Today@Challengers

Today @ Challengers… Our bestest pal CULLEN BUNN posted this amazing SIXTH GUN commission by our other bestest pal BRIAN HURTT and it is SO VERY GORGEOUS. *drool*

cullenbunn:

Awesome SIXTH GUN commission by Brian Hurtt.

Today @ Challengers… This is what it looks like every week when we clean out our customer Hold Box. Every week this much merchandise is abandoned by the very people that asked for it in the first place. And this is not subscription member merchandise, either. That would be a whole different… larger… pile.

Today @ Challengers… SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!

C2E2 and Free Comic Book Day may be over, but Challengers has one more event to make your spring overloaded with comics: a special ONE DAY SALE on Saturday, May 11th!

For one day only, we’ll have a special selection of graphic novels at 25% off. And not a couple old books, either. Hundreds of copies of Walking Dead, Fables, Sixth Gun, Peter Panzerfaust, Superman, Batman, X-Men, Iron Man, Hulk, Green Lantern, Locke & Key and much more.

Sale starts at 11am Saturday, May 11th, and ends at 5pm the same day. First come, first served. We won’t be setting books aside ahead of time, and we won’t hold books for purchase on a later date.

25% off on some of the best books we’ve got for one day only! We know you can fit a few more comics into your spring!

Today @ Challengers… Elio was amazing as Storm, in a costume he made JUST FOR US! And Mike’s Ultimate Spider-Man (Miles Morales; not pictured) was the highlight of all the kids’ day! THANK YOU BOTH, so very much. Find out more at: MikeAndElio.com.

mikeandelio:

Elio as Storm for the Free Comic Book Day. We were working for a comic book store called Challengers Comics. This costume was made to wear only for this day. So…yup Exclusive lol.

Today @ Challengers… We are happy to present some great new books we got direct from their creators… Jason Brubaker’s REMIND vol. 2 and the first 2 issues of AW YEAH COMICS by Art Baltazar, Franco, Denver Brubaker and plenty more! And… all of the books are signed by the talented folks involved. Happy reading to us all!

Today @ Challengers… It’s a great day for bookplate fans! This week alone saw the release of 2 brand new EX LIBRIS CHALLENGERS editions, both inexpensive hardcovers! MIND MGMT by MATT KINDT and GOD HATES ASTRONAUTS by RYAN BROWNE.

EX LIBRIS CHALLENGERS is the name of our bookplate program, and what that means is you get a limited, signed and numbered print for buying the book. Each print is signed by the book’s creator and limited to only 200 copies. And they come free with the book. Neat, right? Thanks. We thought so.

Today at Challengers… we got in our new Ex Libris Challengers bookplate! Beautifully designed by Matt Kindt for MIND MGMT Volume 1: The Manager, this full color 5.5”x8.5” print is signed by Matt (in silver!) and limited to 200. It’ll be included free with all MIND MGMT Volume 1 purchases while supplies last, only at Challengers. In-store sales start this Wednesday, April 10th. Online sales at ChallengersComics.com start April 17th.

Special thanks to Matt Kindt for totally, completely killing it on this print. No, Matt, you rock.

Today at Challengers, it’s the release day for Lucy Knisley’s RELISH: MY LIFE IN THE KITCHEN… but only because we got it from a non-Diamond distributor. See, because RELISH is being published by First Second, we could get it directly through MacMillan (their parent company/imprint/whatever) for sale on the book’s actual release day of April 2nd. If we’d only ordered it through Diamond, we wouldn’t get it until April 9th and we couldn’t sell it until April 10th. And this is from the largest comic distributor in the U.S.!

tl;dr We have RELISH and you can buy it from us today. And you can get it signed by Lucy on April 10th during her event!

Today @ Challengers… We got some pretty great stuff in the mail! LUCY KNISLEY’s artwork for her upcoming one-night-only RELISH Art Show!

We don’t want to clutter up this post w/ too much text, so we’ll leave the details for that event here: LUCY KNISLEY RELISH PARTY! Just look at the pretty artwork above.

Today at Challengers… we’re getting ready for tomorrow’s release of our newest Ex Libris Challengers book: THE MASSIVE Volume 1 by Brian Wood, Garry Brown, Kristian Donaldson and Dave Stewart. Similar to other Ex Libris Challengers books, our copies of THE MASSIVE will include an exclusive free, limited to 200 bookplate signed by writer Brian Wood and artist Garry Brown. These go on sale ONLY at Challengers starting Wednesday, March 20th.

Harlem Shake - Comic Shop Style

Today @ Challengers… We proudly unveil our—wait, “proudly”? THAT’S the word we’re going to use? I think someone doesn’t know what that means…

Uh, anyway, here is yet another in a long line of mock-able occurrences, from your pals at Challengers. 

http://youtu.be/ufH0b83RY1M

Harlem Shake video performed by Challengers Comics employees and customers. 

Thank you, George, Parker, Ashly, Nicole, Paul, Molly and Lizzy.
Recorded Sunday, March 10, 2013.
(Totally Ashly’s idea…)

Challengers Comics + Conversation
1845 N Western Ave • Chicago, IL 60647
773.278.0155
ChallengersComics.com

Today @ Challengers… The I LOVE YOU BUT I’VE CHOSEN COMICS t-shirts are in! If you earned one during our sale of the same name, one is here waiting for you! If you are a club member at Challengers, that means it’s already in your club box for you. Everyone else, we’ll be calling. 

Thanks again to the very talented Sean Dove for crafting this year’s design. Check out his website here: http://andthankyouforflying.com/

Today at Challengers… we got this awesome gift from Dave Roman! Dave’s got a new volume of Astronaut Academy, Re-Entry, due out from First Second on May 15th, and he sent us this signed (and personalized!) cover ‘cause he knows what huge fans we are. Look at that golden goodness up there! We should really do something the next time Dave and Raina are in town…

Hint!

Today @ Challengers… We got in our shipments of CHRISTINA HENRY’s new book, BLACK CITY (as well as restock of her previous works). It is volume 5 in the BLACK WINGS series and Christina will be here one week from tonight for a Q&A and Book Signing! We are lucky enough to have had Christina here once before and she is a delight. Don’t take our word for it; come find out for yourself.

Former Agent of death Madeline Black may have been stripped of her wings—but she hasn’t lost her purpose… 

When Maddy finally killed her father, Azazel, she thought his depraved experiment died with him. But now Chicago has been infested with vampires immune to the effects of the sun, and the bloodbath is worse than she could have ever imagined. While the Agency refuses to interfere with other supernatural courts, Maddy is determined to do everything within her power to save her city—wings or no wings.

But when the leader of the vampires requests that she turn herself in or risk more deaths, Maddy becomes a target for the very people she’s trying to save. Left with no other choice, she turns to Lucifer, the one creature who has the power to help her. But her grandfather’s aid has always come at a price…

For more about Christina Henry, visit her website: http://www.christinahenry.net/

Man, okay, LOOK.

Yesterday, we posted our decision to give 100% of our profits off Orson Scott Card’s issues of Adventures of Superman to the Human Rights Campaign. This was our decision based on Card’s viewpoints, with which we highly disagree, as well as our desire to take something that could profit a bigot and allow it to fund a worthwhile cause.

So, naturally, shortly after we made our post, we had folks who disagreed with us. They used the same two arguments that ALWAYS get used on the Internet when someone acts according to their conscience: “You have to have boycotted (or donated, in our case) everything he’s done or you’re a hypocrite” and “You’ll have to boycott (or donate) everything ever by everyone” aka The Slippery Slope Argument. We’d like to respond to both those arguments here.

1) Why start with this book? Did you carry his other books? Isn’t it hypocritical to start with this Superman one?

We’ll plead ignorance on this one. We didn’t know that Card was a board member for an organization that opposed same-sex marriage back when his other comics were released. Knowing that now? We’ve decided to use his book to fund an opposing agenda. Had we known then, when we were carrying Ultimate Iron Man or Red Prophet or the Ender books? We’d have made the same decision as we have today, we’d like to think. Either way, it’s moot, as we don’t regularly stock those older graphic novels any longer, due to low sales. Most likely we won’t be restocking them, but in case we need to by a customer’s request, we’ll donate those profits as well.

2) If you disagree with Card’s politics, you’ll have to do the same thing for everyone else you disagree with. What about (slightly offensive artist) or (outspoken writer)? You’ll have to donate whatever money you make off of them, or you’re a hypocrite.

Oh, Internet, where the world is only 1s and 0s, yes and no, Nothing Is Good Enough or Do As Thou Wilt. Come on. We are people, and we made this decision as people. We are not trying to win a Flawless Victory over the Internet, nor are we trying to pass a bulletproof piece of legislation. This ONE GUY behaved PUBLICLY in a way we were unable to support as retailers without trying to take his homophobic lemons and make equality lemonade. We do not intend to run through the CV or Facebook page or Twitter feed or Google search history or goddamn trashcan of every contributor of everything we carry at Challengers. But, man, that doesn’t mean that if it comes to our attention that a writer of a book PUBLICLY serves on the board of an organization we think is wrong, that we can’t say, “This thing we need to do something about.” If someone else does something publicly? We may make the same decision. If someone privately does something, or is rumored to have done something privately? We may not.

We know that, with the Internet, it’s compelling to use ever more constricting parameters of hypothetical situations to expose the opposing side as too zealous, too apathetic, or (amazingly) both. We think, in the real world, we can all agree that life is a series of decisions, not a carved-in-stone credo that must be defended at all costs. This time, with Orson Scott Card on Adventures of Superman, we decided that we wanted to take our profits from his book and give them to the Human Rights Campaign, to offset the money Card stood to make, and a little more besides. This is A decision we made today. We may make others like it in the future, we may not. Let’s all keep an open mind.