Mike Sterling over on Progressive Ruin brought up the Walking Dead:
The first volume, reprinting the initial issues of one of Image Comics' precious few success stories in recent memory. The keystone of a whole series of paperback books reprinting this popular series. A series that recently released its 50th issue to much attention.
The first volume, unavailable. For most of the summer.
I had a number of customers looking to start reading Walking Dead, having heard the hype and read the reviews/interviews and so on. Normally, that first volume is an easy sell...it's only $9.99, and it has a lot of good word of mouth, so it doesn't take much to get someone to try it out. But it's only an easy sell if I have any to sell. And because I haven't had any copies to sell, those are lost sales. I've plenty of volumes 2 through 8, but a new reader's not going to want to jump in with the second volume. S/he wants to start from the beginning, and if I don't have the beginning, I don't have that new reader.
I dunno, Robert...maybe instead of shooting off some crackpot shit that you maybe gave two minutes thought before yelling action at your camera (for no apparent reason because you were the director and cast)...you should have been working on resolving this type of problem.
You know...so that retailers like Sterling would have copies of the first trade around when your perennially late product had its landmark 50th issue.
I could be wrong. I'm just passionate about this and I'm trying to save the industry...from your attention deficit disorder. ;)
FYI: as far as I know, Mr. Sterling isn't bringing this up with the intention of having it used as evidence that Kirkman needs to spend more time straightening his own shit out instead of making sweeping generalizations about how people should work or thinking ideas he came up with during one session on the crapper might save comic books. That's just me.
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