A good week to order some back-issue comics …

… albeit for a bad reason.

I received one of those phone calls yesterday. The kind we all dread, where the news from the other end of the line is all bad. The details are still very sketchy, but the general situation is that a very large water main broke underneath our Thornton, Colorado Mega-Store. The resulting jet of water that burst up through our concrete floor was so powerful that it has been reported to me that it spewed water and mud to a depth of 18 inches throughout the store. Considering that our Thornton Megastore, at 11,000 square feet, is (or was…) the largest comics store in the country, the amount of water that must have been involved was just mind-numbing. It supposedly took the fire department over eight hours to finally pump the water levels down enough in our store to allow the damage control experts to begin the process of cleaning up.

That’s Chuck Rozanski of Mile High Comics fan. It’s generally a fine online resource for buying comics, and I do my weekly pull at the Mile High affiliate store in Littleton.

At this point, I have no way of really knowing how much was destroyed. I’m still here in New York, so I have only my imagination as a guide. I do know, however, that the Thornton store contains over sixty 6′ high showcases (at an original cost of $1,100 each), 50 shorter cases (at $500 each) as well as another 150 comics bins, new comics racks, and bookcases (average $400 each). All of those fixtures had bases made from particle board, which swells massively when made wet, and then disintegrates into flakes as it dries. As regards to merchandise, the Thornton store contained hundreds of thousands of dollars of retail value in comics, trade paperbacks and hardbacks, toys, collectible cards, posters, and portfolios. How much of that inventory will be salvageable is strictly dependent upon how high the water actually rose, and as to whether the resulting moisture migrated above that level via condensation. With most of our better comics stored well above the ground and protected within plastic sleeves I think that we’ll be OK in that regard, but the 100,000+ comics and books which we had displayed at, or near, ground level will be a total loss. Suffice it to say, I just took a savage financial hit. Insurance will cover some of my loss, but it is almost a foregone conclusion that I’ll eventually receive only a small percentage of the value of what was destroyed. Sigh…

To increase cash flow at a definitely dire time, Mile High is lopping their usually discounted prices for back issues by an additional 25% by using the codeword “FLOODHELP” when you order online. It’s only good for individual comics, not for trade paperbacks, but it’s in addition to already discounted comics (e.g., the 50% comics are now effectively 62% off). And if you order $50 (in the US; $125 outside) (and trade paperbacks apply to that total), then shipping is free.

I don’t usually advertise on behalf of folks, but Rozanski’s something of an institution in the industry, and, like I said, I’ve done plenty of business with him before. So if you had some comics back issues you were thinking of picking up — now would be a great time, and a win-win for both parties.