2002-10-30 - 11:25 p.m.

God Gets Married!!

In spite of how tiring yesterday was, I still had to pick up the new comics at the UPS hub today. When I got up, for some reason I just couldn't face cooking breakfast so I tried an experiment. Instead of starting breakfast I got dressed quickly and went to a diner that was only about a mile away from UPS.

In spite of the fact that the rush hour traffic was worse, I got to UPS about 15 minutes earlier than I have been recently. Don't know if I'm going to make a habit of that though.

That means it's time for another comic review!

Battle Pope: Wrath of God #3

Here's a rip-snorting, fun-packed comic that is totally and utterly blasphemous. If you take your religion seriously, you won't like this much!

In some indeterminate near-future the End of the World has come: God has turned his back on Earth as Angels and Demons freely walk the planet. Who defends humanity against this scourge? Why it's God's representative to humanity, Battle Pope! He's dressed like the Holy Father, but he packs a punch like Superman.

Mostly, this is played for laughs. Pope is hardly a saintly character. He's angry, lustful, crude, etc, etc. Much more like cigar-chomping Sergeant Fury than Saint Francis. For example, in a previous issue the rest of the cast stumbles in on Pope paying off his elderly landlady "in trade" in the shower. Dear Lord, strike me blind!

Probably the funniest thing about the book is the supporting cast. Battle Pope's "sidekick" is Jesus Christ, who is portrayed as an addle-pated surfer dude. Last issue we were treated to Jesus "patrolling the city" with Pope's temporary substitute, Santa Claus. I kid you not!

Last issue God found out that Pope had been sleeping with his girlfriend, the Virgin Mary, so God punched Pope out. Yes, I know how that sounds. This issue Mary told God why she was unhappy with their relationship, so God asked her to marry him. The rest of the issue was taken up with the wedding.

I've been waiting for the latest issue of Battle Pope to come in so I could talk about it, but this issue isn't quite as good as some of the previous ones, still everything I'm going to say still applies. This is a well-written, well-drawn comic that while a little blasphemous, is a lot of fun. I like it a lot, but the sad fact is this book is a charity case for my store. Literally NOBODY buys it. We order two and sell zero.

I really have no idea why that is. Maybe a lot of my customers are Catholic and don't find this sort of thing funny. Frown Town seems to have a Catholic church on every corner.

Comic books with low sales like this are the norm in the comic industry, in fact the vast majority of the books we order sell two copies or less, and we order many of them on a "subscriber-only" basis. A book with low sales is much more dangerous to carry than one that sells well. It's no tragedy to order 80 X-Men and sell 79, but to order two Battle Popes and sell only one makes the book immediately unprofitable, not to mention ordering two and selling none. A lot of smaller publishers talk like it's the duty of comic stores to support them, but we really do so at our own risk. In what other industry would producers consider it an obligation for retailers to lose money on their product? None that I can think of. These business Neanderthals can bite me.

Anyway. There are a couple other books that came in today that I'd like to review, but in keeping with the fact that time is growing short for me, I think I'll save that for next week. Ta!