I should probably stop blogging about pointless mundane stuff, but… I’m not going to. It makes me feel better. And nobody really has to read any of this, so I might as well.
I’ve mentioned previously my experiment with home grocery delivery from Whole Foods. Last week, I’d pretty much decided not to do it again. But I started feeling a little sick last night, and didn’t feel any better this morning. So I went ahead and put in a Whole Foods order for delivery, figuring it would be safer for everyone if I didn’t go to the grocery store this week. Things seemed to be going well with it. They made a few reasonable substitutions. And there was only one item they were out of and didn’t have a substitute for. The delivery guy showed up at 8 AM, no problem. But he only dropped off one bag, when there should have been three. So I didn’t get most of my order. To make a long story short, I got a credit from Amazon for the missing items, then went out to ShopRite and bought all the other stuff I needed, since it didn’t look like the missing bags were going to show up. So that was kind of a failure. Then, at 10:30 AM, someone randomly showed up with the other two bags. So now I have a bunch of extra stuff, and a very full refrigerator and freezer. I probably still have the credit from Amazon too, so I guess it all worked out? Either way, it was all more trouble than it was worth. (And as to feeling sick: I’m still not quite right, but I think it’s just an upset stomach.)
On a completely different topic: I’m a little worried about the comic book industry. DC just announced that they’re withdrawing their business from Diamond entirely, and using two new distributors. There’s a round-up of reaction and some analysis here. I wouldn’t want to own a comic book store right now. I’m not sure how this is all going to play out. Maybe everything will be fine? But probably not. I’m still ordering comics from Westfield, but it’s getting harder for me to justify the expense. They skipped shipping anything in April (for obvious reasons). My May shipment showed up last week, and it only had two comics in it. So the shipping cost was higher than the cost of the actual comics. I just placed my order for this month (for stuff that should ship in August) and I only had four regular books on my order. I added a couple of one-shots, so hopefully I’ll get at least six books. With delays and cancellations, I think I’ll probably be averaging 4-6 comics per month, for the rest of the year, which isn’t really enough to justify the shipping cost. So it would make sense for me to just switch to digital. But I feel like now would be a bad time to cut and run on Westfield. Their service has been great, and supporting a (relatively) small company seems like a good idea right now.
On a bright note, the 2020 Eisner Award nominees have been announced. I haven’t heard anything about how they’re going to actually hand out the awards, since SDCC is of course canceled. Maybe they’ll do a virtual awards gala, or maybe they’ll just issue a press release with the winners, and then do something to celebrate them at the 2021 con (assuming there is a 2021 con). There’s a lot of stuff on the list that I haven’t read. Some of it is stuff I’ve been wanting to read but haven’t gotten around to (like Immortal Hulk), and a lot of it is stuff I’ve never heard of. Looking at stuff I’ve actually read, there’s Death Wins a Goldfish, by Brian Rea, which I read just recently. And The Handmaid’s Tale: The Graphic Novel, which I read a few months ago. And I think that’s about it. So there’s still definitely some quality comics work getting published, and there’s still a ton of it that I haven’t read.