{"id":1475,"date":"2007-09-09T14:49:34","date_gmt":"2007-09-09T22:49:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lee.org\/blog\/archives\/2007\/09\/09\/heavy-ink\/"},"modified":"2007-09-09T14:49:34","modified_gmt":"2007-09-09T22:49:34","slug":"heavy-ink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/2007\/09\/09\/heavy-ink\/","title":{"rendered":"Heavy Ink"},"content":{"rendered":"

Heavy Ink<\/a> is going to be a better place to buy and trade comics than any currently exist online OR IN PERSON. Doors open in October.<\/p>\n

Trav’s “Progress Report #1” gives you a good primer:<\/p>\n

<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Posted on July 19, 2007
\nFiled Under Uncategorized<\/a> | 5 Comments<\/a><\/p>\n

I should first say that I decided to launch Heavy Ink because I am a comic book fan. A fan with some problems. The biggest problem I have is that I don\u2019t know what the good stuff is. The second problem is that it\u2019s too much of a hassle to find the good stuff, and then to get the copies, reliably, into my greedy little hands.<\/p>\n

I know a few things I like: The Watchmen, most everything by Warren Ellis, Sandman, V for Vendetta, The Walking Dead, Ex Machina, and a few others. But if I like these (half of them decades old), what else should I check out? Now, today?<\/p>\n

My local comic book store is not much help – they\u2019ve got a limited selection, and while the staff is friendly, they know more about Spiderman and The Hulk than they do about good writers, interesting plots, and obscure titles.<\/p>\n

My local comic book store is also a bit of a pain to deal with: I tell clerk #1 that I want to subscribe to a title, and he nods his head. Eight weeks later, no copies of it have arrived. I talk to clerk #2, and he confides \u201cOh, clerk #1 is always like that\u201d. I ask clerk #3 if I can get back issues, and he says that he\u2019ll check \u201cat the other store\u201d, but they back issues never arrive.<\/p>\n

Does it have to be this hard?<\/p>\n

I knew what I needed: an Amazon.com of the comic book world (easy to use, most everything is in stock, ordering is simple, and customer support – on those rare occasions that you need it – is top notch). It also needs a great recommendation engine geared towards comics, flexible shipping (weekly, if I feel like it, or monthly if I don\u2019t), and maybe some way to organize my collection and fill in the holes.<\/p>\n

Finally, this web store should offer a tool that will give total neophytes who have seen one issue of Concrete, or have read a novel by Neil Gaiman, or were loaned a book by Art Spiegelman, or whatever, some way to start pulling at that one loose thread and discover what in the world of comics suits them.<\/p>\n

I looked around at the top online stores, and I sadly realized that none of them were filling the bill.<\/p>\n

Having developed SmartFlix.com from the ground up (I started it in a spare bedroom, and mortgaged my house to make it happen) just because I wanted to watch some videos on using a metal lathe, the answer was clear to me: I should take the great team that we\u2019ve already assembled and inspire them to build my dream comic book store. We\u2019ve more than competent in running a website, and handling tons of inventory flowing in and out, offering top-notch customer support.<\/p>\n

\u2026and most of us are interested in comics as well!<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how the dream began.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re now about four weeks in, and we\u2019re hoping to go live in October.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s our status:<\/p>\n

…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Keep reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heavy Ink is going to be a better place to buy and trade comics than any currently exist online OR IN PERSON. Doors open in October. Trav’s “Progress Report #1” gives you a good primer:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,1,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-distractions","category-general","category-notable"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}