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Yeah, that's the thing about having a central store collectors frequent. It's like a mini-version of making Walmart and Target happy. Although I really wish Ringside would exploit that to float the idea of Ringside-exclusive case packouts for the Main Event waves so I could actually get the NXT...

I think they tend to do a lot of purchase windows with made-to-order offerings. But I've never bought any of the SDCC exclusives or anything like that through them, so I'd have to ask someone who has if that's an issue.

Mattel Creations. They do occasional WWE exclusives (and sometimes make store exclusive product available, like with Target's WWE Legends Elite line). Definitely doesn't have the footprint Pulse does, I think they mostly tend to do a lot of specialty product compared to Pulse.

But that's the reason why really specific theme waves don't work. They can't afford too many people taking breaks.

Yeah, in this case something like Secret Wars or COIE might work because the variety of figures that could potentially fit under that banner is so massive. It's like WWE having a WrestleMania wave once a year - probably 85% of the wrestlers they've ever released has at least one WrestleMania...

Themed waves seem kinda disastrous for retail unless the theme is something at the level of Batman. If you pick a theme that people aren't really into, you have 4-6 figures sitting around forever instead of maybe just 1 less popular choice in a wave. And the benefit of them is...nothing...

Petition to have that amended to "just the Eagles." Carpenters had some great stuff. Also, I would be remiss in not mentioning the Raincoats' self-titled from '79.

Hah, I'm sorry! Some dudes I know from film festivals run a ton of film programming there now, if you're nearby still it's worth checking out their stuff (a lot of it's under the It Came from Schenectady name). They did a whole month of Taiwanese martial arts stuff last summer, it was incredible.

Oh man, last year I was at a concert in Albany for one of the million midwest emo revival bands I love, Real Friends or Mom Jeans or someone else, I can't even remember. And between bands, Complicated came on in the venue and I have never heard an audience sing that loudly for a song over the PA...

Oh, I should finally check that place out next time I'm at the Proctors for something. They're running Double Indemnity, Out of the Past, and Mark of the Devil next month, I'll probably end up going to at least one of those.

I mean, I get that. A song you dislike is more annoying when it's around you 24/7, and it's easier to gain some appreciation even for stuff you disliked when it goes away for a while. I think for me, I remember having to put up a lot of fronts when I was a teenager and pretend I disliked a lot...

Oh wow, was Earthworld the other? I didn't grow up around Albany, but I'm not very far and I stop into those two sometimes if I'm in town for a concert.

The large body of scholarship about the Black and gay roots of disco as well as the causes and expressions of the backlash to it, for starters. I recommend Peter Shapiro's Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco as a starting point (oh! and Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American...

That wasn't the only event like that, and we have some anecdotal accounts that a lot of people were just bringing albums by Black artists, regardless of disco status or not. Benefit of hindsight and all, but it's hard to see the anti-disco backlash as being anything but a moral panic about Black...

Truly our comedians had better luck covering the singer-songwriter boom.

The critical reevaluation of disco over the past couple of decades has been fantastic. I mean, I get that part of the problem was that everyone did a disco track or album at some point in the 70s, which meant that you had a ton of bad music by people who had no business in the genre. If someone...

...Zombie Planet in Albany?!

Straight up, I don't think we've had a decade where there wasn't amazing music happening throughout, but my God is there tons of great 70s music. I get that the worst 70s music is extraordinarily kitschy even by the standards of bad music, but the best is so good. If a decade can give you both...

Frankly I think it's not Disco enough. Don't even talk to me until you've got fish in your shoes.

I wasn't implying you did. I don't know it could have been possibly read that way. The point I'm making is that someone's popularity or sales figures don't mean anything to my personal tastes or stances. Why would they? To me, "They're popular, they sell" in response to a criticism that has...

I don't get a cut of Tom King's books and wouldn't accept it anyway. The logic of the market doesn't mean a thing to me, my tastes, or my moral foundation. His whole persona being built on being ex-CIA is as reprehensible to me as the initial Wonder Woman film marketing making sure to spotlight...

"I Hate Myself and Want to Die Comics" was my name for a fictional strawman LCS. My point was that local comic shops are not a sustainable base for book sales for an entire publishing line. Not everyone has them nearby, which was why I didn't regularly buy comics as a kid. And worse, some people...

Mattel's job isn't to grow the pie in all categories. It's just to sell toys. Like, Mattel isn't why WWE has grown over the past 15 years, WWE's talent roster and business strategies are why. Mattel has done good work in its role adjacent to and benefitting from that growth, but toys are for an...

Sometimes you just gotta fire a rocket through your propellers to give it some spin. It's like bowling. With missiles. And giant whirring blades.

They're also regaining the license on an upswing for it, which I'm sure is helping their case, and at a time when the biggest competing superhero line is in a deep rut of uninspired repetition. But they're also making their own case well with the quality of the WWE and MOTU stuff and a good...