Someone asked, so we're going to answer about why there wasn't a mid-month shipment for bi-weekly members of the comic service. It's really very simple:

Both Christmas and New Years days fell out this season on Fridays. Logistically that creates a big headache from the standpoint of getting books to their destinations, because it means long weekend delays, extra holiday days, and a whole mess of other slowdowns. Because of this everyone got together and collectively decided that it would be better to engineer a "skip week" for the last week of December. OK, nothing too complicated there, right?

So for the purposes of retail accounts, a whole two books were released that week: Blackest Night #6 and one of the versions of Fall Of The Hulks....I think it was a variant version of Alpha or something like that...whatever.

Normally that week would have contained the current issue of Previews. But since everything was put off for the skip week, that issue of Previews (currently for March releases) did not arrive until the first week of January, which triggered a full monthly shipping for everyone. Still with us? Good.

It would not have made sense to do a bi-weekly shipment on the second week of the month (the normal schedule) because only one more week of books would have arrived after the monthly shipment. So it was decided to wait for the third week. But then it became obvious that the next Previews would ship the last week of the month, again triggering a full monthly shipping. Therefore, it would have made no sense to do the bi-weekly that week either followed by a single week's worth of books with Previews, and thus everyone is getting the full monthly shipping treatment.

The result is that we skipped a bi-weekly for everyone, but also saved everyone the shipping charges, and the schedule will return to normal for February.

And you guys thought that running a comic service was easy? Sheesh!

The big issue before we went any further was the anomaly which we noticed on some computers when accessing the home page. Namely, the Categories section would sometimes improperly load, such that the categories themselves were invisible, or at least messed up a lot. That issue has been addressed, and the problem seems to have been resolved. However, if you're having trouble with it on your machine, please let us know. Include the type of machine, the browser and the operating system with version numbers if you can. We'll appreciate it. Reply to this blog entry for fastest action. Thanks.

Just in case you didn't know, we have the newest solicitations already up and running. Had them over a week ago in fact. We'll be putting them through even earlier each time now., We did not change the featured items this month because of all the other involvements with e-commerce updating. Also, getting used to the new setup ,in general. Just thought you would like to know...

E-commerce working again. We've added a "search in progress" page when you search from the home page or any site page, as opposed to searching from the e-commerce dialogue itself under the frame. When we switch to the new system, the searches will be easier to track. Since some of them take a while right now, the new page is good because it gives you reassurance that your search is actually happening.....

Hi. The e-commerce side of things will be down for a day or two starting today (Jan. 2 and going likely until Tuesday, Jan. 5. We're still working on the new aspects and the old aspects are still up there, but the maintenance necessitates the down time. Our apologies for this. Meantime, send want lists and stuff and we'll fix you up that way. Happy New Year to all!