Well, not at making them interesting, anyway!

Chapter 223: Those three magic words... "F O C"

Hi there.

So I’ve been trying not to be too obnoxious about my new book WE’RE TAKING EVERYONE DOWN WITH US on here. But we’ve hit that magical time in every comics life - FOC¹ a.k.a. Final Order Cutoff - so that moratorium on being obnoxious has ended. Sorry.

The WTEDWU Team of myself, Stefano Landini, Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, Jason Wordie, Roman Titov, Becca Carey, Steve Foxe, Eric Harburn, Courtney Menard, and the powerful folks at Image Comics have been hard at work making this the best book we can. But we’ve also been trying to get people excited to read it too. And that means a lot of press, a lot of podcasts, and this badass trailer.

My pal Blake Howard put this together for us, and our friends in Summer People kindly let us use their song Good Problems for it. So go give it a watch, like it, and share it with your friends, families, and coworkers. Share it with people you dislike too. Keep them on their toes.

I’ve been doing a lot of exciting things to get people interested in this book and the biggest one was last week. I LEFT MY HOUSE! Yes, you read that correctly. But not only did I leave my house, I drove to Newark, flew to California, drove to Glendale, and threw a party.

I know what you’re all thinking- “Matt, you fucking love parties!” No. I do not. That is wrong. But last week was the annual ComicsPro meeting for comic book retailers and it is a genuinely good and productive time every year. A lot of the people who go to these meeting are the reason I have a career so I like to go, give thanks, and hang out. Earlier this year I had the idea that we should throw a party there for the retailers as a special kind of thanks, removed from sales pitches and marketing dinners. So I called my buddies

Gerry Duggan

,

James Tynion IV

, and

Chip Zdarsky

and we put together a little thing called WE LOVE COMICS at Golden Road in Atwater.

I stole this picture from James, but I paid $300 for all the donuts so I’m not going to not show them off. We had an open bar, free food, and good music. Word of advice if you’re thinking of throwing a party- free mozzarella sticks. People lose their fucking minds. Tons of retailers came out, as did a ton of the LA comics scene.

Photo of Ed Brubaker and James Tynion hanging out stolen from

Gerry Duggan

. Don’t tell him. At the end of the night we treated everyone to gift bags full of exclusive goodies. Much love to Jazzlyn, Harley, and DeAna of

The Empire of the Tiny Onion

for working hard on making sure everyone had a great time.

Gift bag photo also stolen from Gerry. I guess you should just read his post about it here. And yes, that is an exclusive, hand numbered variant of WTEDWU #1. Get thyself to ebay, nerds!

Anyway, it was a fun night and I got to fulfill my dream of getting hundreds of comic creators and retailers together and then playing GG Allin over the P.A. and acting like that was normal.

In addition to us making a trailer and throwing parties, a few kindly websites have run advanced reviews of the book. Huge thanks to CAPES & TIGHTS, MONKEYS FIGHTING ROBOTS, AIPT, and CBR for taking the time.

CBR didn’t give us a grade but it’s a very nice review you can read here. Obviously I know everyone’s taste is different, so reviews are very subjective… until I have a 9.8 average score on the aggregate site ComicBookRoundup. Then I believe they are gospel and we should all adhere to their proclamations.

That’s really it. If you are looking to preorder the book, thank you. Also, if you don’t have a local comic shop there are a ton of great shops that ship all over the world. Can I suggest the following-

MIDTOWN COMICS. My friends in my hometown have all the issues available to order now.

COMICHUB. Comichub is a system that helps stores sell books. What does this mean for you? Simply put, you can set up an account, order the book from their site, and arrange to have the book shipped to you or pick it up in 1 of the 130+ stores around the planet that use their services. It’s an easy way to order any comics you want.

IMPULSE CREATIONS. The mighty Impulse Creations in Tulsa not only have a great site for ordering books, but they’re offering a preorder where you can get the first 3 issues of WE’RE TAKING EVERYONE DOWN WITH US signed by me!

THIRD EYE COMICS. My good friends at Third Eye in Maryland (and surrounding areas) have the issues up for pre-order now. Order them or stop in.

DCBS. The giant discount comic book seller is not only selling our book, but you can buy issue #1 signed by me straight from them.

FORBIDDEN PLANET. If you’re over in the UK, Forbidden Planet is a great place to mailorder your books from.

---

That’s it for me.

Stay safe. Take care of each other. I didn’t just play GG Allin, I promise.

-Matthew Rosenberg

NYC 3/2/25

1. For those that don’t know, FOC is Final Order Cutoff is the time when stores place their orders for a comic. It’s usually around 3 weeks before the release date. Those orders are then all totaled up by the distributor (In our case that is Lunar Distribution), passed on to the publisher (Image Comics), and then sent to the printer (I have no idea?). So this is the time when we find out how many copies we sold of the book which, in many cases, determines how long the book will go. It’s a big deal for us who make comics, that’s why we all talk about it a lot.

A couple points about FOC and preordering that I think could use some clarification.

1. Can a store still order the book after FOC? Yes. 100%. Just because you missed FOC does not mean you shouldn’t tell your store you want a book. Stores can still order books because publishers print more than what is ordered, assuming people will still be discovering the book in the 3 weeks leading up to release. Also stores are often caught off guard by demand and need to quickly reorder books, and that is what the overprint is for. BUT stores pay a bit more for books ordered after FOC. Preordering has a benefit for them so it’s always better. ALSO stores are not guaranteed to get any books they order after FOC. There will be extra copies, but it is first come first serve, so you might miss out.

2. Does preordering really matter that much? Short answer- yes. Longer answer- fuck yes. Besides the reasons listed above, it is important to understand that stores pay for all the comics they bring in whether someone buys them or not. So they want to go as close to selling out as they can, while not leaving customers walking away empty handed. This means they have to do a brutal game of guessing how many people will want to read a new title when it comes out. Their best metric for making that guess? Preorders! Most customers don’t preorder, but the few who do help the shop understand what early excitement levels are. Every shop does different math equation for this, but I know shops where every preorder means they order an extra 10 copies for their shelves. So when we tell you to preorder we aren’t just doing it to make sure you get your book, we’re doing it to help shops understand that people want the book, and we’re doing it to make sure the book is on shelves for people unlike you who didn’t preorder (we call them “bad people”).

So that’s why every comic creator you know is annoying about this. The good news is that it’s easy to do. Stop in, call, email, or go to your local comic shop’s website and let them know you want WE’RE TAKING EVERYONE DOWN WITH US #1.