Chances are if you’ve been in one of our locations more than once, we’ve probably mentioned our subscription (also known as a hold or pull list) to you. Signing up for the pull list guarantees you a main cover of any title you wish to pick up… but what about the variant cover and last-minute printings that weren’t originally solicited or if you’re not on a sub list and want a particular cover or want to get something outside your list? What feels like the best kept secret in the industry (that really should be shouted from the top of Titan tower) is the Previews Guide and website. Previews is what every shop uses to order a majority of books in their shop. Currently it covers all mass published Independent titles and (at least for now) contains Marvel books; DC books are available to view on the LunarDistribution.com.
Using the Previews catalog or the previews website allows you to see what we see. You can find release and order dates, to the descriptions of the stories, and even the occasional sneak peek at pages from some books! All of this information is used to get us and especially YOU excited about what’s to come. Now, there’s a lot of information to go through and we base a lot of our choices on what to stock on trends and what may get us excited, and what we think you might like. But, let’s be honest, we can’t possibly know all of the sweet, sweet, comic book interests and desires that may roam in your brain, and we don’t want to miss a title that you may be super curious about. So, like a good super hero team-up the best way for all of us to win is communication. The best way to do that is just give your local Graham Crackers a quick email before FOC. Don’t know the email? Give us a call and we will be more than happy to share. Just email us a list with the full title and cover information with artist and we will make sure we order it for you. You may even see your local Graham Crackers change around you, because when we notice trends, like when a lot of you ask for the same book that may have flown under our radar, we will start to order extra of that title so that we can share with everyone great comics, and that’s because of YOU!
Now we know what you’re thinking; that was a really long-winded way of saying that if we know you want something by FOC then we can order you whatever and even how many you want. But hey we’re in the business of comics and we like to tell stories too.
Now for the brass tacks: Shops typically do two sets of orders: one we call initial orders; these are done monthly and are based off of the latest Previews catalog and DC Connect guide and one called final order cutoff or FOC; and these are done weekly about 3 weeks before a book release and are our last chance to guarantee that we can get certain covers or quantities of a book you want. Since a majority of items are covered with Previews World we’re going to start there. The Previews World webpage (https://previewsworld.com/FinalOrdersDue ) is finalized by noon (EST) every Friday by the vendors and are available to be viewed by the public, please note orders would be due to your shop by Sunday night. On their webpage you can browse everything that is available that week(end). You can even sort by vendor and category depending on your preferences. Please note some cover images will still not be available once the webpage has been finalized, those books just become a nice surprise when they come in.
Now for DC, Final orders are due to your local shop by Saturday night so we can get all our orders in by our Sunday deadline, these can be viewed on https://www.lunardistribution.com/ please note that Lunar does show ratio variants and stores cannot guarantee that we will receive those. Navigating Lunar’s site is super easy, the FOC section is visible right on the home page and is ready for you to scroll through and pick whatever catches your eyes. You can even select future weeks from their drop-down menu, future dates may be subject to change but it doesn’t hurt to give us an early head up.
Don’t have a lot of time to go through the all the webpages, don’t worry we got you covered. Murrieta’s own …well formally, but still… JC has also started to do a quick 5–10-minute recap on our Facebook page that’s posted Friday afternoon. In the video, JC, goes over some highlights and variant covers that we think stands out that week. So, we encourage you to take a peek at the websites or check out the weekly video and be sure to let your local Graham Cracker’s know what extra goodies you would like.
With these tools tucked into our utility belts we can work together to make your experience and our shops the very best. Utilizing Previews World and Lunar Distribution and our FOC recaps are the most helpful ways we can support each other in sharing our worlds of fandom and love of great story telling and beautiful artistry with each other and our comic’s community. So help us help you and drop us a line and let’s keep exploring the great multiverse of books out there together.