You are part of the rebel alliance and a traitor!
Chapter 81: Holiday Gifts and Pizza.
New Books for December!
Exclusive Gifts for All Your Holiday Shopping Needs!
Tour Diary pt. 1 -Traffic and Pizza!
Your December Webstore Discount Code!
Hey there!
Been a bit since I’ve wroten written one of these that wasn’t just a Podcast update, so I might be a bit rusty. I haven’t forgotten about you all, I’ve just been very busy, tired, and dealing with a lot of personal stuff too boring to go into here. I’ve also been working long hours building exciting books for Ashcan Press so, in a sense, I was working for you this whole time. In a sense. Sorta.
I didn’t send this last week but I am making a handy graphic for all the books I put out each month. So this is a week late, but I’m sure your local comic shops still have last weeks books if you missed them.
It seems I also forgot that myself and Juan Ferreyra have all 3 issues of our THUNDERBOLTS book in the KING IN BLACK OMNIBUS that’s out this month, but I didn’t feel like redoing this image after I realized that. So if you are in the mood for a giant read, or you’re looking to give someone a gift that could crush a small animal this holiday season, you can grab that wherever big books are sold. And feel free to buy me one too because I didn’t get comps of it.
Speaking of gift giving season, I haven’t been updating our webstore because we’ve had some weird glitches we’re trying to figure out where orders weren’t showing up. But the good news is we have figure it all out! All back orders are shipping as we speak! Hurray! And thanks for your patience if you ordered something.
So, with that said, A LOT of you asked me if we’d have any cool exclusive stuff in the shop for the holiday season. The answer was going to be no, but since we sorted out our weird shipping issue, it’s now a yes. I’d still always prefer you buy my stuff from your local comic shop. Don’t know where one is? Use ComicShopLocator.com.
But I get sometimes people want to get something they can’t get just anywhere, so I threw a few exclusive items for you or anyone/everyone on your holiday shopping list.
You can find the stuff at right here-
WHAT’S THE FURTHEST PLACE FROM HERE? vol.1 Exclusive tpb with signed bookplate! This cover is exclusive to our webstore, limited to 300 copies total, and comes with a bookplate designed by Tyler Boss and signed by both of us.
WHAT’S THE FURTHEST PLACE #7 Exclusive Foil cover. Limited to 100 copies and exclusive to our webstore. We like to make foil covers for the issues. We may stop doing it soon because it’s a bunch of work, but before we do make sure to grab this great cover. We have a few signed copies too!
DEAD DOG’S BITE hardcover signed and sketched. Tyler has a few copies of his amazing series left over from conventions this year. So he decided to sign and sketch in them and put them in the store. It’s a rare treat because he doesn’t really do that… well, ever. Not sure why he did it here, but you don’t look a grumpy art horse in the mouth. So get them now, because when they’re gone, they’re gone.
If you order in the next few days you should be getting everything before the holidays if you live in the U.S.. I can’t make promises or tell you when you’ll get international stuff, because shipping is pretty broken, but we will do our best.
I also threw up a couple items that are only for paying subscribers. They are signed and there aren’t a lot of them, so if you want to check them out scroll to the bottom of this newsletter.
And remember, monthly paying subscribers for this newsletter get 5% off all webstore orders (with the code that only they can see at the bottom of this email) and annual subscribers get 10% with the code I sent you before. So if wanted to get a few things from our store it basically pays for itself and you get other bonus stuff too. Or pay full price like a civilian.
Now that that messy business is out of the way, let’s talk about where I was last month.
My good friend and publisher Matt Pizzolo, head of Black Mask, had written an excellent new book called ROGUE STATE. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you should. It has real DMZ / V FOR VENDETTA vibes in the best way. And when he realized his book was launching the same week WILDC.A.T.S. #1, he came up with a very dumb idea. “We should go on a signing tour together.” And I love dumb ideas so I said “…I guess.” And we were off to the races.
Part of the reason I wanted to do this was because I haven’t been to any cons or really done many signings in a while and it’s a fun and (sort of) easy way to give back to the fans and shops that support me. Also, I read this and felt incredible pressure.
Getting the chance to write WILDC.A.T.S. is not a privilege I take lightly. And seeing that Jim Lee himself took the time to do a cross country signing event for the launch 30 years ago, it seemed like hopping in a car and going up and down the east coast was the least I could do to honor the legacy of the book.
What follows is the first part of my little tour diary wherein I travelled over 2,600 miles to sign comics in 18 stores over a period of 12 days. Some parts were edited out to make us seem less stupid. The rest is all true.
WILD STATE / ROGUE C.A.T.S. Tour Diary pt. 1
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 9th.
A little over 2 weeks before we were supposed to leave for tour we found out that, due to a printing error, ROGUE STATE #1 would be shipping a week later than it was supposed to. So all these stores were kind enough to accommodate us by switching dates where possible. A few shops weren’t able to do that and Matt had to get books fedexed to him so he’d have copies to sell at the shops. Then we added a few shops to fill in the holes from pushing a bunch of stores back a week. All this is to say, we were off to a chaotic start.
But Wednesday finally around and WILDC.A.T.S. is out in the world. I had hoped to hit up a bunch of local shops before I headed out to my first official signing but I ended up having to do lettering revisions that kept me home too late. Our first stop was the awesome FOURTH WORLD COMICS in Smithtown, NY. I still left with well over 2 hours to get to the shop, which is only about an hour from my house. Unfortunately, god or Long Island hates me, because I ended up stuck in traffic for almost 2 hours, meaning I was going to be half an hour late to my first signing. Awful start. Luckily I was meeting Pizzolo there so I texted him to tell him. And, of course, he was sitting in the same traffic. Eventually I got to the shop and was pleased to see people had stuck around. Sorry!
I’ve signed at Fourth World a few times in the past and it’s always been fun. In a lot of ways it’s sort of my platonic ideal of a comic shop. It’s got a huge selection of trades, a ton of back issues, toys, statues, and stuff like that. It is overwhelming in the best way and the people who work there are amazing.
The customers were really nice and it’s always a nice feeling to see some familiar faces. A very nice young WHAT’S THE FURTHEST PLACE FROM HERE? fan just happened to be in the shop and seemed pretty excited by the coincidence, which is oddly an even better feeling than people coming to see me in some ways. It feels serendipity. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it. Either way, it was fun. I just wish I had had more free stuff to give her.
There was also a guy who was excited about THE JOKER and happened to be dressed almost entirely in Punisher gear. When I mentioned that I wrote 27 issues of the PUNISHER he looked confused and asked which ones. I replied “The ones that everyone hated,” but that didn’t clarify. It turns out he actually liked my run and had no idea I wrote it. I know some writers get offended when the audience doesn’t know who made what, but I never really care. I am always pleased when stuff like this happens because it means he follows the characters he likes and ends up enjoying my work without even realizing it. There is something very gratifying in doing your job well and not having anyone notice. I am sure there are also tons of people who keep reading different books of mine and hating them, which is funny too, but in a different way.
Anyway, if either of the above people read this newsletter, hi! Thanks for coming to the signing. And thanks to everyone else who came too.
When the signing ended I had meant to buy a bunch of stuff but realized I had to pretty much run out the door for a very important reason. My dark secret is that the real I agreed to do this signing tour was to buy a lot of comics but also to eat at a lot of places I love and haven’t been in a long time. So, even though I had books to buy, if I had stuck around I would have missed grabbing pizza from my favorite pizza place- Mama Theresa’s in Garden City.
Years ago I worked out on Long Island and my old boss, who liked pizza more than almost anyone I’d ever met, swore Mama Theresa’s was the best. He loved it so much that he used to deliver pizza for a competing pizza place where he could eat for free, but he’d still go buy pizza at Mama Theresa’s instead. I, being a city kid, obviously was wildly offended and annoyed by his claims that the best pizza place was on Long Island. Finally, one day, I relented and tried the buffalo chicken slice and the rest is history. To this day it remains my favorite (still existing) pizza place and I go there every time I’m out on the island. So the above pie was purchased in order to celebrate the launch of WILDC.A.T.S. and the first day of our little tour.
Tired, stuffed, and still buzzing off talking to more people in a day than I had in years, I headed home to sleep and get ready for the trip ahead.
And that concludes Part I because otherwise the email will be too long and will end up in your spam folder. But I’ll see you next week for part II of my little tour diary. It will be shorter because I pretty much forgot to take pictures the whole time.
Stay safe. Take care of each other. Eat more pizza.
-Matthew Rosenberg
NYC 12/11/22
THIS PART IS FOR PAYING SUBSCRIBERS ONLY. SORRY. I STILL LOVE YOU.
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