Filed under: ISSUE 1

EA#1 available at Mission: Comics & Art

Here's an update to the growing list of stores carrying Electric Ant. As of last Wednesday, our neighborhood boats an awesome new comic shop, Mission: Comics & Art! I was alerted to the new place by Ryan Germick, who introduced to the proprietor Leef Smith over email.

Tooday, I stopped by and met Leef in person-- he's a cool dude, born and bred San Franciscan who lives in the Mission. The shop features a nice, clean layout similar to Comix Experience but with a little more space. We talked about the balance between indie comics, mainstream TPBs and catering to the Wednesday new comics crowd.

The store is still working out the inventory levels, but I saw a great mix of stuff I am into: new floppies from last week, DC's newsprint Wednesday Comics, Tom Gauld's THIS GIGANTIC ROBOT from Buenaventura, etc. At this time, I didn't see any manga in stock at the store, which is okay since I rely almost entirely on Kinokuniya for my English and Japanese langauge manga fixes. I bought a copy of Sweet Tooth #1, and a surreal Green Lantern tpb illustrated by the late (and great) Seth Fisher that was recommended to me.

Mission: Comics & Art also features a nice-sized gallery space in the back, with three walls for curating comics/fine art exhibits. I can think easily think of a bunch of local cartoonists (EAZ contributors, all of 'em!) who could do a great show there! Was fun talking shop with the owner, and I'm stoked to see what the next months hold. They will be open 'til 8pm Tues - Sunday, so I plan to head here after work on New Comics Day (every Wednesday) instead of Lee's in Mountain View.

On a final note, Leef is interested in stocking out a Local/minicomics/zines section there, and took on some copies of Electric Ant #1. If you are in the hood and want to recommend it to someone, they can now grab a copy there while supporting local business.

EDIT: Made some corrections from Leef

Updated Electric Ant #1 preview on the zine site

Like with MY SEAT IS YOUR BEHIND, I've put up a preview of ELECTRIC ANT #1 online. Unlike that preview, this one only lets you see 50% of the total content. It's now on the main page of the site, gonna re-work the entire site once Issue 2 is at the printers.
DOWN FOR MAINTENANCE

You can click the Buy this book link above to be supportive! Feeling stressed out right now, thanks to all the contributors for being awesome and bearing with me...

your faithful editor,
Ryan!

Village / Vanguard opens in Paris... featuring the zine!

Exciting and crazy news, the badass indie manga publisher Editions IMHO has opened a storefront in Paris called Village/Vanguard! I probably won't have the luxury of seeing the store in person any time soon, but I seriously wish I could.

Editions IMHO is an excellent publisher of manga, European comics and punk/trash genre books. In addition to zines and domestic comics, they publish french editions of manga by Suehiro Maruo, Atsushi Kaneko (Bambi, Soil), Tori Miki (they have 4+ volumes of Anywhere but Here), Hideshi Hino, Junko Mizuno, Shigeru Sugiura, and Nekojiru. DAMN, DUDES. They also have in stock an original edition of the infamous 1988 art book by Suehiro Maruo & Kazuichi Hanawa (& Yoshitoshi), 28 Atrocities in Blood. Don't buy the bullshit Creation Books junk reprint!

The most exciting news (to me)? They are the first (and only, so far!) shop selling Electric Ant #1 in Europe!!!

That's right, an awesome boutique carrying the zine-- I couldn't be happier. Above are screencaps from their site, along with images from their blog.

Spotting our zines and comics at The Beguiling

I'm going to add a new post to Same Hat specifically about The Beguiling (to add to the series of TCAF posts) this weekend. But before that, I wanted to share these photos and sightings from the shop. (I know Comic Relief lovers will be shocked by this, but I contend that The Beguiling is the best comics/manga shop in North America).

1) The shop from the outside - I think it's a converted Victorian
2) The zine and minis rack right by the counter in the front (what is that in the lower-right?)
3) Copies of Electric Ant #1!
4) They also featured Hellen's comics right in the front
5) And finally, 3 copies of Tokyo Zombie were in stock upstairs.

New Store Carrying the Zine: FORBIDDEN PLANET NYC!

Exciting news on the sales front: Austin from Forbidden Planet in New York placed an order for copies of the zine to sell at their store!

The shop is located right in Manhattan, and know for curating a rad indies section (alongside the normal mainstream and manga sections). This was the first time a shop came to me(instead of me throwing myself at them. They made the "biggest" wholesale order to date, and I'm mailing copies out today.

Tell your city folk friends: by the end of the week they can now easily snag a copy at FPNYC-- on the shelf next to Jin & Jam #1!? (that would be rad).  I have updated the STORES link accordingly.


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Electric Ant at Poopsheet Foundation... and GoodReads/Shelfari

Quick update today, Electric Ant #1 is available for sale officially at one new shop, and has been added to a few book review sits.

poop sheet

You can now purchase Electric Ant #1 from the Poopsheet Foundation, along with other zine and minicomics goods. Poopsheet is a zine distro/mail order site run by a friendly dude named Rick.

 

In addition, Same Hat reader Erik wrote to let me know that he has now added entries for Electric Ant #1 to Goodreads and Shelfari (Couldn't find the direct link for Shelfari). First review of the zine on Goodreads:

The interview with Frederick Schodt is good. Hall of Dark Lords is pretty great and the first kiss theme and related comics stories are fun. The feature comic, Love Entity, is alright. The NINlibs are hilarious (mad libs of Nine Inch Nails songs). And the photographic tour of the Department for Implementing 15 kinds of Violent Death is neato (Daoist Dongyue Temple of hell).

You can now rate and review the zine on both sites!

Saying So Long to Issue 1...

We had a rare and lovely day of NO RAIN in San Francisco today, so I did a bit of aimless wandering in my hood. Stopped by the small-but-impressive zine shop, Needles & Pens, for my fix of local goods. While making mental lists of things come back and buy, I was pleasantly surprised to see restock copies of Electric Ant #1 gracing the front display and featured shelf inside the store!

As much as I still like talking about Issue 1 (due to it's still pulling a few sales a week, and it took so frakking long to put out), it's time to stop fixating on it and commit to undertaking work in earnest on Issue 2. I've done all the preparations and ruminating, and have all the contents and desired contributors written out. Yes ma'am, it's time to finally DO THIS THING.

Yeah, so I'm not normally one for online navel-gazing, but I thought a post to you guys here would best help me TAKE THE PLUNGE and knock myself from the "planning stages." I'm gonna send invites for feature contributions out by Monday or Tuesday - check your inboxes!

PS: Planned release date for issue 2? SPX at the end of September.

Testing out coupons...

hello my peoples,

No action required, but for the next 5 days I'm testing out a coupon feature for selling Electric Ant #1 (and subsequent issues, among other things) using Google Checkout. I just created a coupon that knocks 2 BUCKS off the price of the zine (down to $6.00). Tell yr friends, if they were looking for a good excuse to pick up a copy and hadn't yet.

Good-job-blank-coupon

The coupon code to enter when buying a copy using Google Checkout is: EAZBCREW  (and is not case-sensitive). I'm gonna try to buy a copy from myself too, just to see how it works...  Thanks for indulging me!

Your faithful editor,
ryryaaaaaan

Nice post about the zine at Ada Books!

I just noticed this morning that the Ada Books blog posted a short blurb about Electric Ant #1: http://www.ada-books.com/blog.htm

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Although I haven't been, I hear from numerous folks that Ada Books is THE go-to place for indie comics, zines, and minis in Providence (near Brown and RISD).  They now are stocking some copies of the issue...  Very excited to be included at this cool shop!

View Ada Books on Google Maps