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He is not abandoning The Good Fight, but rather is gathering his forces to wage it on another front.

So while Matt pauses to roll up his sleeves and tighten his belt and get his second proverbial wind, let us all take a minute and reflect on the fine job Matt has done getting the word out about good comics to read, but also underlining the message that comics are good to read. It needed to be said, and it wasn’t being said loudly enough until Matt and Dave and Alec put Savant together. At the other end of the comics spectrum, you’ve got your guy at Marvel. You may recall that back in the very first “Loose Cannon,” I said I’d have my eye on Bill Jemas, the current publisher of Marvel. I was cautiously optimistic, those thirteen weeks ago, that despite his never having had two profitable quarters to rub together, that the addition of Joe Quesada and Stuart Moore and Axel Alonso to the ranks might help Jemas pull The House of Ideas out of its creative and financial spiral. The latest gas can kicked into the fire by Marvel, of course, had been their limited over-print policy. In an attempt to increase retailers’ up-front orders, Jemas announced that over-prints are a thing of the past, and that a retailer had better order all the comics they think they can sell initially, because they aren’t going to be able to get more if they sell out. What the guys behind the counter call “just-in-time” ordering will go bye-bye for Spidey and his ilk. Marvel’s thinking is that they can artificially inflate the numbers and make themselves look attractive to FOX or whoever while increasing their share of a dwindling marketplace. What this did, however, is place the financial burden on the retailer, by making him bet, three months before they come out, on the exact number of Marvel comics he can sell. Join me in a toast: to Matt Fraction. Let’s check in, shall we?

Even a savvy retailer can guess wrong here and end up with a bunch of unsellable inventory…

And a smart retailer’s just not going to put the livelihood of his shop on the line for that sort of smoke-and-mirrors sleight-of-hand from Marvel. Which ends up with the numbers not showing the surge Marvel expected, and the retailers loudly and vehemently explaining to Marvel why this is A Bad Thing.

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