quick break we'll be right back let's face it the comics landscape is a mess right now i'm the editor-in-chief of a comics journalism outlet and i can't even keep track of it all if you are as passionate as i am about indie comics and its creators you should check out the lantern guide created on the premise of creating light in the dark it's going to be the go-to resource to keep you up to date on the projects

[00:35:39] and the creators that you love don't take my word for it i reached out to my friend brian level poison ivy artist and indie comics creator to get his take brian what does the lantern project fix i'm a dude who loves indie comics and i know personally like i get very frustrated when something shows up in my social media timeline or something like that and i feel like i can't keep track of everything so really

[00:36:05] the lantern project was born out of that um it was an opportunity for me as a reader to kind of like have a place to want to consolidate all the stuff that i wanted to read all the cool projects from cool creators that seemed interesting and kind of unique to like something that i would like which is really not super represented everywhere else but it's all over the indies having a spot to go to that felt like it consolidated a lot of those audiences and a lot of those places where i

[00:36:32] couldn't just get drowned out in the feed of social media uh was seemed really valuable to me what's the ultimate goal it's really our hope with this project that creators feel like they're able to get in front of readers and readers are able to get books that they actually want to read with a much easier time of keeping track of them and accessing them catalog is scheduled for a quarterly release so head over to the lantern catalog.com to sign up now so you don't miss your next favorite

[00:36:59] thing i'll put a link in the show notes for you y'all jimmy the chaos goblin strikes again i should have known better than i mentioned i was working on my dc universe meets ravenloft hybrid dnd campaign on social media my bad he goes and tags a bunch of comics creators we know and now i have to get it in gear and whip this campaign into shape so we could start playing another friend chimes in are you

[00:37:24] going to make maps it's fair to say it's been a while since i put something together so i guess question mark it was then that i discovered arkinforge if you don't know who arkinforge is they have everything you need to make your ttrpg more fun and immersive allowing you to build play and export animated maps including in-person fog of war capability that lets your players interact with maps as the adventure unfolds while you the dm get the full picture now i'm set to easily

[00:37:53] build high-res animated maps saving myself precious time and significantly adding nuance to our campaign that's a win every day in my book check them out at arkinforge.com and use the discount code yeti5 to get five dollars off i'll drop a link in the show notes for you and big thanks to arkinforge for partnering with our show i think i'm going to make jimmy play a goblin warlock just to get even welcome back well you talked about the setting up trust with customers it seems like

[00:38:22] covid was a catalyst for most shops to sort of adapt or die how did you ride that change so covid was an interesting one because i mean covid's where diamonds problems started in a way because they basically said we're shutting down distribution and dc went oh we don't like that so dc set up with lunar and then etc so there was a snowball effect of covid there but the thing was our deliveries weren't stopping so titles were still coming on a weekly basis so we had access to our store

[00:38:52] one day a week so we were able to go down and like do things behind the scenes and all the rest but what we actually did was we rerouted our deliveries to our house and then we still had everybody's pull lists on file so we would work out everybody's titles and then what vick and i would do every week is on a wednesday and a thursday we would just be on the road for 10 hours a day we would just drive to people's houses we'd always be in touch in advance it wasn't just like we you know turned up and said buy your comics you know you ordered these no no no we of course we

[00:39:20] would chat to people in advance and say look we can fit you into an hour window here we'll drop stuff off so what we would do is we would be in the road we'd get to their house knock the door set the comics in an envelope on the on the ground you know take our two three meters you know steps back and then we would chat with people as well as they picked up their comics they would pay palace the money that kept the business going but it kept the community aspect going because let's be honest during covid

[00:39:47] we were bored talking through screens to everybody all the time you know it's we were sort of losing that personal touch and i think a lot of people appreciated our personal touch you know we we didn't miss a week we we were on the road you know vicky did all the drive i don't drive so although all the and kudos has to go to vicky for the driving um but we just kept in touch with people we kept the community going we explained everything that was happening with the business step by step

[00:40:13] and yeah when when covid hit i think we were two and a half years into it nearly three years and we just said look we put way too much into this to just roll over for it you know let's try and keep it going and again i'm sure different stores had different things but we got decent grants different business grants we took out a business loan which i'm thankful to say gets paid off in about four months time um it was like a five-year sort of loan system but you just did what you

[00:40:40] could to keep it going you know i i just didn't want the store to i didn't want all the hard work that we had done in the beginning to be for nothing for circumstances that were out of our control so yeah we were we were determined to keep it going and thankfully we can try and keep it going as much as we can but the customers don't want it tough thankfully we have that great customer base and and they kept us going as well so uh yeah we're thankful for every single person walks through the door and stuck with us over the years but yeah covid was a trying time don't get me wrong

[00:41:09] but you know it sort of reinforced that community a little bit more yeah and i imagine having that coffee element was a boost coming out of the back end of all that because everybody wanted to be around people again has that spirit carried on or is it has it diminished at this point at all or not it's all that vibe at the shop we we have that vibe at the shop in general i mean wednesdays there's always at least 10 people in the store all day long some come some go you know

[00:41:36] it's conversations about the new issues it's it's a weird thing in a way because i i say this to people all the time like my original idea for the store was you pick up your pull list you have somewhere to sit down that's comfortable you have a coffee you read your comics no one reads in the store they're all too busy talking so in a weird way it's uh the perception shifted a tiny bit but no the community without the community the business wouldn't be what it is it's you know we as i say all the time we are thankful every person walks through the door and supports us because

[00:42:05] you know i'm i'm not an idiot you know amazon's cheaper than us you know there's there's online book retailers that are cheaper than us ebay is cheaper than us but i like to think people come back a because of the community b because of our knowledge and c you know because they like the people who own it i mean we recently um i recently had a son as i say um alfred and he'll be three in july and when he

[00:42:29] was born the outpouring of gifts and well wishes and cards and all the rest you you sort of knew you had a big community in the store but once they all sort of did something at once you were sort of like wow like we you know people really do appreciate this store and and it's it's at a time where let's be honest as well the high street is struggling you know the amazon's getting bigger and bigger and you know there's more and more stores closing and this and that and less reasons for people to maybe

[00:42:55] come into town but we're we're kind of lucky we've created a space where sometimes people come into town they come to us and then they go home you know it's they just like that hangout space so yeah it's uh you know we've been very fortunate a lot of ways but a lot of hard work's obviously into it as well what goes on in downtown is there a big pool or is there a stadium no there's the thing

[00:43:19] is and belfast city center is quite small but just a lot of the high street is just not you see units everywhere that are up for let or businesses closing down unless they're big corporations and big franchises i mean belfast city center is quite small but that doesn't stop there being nine starbucks and you know a two minute walk of each other you know it's it's sort of become that sort of place you know but um where we are we're in a market where there's

[00:43:47] maybe about 30 stores but they're all quite unique they're not really stores that you see anywhere else on the high street they're stores for sort of sole traders and small companies well we're fortunate there's a car park beside us in fact there's two big car parks beside us there's one in our market and then there's one in a shopping center beside us so people find it quite easy to get to us which is good you know they they can pull up park the car get out come in and sit with us for an hour and then

[00:44:13] like to go sort of thing you know so uh yeah but it's i will say that my main aim with the store is always make it a place where if i didn't own it i would want to be at it so that's always ethos to work with as well yeah well if you could change one thing about the industry and only one what would it be oh that's a big question oh i know that's why i said just one this may sound like a strange

[00:44:41] thing to say or a store owner who deals in mostly lower priced items so you have to sell quantity rather than anything else i would like to see more affordable stuff um dc for me in the last year have cracked it really well see those dc compact editions they are yeah the future it really bugs me that they released like 10 of them really quickly and then there hasn't been a new

[00:45:10] one for like six months but there's nothing worse than younger kids coming into the store and like i would love them to walk out with five or six comics each but they maybe only have 10 pounds so they're walking out with two comics or three comics so i would want to see more reasonably priced items and i know that's hard obviously cost of printer paper and you know shipping and you know tariffs and taxes and and all sorts but i i would just love the industry to be a bit more

[00:45:37] affordable you know so i would like to see more comics mark miller tried it a couple years ago it didn't seem to go anywhere but like he released the title called he released a title called nightclub at $1.99 uh with the idea being that like lower price number one more affordable but no one else has followed suit todd mcfarton's done it for years with spawn being three dollars it's going up to four dollars in the middle of the summer i think so it's it's sort of going the wrong way from that point i

[00:46:05] would rather see i would rather if someone walked in with 10 pounds i'd rather see them walk out with five comics not two comics you know that sort of thing so yeah for me just make it more affordable because i think nothing's more welcoming than saying you know come in your money will go a lot further here sort of thing you know like we do things where we can you know we we have a stamp card system every 10 you buy you get one free um you know we do discounts in store we mark down all

[00:46:31] none of our omnibuses are rrp we mark them down by you know 10 you know and that that's the business in a way taking a hit rather than anything else but i just want people's money to sort of go a bit further so yeah if i if i could change one thing in the industry it's just a bigger range of affordable stuff like those compacts are great but there's only maybe 10 titles you know if there was a hundred of those that's why manga does so well you know manga i'm only a small manga section in store

[00:46:58] if i was a maybe if i was a better businessman i'd have a bigger section but my my passion isn't there so like if people walk in and say oh could you recommend such and such my manga knowledge is death note naruto and akira that's as far as it goes whereas if someone says recommend a dc book or a marvel book or an image book i can talk to them for an hour about stuff but i think that's why manga so

[00:47:23] so popular from that it's all every single manga book is ten dollars and under you know so people can buy bulk of it so yeah more dc compacts please um marvel tried to copy the idea a little bit but they copied the homework but did it wrong because they released their books at fifteen dollars with back matter and extra features and stuff no just give me the story 12 issues of watchman for

[00:47:47] ten dollars 11 issues of court of owls for ten dollars that's just incredible value so yeah more more about that point yeah i think that's the other thing with manga is just that it's linear and you don't have to worry about all these continuity things i'm not a big continuity person i mean i'm i'm not completely throw out the rules but i really like elseworld stuff for that reason i think that's one of the reasons the ultimates and absolute has been so appealing to people absolutely because

[00:48:12] it's you know you can just jump right in as you were saying and you don't have to worry about 50 years of history yeah i mean it's i think sometimes it's down to stores to educate a little bit though as well i think i see memes going around all the time of you know oh i want to get into comics and then it's that you know still of charlie from it's always sunny in philadelphia in front of the board with all the different connections and then it's someone going oh get into manga start with number one i think that's really lazy i think there are millions of starting points comics for people

[00:48:42] i think it's up to store owners to educate and give those starting points i mean we i've been recently doing this thing where i i now print out starting points for new reader stickers so if say batman's on issue so perfect example hush 2 anyone who's not into comics would look at that and go issue 158 i need all 157 before but if you advertise on it starting point for new readers this is the

[00:49:08] start of a story you can pick this up and then read the next ones so i i do think a lot of the onus is on the store owners to educate on it because i do think that point does get overplayed a little bit i remember when i chatted to the one of my favorite artists and he's a bit of a friend at the store was telling one or two stories before coming on clay man i was chatting to him about continuity i think it's in one of our old interviews and he says continuity should be specific to the

[00:49:33] reader they can ignore what they want from continuity they they can over um they can give more value to certain things from continuity it's their continuity just tell a good story and yeah don't worry about the connections here and the connections there like marvel are finding this out right now i think with their movies when the first 10 years of the mcu happened it was perfect but see now i i chatted to one or two people saw about this a couple of years alfie comes to me

[00:50:01] my son and says oh dad liked it in the marvel movies where should i start well son i've got these 52 movies for you to watch i've got these 15 tv shows you know it if you get too bogged down in continuity you'll never read or watch anything you know so so yeah i think i just i love to see more responsibility taken from store owners and people who are passionate who are fans of the industry to say here's your starting points you want to get into batman here's year one you want to get into

[00:50:28] spider-man here's spider-man blue you want to get into you know obviously it's different with indie comics but indie comics are easy enough to source in terms of um do you want to get into walking dead here's volume one when it comes to the big two stuff you can always find stories that are like look this epitomizes the character if you enjoy this i'll recommend something else i think they're doing a good pivot at least with the marvel tv shows i just finished up the new daredevil show not to give anything away but i don't think you need a whole lot of contacts from the previous seasons

[00:50:56] to really know what's going on if you if you basically know who daredevil the punisher and kingpin are well thing is with daredevil i mean daredevil as you can see from my arm uh daredevil is one of my guys i mean i i've all the omnibuses sort of behind you there i've dared every single daredevil on the machine get um daredevil is a good example and we still haven't watched the finale of born again so i can't fully comment on it but sure you get five episodes into that daredevil born again and there's

[00:51:25] one episode in it that for me is the best episode i've watched so far and it's a one-shot adventure of matt murdoch stuck in a bank as it's being robbed and there's miss marvel's dad as the bank manager so you've got your ties to a larger audience but it's a one-shot story that's what it should be this is everything about the character matt could have walked away he could have said to the police he whatever he wasn't dressed up in his daredevil you know costume so he has to think

[00:51:51] like a hero and think in a logical way how do i protect people and see it people that episode for me is the best of any recent marvel tv show i think because it has a tiny bit of humor to it as well the the dad character is great it has stakes and it shows what it is to be a hero but you don't need you could have never watched another episode of daredevil ever again just watch that one and you'll know what the character is about so yeah i think i think marvel yeah they're trying

[00:52:15] to figure out the the live action universe i think dc maybe have a good opportunity here because with superman coming out they can say look this is the start of our universe so you know to make it simple you don't need to have watched anything else the only thing in the dc industry just to jump in with a slightly personal note is the snyder cultists might stop that happening unfortunately but um yeah tribalism is a terrible thing it's something we try to it's

[00:52:44] something we try to stay away from in the store like i say to people all the time don't just limit yourself to dc don't just limit yourself to marvel you're missing out in some great stuff just read what you enjoy it doesn't matter what company produces yeah it's really weird because we have those things you were talking about your your co-host and marvel guy dc guy jimmy my co-host is exactly the same way he grew up dc i grew up with marvel it just happened to be what we were exposed to because

[00:53:10] that was what was available so he did this thing in march where he covered a whole bunch of marvel titles so he was introduced to the thing and the fantastic four and he just had never gotten into them before now they're on his pole he said i don't know why i stayed away from these characters yeah but i did it's weird that's the way it should be i mean for me what i find is i my

[00:53:35] weekly stuff i read a bit of everything but i always have at least one omnibus on the go in the background that i'm trying to get through and all my omnibuses i'm reading are marvel because i grew up dc so i've read all the big dc stories you know i've i've read batman nightfall you know i've read death and return of superman i've read alamor's swamp thing i've read you know all these great great runs and i own a lot of them anyway but uh what i find is i'm like i i recently i only just read

[00:54:04] in its entirety captain america by ed brubaker one of the best things i've ever read and of course those five omnibuses so yeah don't limit yourself to what you read or what you watch or what you play or what you like i'm a big wrestling fan as well and again okay tribalism that exists in the current state of things because there's an alternative to wwe and people are just so tribal and i just don't get

[00:54:28] just watch or read good stuff don't worry about who makes it you know it's it's a it can be quite a quite a black and white world we live in now i think something's either the greatest thing in the world or it's the worst thing in the world it's there's plenty of things that are just that was pretty good what about having for dinner tonight it can still be entertaining it doesn't have to be the worst or the best yeah i mean i was a production assistant for wcw back in the attitude era so i think what they're

[00:54:54] doing right now is really just trying to mirror in some ways the rivalry because that rivalry really there were some bad things about it the misogyny was off the charts but it really pushed wrestling to be what it is today when you had that rivalry yeah i think so i think i think uh from a business point of view i think you always need a rival dc and marvel have been pushing each other for 60 70

[00:55:21] years at this point you know and and sometimes dc will be on top sometimes marvel will be on top but i think as fans you don't need to get involved in that i think as a fan just watch what you enjoy and don't you know don't give so much of your energy to like hate watching things or you know abusing things or it all goes back to what i said about like with our podcast like things you enjoy

[00:55:46] give airspace to stuff you don't like but um well i'd like to uh you know pick your brain sometime about that the wcw time definitely sure absolutely no problem well what is the favorite thing that you've got going that you're reading right now um as i say i'm i'm loving the absolute universe i think there's such great stuff there uh the ultimate universe i think that's the most exciting spider-man's been in years independent wise i'm loving the ghost machine stuff uh all the stuff that jeff johns

[00:56:16] gary frank jason fay book peter jay tomasi those guys are doing some great books with red coats and rook exodus and um hide street and stuff like that let me see what else am i really enjoying anything and i mean anything from ed brubaker and sean phillips is just like those guys have got it made that they're another good example actually just to go back about what you're saying about like the

[00:56:42] models in the industry like they decided a few years back we're not releasing single issues anymore i'm not saying this would work for everybody but they found a way to say we're going to make every book we release a finished story it's going to be hardback it's going to be one shot that you can pick up and it's going to feel special every time there's a new release and those guys have cracked that a lot of that comes from sean phillips being a machine he just does not seem to stop drawing but uh anything those guys do like there's a new criminal book out in august looking forward to

[00:57:11] called nights i'm really enjoying i'm enjoying salvin amed's daredevil i have to say i was a little little wary on it on the start because i love chip sadarsky's running so much but it's really really grown on me quite uh quite a lot things to look forward to uh fantastic four number one ryan north is hitting soon um it's nice to see a bit of synchronicity with the movies i must admit from a store point of view um you know you you were asking me about free comic book day i wish i

[00:57:41] had have had a thousand copies of the first trade paperback of invincible that would have sold every single one of them but they were all out of print they're all coming back in next week which is nice but uh yeah fantastic four there's a new number one coming out the same month as the movie uh they're doing the summer of superman through dc at the moment i got an early look at superman unlimited actually by dan slot and rafael albuquerque that first issue is incredible

[00:58:05] and i'm not a huge superman guy i think it's hard to i have a weird view on superman i think it's hard to do a long ongoing because there's only so many times you can go magic somebody loves in danger kryptonite um but mini series some of the superman mini series are some of my favorite things you know up in the sky and american alien and red sun red sun for all seasons uh so shorter ones i think are great but yeah check out that superman unlimited if you get a chance very very good stuff i mean

[00:58:35] i genuinely enjoy so much you know i i'll read every single indie number one that comes into the store regardless of publisher okay um and dc and marvel i will try out most titles as well so uh there's there's not a lot out there that i don't like maybe i'm just easily pleased i don't know no i mean i maybe i'll help sell some exquisite corpses done uh in the shop for anybody who happens to be a listener i got a sneak peek at that and i am hype on that book i think it's going to be

[00:59:05] so good so good for for the audience that it's meant for nice no i'm really looking forward to it as i say anything tinian tends to ends a deliver i mean nice house in the lake and now nice house by the sea i think those are a couple of the best books the last couple years i remember reading the first issue of nice house in the lake and just being blown away and it's it's a hard book to sell in a way because you hear the you hear the synopsis a little bit and it's like 10 strangers in a house

[00:59:33] by the lake you think there's going to be a horror book there's going to be a killer one of them's going to get killed each issue who's the killer and you get halfway through that first issue and i remember very definitively being a page turn and going oh that's what this is about and i i was really blown away by that i think tinian's he's a very very clever guy um a shout out actually for one of my favorite runs of the recent years was firepower by robert kirkman and chris stanley uh yeah wonderful

[00:59:59] wonderful book uh through mh comics as well so but yeah i could talk recommendations all day all day long believe me it's like i never switched off from work oh yeah well i mean i never i never do either you know the exquisite corpses thing it was really cool i got to talk to michael waltz anybody is interested who is listening i talked to michael waltz you can go back i'll put a link in the show notes but about exquisite corpses and it has the production nucleus of a big two book and that's why

[01:00:29] i'm so hype about it because all of the writers that were working on that got into a room in a cabin for a weekend and just ground out the story and then you had waltz who came in and he added wrestling fans this is right up your alley because he created these immediately recognizable characters with just enough personality and that nugget so it feels like watching wrestling playing fortnight

[01:00:57] mixed with murderers who are thrown into a small town and all the townspeople is really the nucleus of the story you know what they're going through but you have this you have a bag of skittles that's going right along with your halloween you know there that is beautiful and you know all these crazy vibrant colors and it's it's just a lot of fun it's it'll be a cool ride i'm really this is the

[01:01:23] first one in a very long time i feel like that book i would read in my car you know i'm that hype about it so well two things on that one i'll make sure it's top of my reading plan next week when it comes out the only thing is it does make me a little sad because i love michael walsh's silver coin but obviously if he's tied up with exquisite corpses he might take a break from that um i'll definitely listen to that interview though i've never i've never chatted to him or actually heard any interviews

[01:01:47] he's done but i thought that silver coin book was such a clever idea because you're so used to one writer and a different artist each issue with anthology books but you very seldom get same artist but different writers and the the caliber of writers in that book tinny and chip sadarsky ram v you know kelly thompson you know there were so many great writers in that book i i love that um yeah no i'll

[01:02:14] definitely have a lesson yeah even i will check out the show notes for that uh there we go that's my my salesmanship is done for the day so i'll turn your salesmanship back on what else do you have coming up with the shop that you want to pitch um i mean how can people help certainly the big thing with the store is where we're about to hit our eighth anniversary which is first of june uh it's always easy to remember when we open because we had a nice bit of comic synchronicity we opened the

[01:02:42] day that wonder woman one came out in the cinema uh which was june 1st 2017 so yeah i mean with the store we're we're just always doing our best to improve it where we can you know we're we're always loading it out with as much stock as possible loads of starting points loads of new graphic novels we we do our previews boards in the store for to let you guys know what's coming up next i've been doing some changes in store recently we may have one or two signings coming up towards the end of the

[01:03:10] year um definitely check out the podcast you know we've been interviewing some great people lately we chatted to one of my absolute heroes recently rick reminder who is uh the right yeah the writer of one of my favorite books of all time deadly class it's uh tattooed right there um that was a fantastic interview um you know we're expanding the youtube channel to include more videos similar to yourself as well so we're we're working on loads and loads of stuff i mean that's the bottom line with our

[01:03:39] with our store is you know it's run by fans so you know it's run by people who love this industry read as much as possible about it happy to recommend stuff uh and always happy to chat to people who are involved in the creation of it so um hopefully that comes across with uh with anybody that walks through the door but uh no it's just it's it's nice to come on and chat to someone who's well informed just as passionate as i am and uh i don't have to leave good questions for once so this is

[01:04:07] this is nice yeah well as a fellow daredevil fan i'm going back and trying to get my hands on the uh the omnibuses for miller's run because when i was a kid i i look at my own comics journey and there are milestones you know there's this was the first book that i ever read that my cousin gave me and it was you know an amazing spider-man way back in the day i can't remember the number but you know with the

[01:04:35] vulture and everything and that was the first thing you know and the next big milestone was daredevil 189 and there was a used bookstore that was in town my mom would drop me off and comics were like 15 cents and they were all messed up and mangled and everything just in these massive stacks and i saw that daredevil cover where he's flying and the yellow cover with you know the ninjas at the bottom

[01:04:59] and the rain of arrows that are going up and as a kid instant magic so i'm now going back and trying to find and reread a lot of the stuff from from being a kid and fill in those milestone moments for myself i'll i'll make you slightly jealous right now for just a quick one but uh this is all my daredevil here this this is the first ever omnibus that i ever got so one year i was in forbidden

[01:05:28] planet with my mom and uh this was maybe about 15 years ago and she said to me have you any ideas what you want for christmas al and i and i had never even thought about an omnibus before i was like oh they're so expensive they're so big and uh i pointed this one out my mom got me for christmas it is very well read it has stains at the top it has folds it has all sorts but um that was the

[01:05:52] first ever omnibus i ever added into my collection but uh and it's one of the absolute best ever since but yeah when it comes to my comic journey i have a very easy story with it i was in the comics as a kid but i sort of grew out in a little bit in my teenage years and stuff like that and in my early 20s i worked in a cinema and batman begins had just come out and i loved it it blew my mind and one of the guys i work with said oh you enjoyed that here read this and he handed me batman

[01:06:20] year one and i read it that night and the next day i came in i handed a strip back to him and what else you bought and that was me i was i was hooked ever since and batman begins believe it or not came out 20 years ago this year which is very depressing uh but yeah that's where my serious journey began as i say as a kid you know batman animated adventures of the spider-man cartoon it was you know those types of things but uh year one was definitely my my formative my formative book

[01:06:48] well i'll have to reach back out to you and let you know how it goes after i get through the read it seems like the 189 issue it was a weird gap where the they broke it up and it's sort of in between if i'm understanding correctly towards the end of this one um this includes variable 158 to 161 and then 163 to 191 as well as a what if book as well so but yeah i mean miller's

[01:07:12] miller's run i mean my favorite absolute definitive favorite comic of all time is dark knight returns so when it comes to uh the frank miller he's had a big big impact on me but i would say though and this may be slightly controversial it's not my favorite daredevil run okay i'm guessing this is the cover you were having about that's that's the cover yep for me it is mark wade's run

[01:07:38] and chris sammy okay pal rivera and a lot of that comes from the fact that when i lived in cambridge as i say i was going to forbidden planet for my my pull list and i was still more of a dc guy but i started getting into marvel and it wasn't avengers that got me into marvel it wasn't spider-man it was daredevil by mark wade and pal rivera and chris sammy it was hawkeye by matt fraction and david asia it was miss marvel by g willow wilson i liked all the fringe books

[01:08:08] you know i wasn't as i said i wasn't collecting spider-man or reading spider-man or avengers or captain america or anything like that but that mark wade run to me is just it's timeless it's it's got its serious parts but it's got moments of uh brevity moments of humor and the art is fantastic the whole way through so yeah i love miller's run don't be wrong it's absolutely brilliant but that wade run just that's what that's what the daredevil tattoo is from that's from the uh

[01:08:35] from the wade sammy era yeah if i ever do the other sleeve these are all memorial tattoos and our dogs on on this arm but if i ever do the other sleeve it'll be all hannah barbara characters so oh i have a great ape and yeah i have a mix of everything at the moment you know there's naruto there there's daredevil there's batman there there goes all the way up to joker um but this is this probably my favorite one here though my favorite director of all times alfred hitchcock

[01:09:03] and uh my son's named alfred so that's his year he had a birth and name and stuff on the clapperboard and then dark night returns there of course because there had to be dark night returns somewhere believe me this is not not fair because you can pitch to to your spouse your partner about um needing to get more tattoos because it is directly related to the business it's a write-off i mean if you get a you get somebody in the shop there's the coffee in here was mug right there watchman as well of course there you go um yeah no i i i

[01:09:32] i try my best with that it's i use that enough i use my son now as a reason to buy really nice things because i say oh i'm bad for him for his future they're they're not for me you know so uh yeah i she lets me away with more than she probably should to be honest but you know i mine's the same that's that's why you know you got to keep them that's absolutely keeper well the thing was i got i got vicky and the saga that was her sort of entry-level comic because she was she really enjoyed star wars

[01:10:01] so i said oh read this i i pitch saga all the time to people and start star wars for adults because obviously it's adult themes and there's swearing and there's sex through it and this and that but it's it's still got that great world building that fantasy element um and you know that romeo and juliet element as well if you know people come from two different races and coming together so uh it's still a fantastic book saga it's maybe not as potent as it once was just because of how

[01:10:29] many it's inspired since but uh it's still a still a fan it still would still be a firm favorite i'm very curious when young alfred gets a little bit older and and can kind of take his pick what he ends up gravitating towards because i mean obviously you can see behind me you know there's there's a library and when my son was younger just seeing what he gravitated to is really interesting because i got him started first on bone and then let him kind of pick what he wanted from there and he

[01:10:57] he immediately locked on to dc characters so he was really into aquaman and then he started sneaking fables and he was way too young to be reading fables and then it was kiladelphia so he made these yeah that's yeah like the escalations and he's like well he comes in and he's got kiladelphia open and he he definitely should not have been reading that um but there were questions from from my wife about

[01:11:22] that one for sure so i'm just saying there are landmines that you might have to answer questions about down the road if you ever want to go back and check out kiladelphia stuff go back in our podcast feed we interviewed rodney barnes one time and we order we interviewed uh jason sean alexander another time and they were two great guys to chat to uh yeah big fan of kiladelphia as well but maybe not for alfie anytime soon i basically got a back catalog of you know all the mighty marvel masterwork

[01:11:50] stuff and i've got bone and i've got you know dc kid stuff but alfie's the kind of kind of child we dress him in a batman hat but a spider-man hoodie so he can uh he can make his own mind up between the big two we won't uh we won't force it on too much yeah good on you as long as you don't make him a chelsea fan we'll be fine oh he's no he's no choice on that one i'm afraid all right well i encourage everyone to go follow the the coffee and heroes youtube channel i'm going to put it in

[01:12:20] regular rotation i'll drop a link in the show notes to make it easy for people so they can find it alan thanks so much for coming on the show and rounding out my international comics perspective a little bit i i had no idea especially about the distribution stuff and how all that worked so it's been a pleasure thanks yeah happy to come on anytime and chat away all right well this is brian o'neill and on behalf of all of us at comic book yeti thanks for tuning in and we will see you next time take care everybody bye guys this is brian o'neill one of

[01:12:47] your hosts of the cryptic creator corner brought to you by comic book yeti we hope you've enjoyed this episode of our podcast please rate review subscribe all that good stuff it lets us know how how we're doing and more importantly how we can improve thanks for listening you you