Mint Condition Copy of The Helm Available for $1.5 Million

That's right. And what's more, I have several mint condition copies of The Helm available at this astonishingly good price so that anyone with $1.5 million can buy their own. You see, The Helm is not just for the elite few, it is a comic book for regular folks--especially those who happen to have $1.5 million to spend on a single graphic novel.

Now, I know what you're thinking. $1.5 million? Isn't that a little...cheap? Yes, you're right. If I go by the popular pricing model, I'm undervaluing mint condition copies of The Helm by nearly $223.5 million. So, what am I thinking? Yes, I know that Action Comics #1 originally sold for only ten cents and it just went at auction for $1.5 million, whereas The Helm has a list price of $14.95--that's nearly 150 times more than Action Comics #1. I know that means that The Helm should sell for almost $225 million--it's just simple math. Even a rat could figure that out. Well, a genetically modified rat with an enlarged brain capable of conceptualizing the idea of math and then doing simple calculations like multiplication. But, and this is important to me, I want The Helm to remain a graphic novel for the masses. If I restrict the book only to people who can afford to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for it, I'll be limited to a pretty small audience. Sure, I'd only need to sell four or five copies a year to maintain my modest lifestyle, but I'd miss the satisfaction of knowing the book was being read not just by a handful of chortling billionaires but by dozens of other, less massively wealthy (but still rich) people.

Also, I'd have to live with the serious possibility that people who could afford to pay $225 million for a copy wouldn't actually read it, but would probably put it in a vault or something so as to protect their investment. I didn't write The Helm so that it could languish in Bill Gate's or Phil Knight's comics vault (no offense Bill or Phil--having been in both your comics vaults, I understand and respect what you are doing.) I wrote The Helm so that fantastically wealthy teenagers could delight in its pages. So that ostentatiously rich 40-year-old males with great computer but poor social skills could thrill to the adventures of Mathew Blurdy. I wrote The Helm so that people with the modest sum of $1.5 million dollars to spend on a single comic book could enjoy a full graphic novel just like people with hundreds of times that much money.

And so, as a matter of principle, I won't accept a penny over $1.5 million for a mint condition copy of The Helm. Unless it is autographed.

PLA Signing

Just wanted to say thanks to all the folks who stopped by the Dark Horse booth at the Public Library Association show at the Oregon Convention Center for The Helm signing. It was great meeting you all! And thanks again to YALSA for naming The Helm one of the top ten Great Graphic Novels for Teens of 2010.

Hair, the PLA and Some Musings

So, after viewing my glorious Google Analytics results, I see that the couple of posts that I've done about hair continue to be the most viewed posts on this blog. Which is rewarding because I only wrote those posts after reading an article that said that blogs about hair were the most commonly searched and read items on the internet.

This suggests that if I want any news to get read in the Helm blog that I should make sure to include some prominent reference to hair in it. Which is not what I'm doing now, although it is what I am doing now.

In non-hair related news, it looks like I will be doing a signing at the PLA (Public Library Association) convention in Portland later this month! I love those Library Association people. Librarians I guess. Ever since the YALSA people put The Helm on their Top Ten Great Graphic Novels for Teens list, sales have been up and lots of new people have been visiting the Website. So, here's a shout out to all of the Helm reading Librarians out there! THANKS! And, WAY TO GO!

One small thing. When Dark Horse asked me to do a signing at the PLA show, I thought for a second they were talking about the PLA of the PLO. Of course, the Palestine Liberation Organization is not connected to the Public Library Association as far as I'm aware except for by the P and the L. But, since the PLO was founded the year I was born, and since the PLA is the military wing of the PLO, you can see why I was concerned. Anyway, it got me thinking that it might be cool if there was a Public Library Army that served as the militant wing of the Public Library. They could make sure overdue book fines are paid on time or really throw down on folks who don't read enough books. Or attack people who bend down the corners of pages to mark where they are in books. That's defacing literature.

Another small concern--while the PLA stands for the Public Library Association (a division of the American Library Association), there is also a PLA that stands for the Punjab Library Association. I'd hate to have anyone confuse the two. That's the trouble with those three letters. They're really popular for organization names. Not only do we have the Palestine Liberation Army and the Punjab Library Association to worry about, there's also the Party of Labor of Albania (which really ought to be the PoLoA) as well as the Port of London Authority, the Phone Losers of America and the Pre-school Learning Alliance. And I'm not even getting into the computer science Principle of Least Astonishment (which really ought to be PoLA).

But, I digress. Or, at least I would be digressing if this entry actually had a point from which I could veer. But it doesn't, so technically, I don't.