Howdy! Please pardon me if today's newsletter is a bit disjointed. The environment in which I'm typing here at the San Diego Comic-Con International has become so overwhelmingly frenetic that I am having a hard time focusing. Not only have I personally been inundated with a huge stream of well-wishers, but the overall level of "white noise" that constantly vibrates in the background of the convention center has become so loud that it starts to affect your ability to think clearly. My guess, both from walking around the building and from the sales in our booth, is that attendence at this year's show is running a good 20%-25% over last year's 90,000+ visitors. While that is certainly a cool level of growth, there comes a point where you have to wonder just how many people they can squeeze into this finite space. Ironically, Friday is usually considered a "slow" day. If tomorrow is busier than today, it should be quite a rush! As regards the convention itself, I spent some time during the middle of the day checking out some of the booths in the media area. That end of the building is far more crowded than the comics section, with gridlock occurring in some aisles. It can be quite disconcerting to suddenly realize that you can't move in any direction because of the mass of people standing around you. While that might make some people very uncomfortable, the reality of the show is that most folks seem quite happy in spite of the crowding. The media companies go all-out at this show trying to impress consumers with both existing properties and new ideas that they are trying to get off the ground. Some of the booths that the media companies have clearly cost well into six figures to set up for the four-day duration of the show, so they obviously must think that exposing their products to this vast target audience has great value. Fans, in turn, really enjoy seeing all the great displays and scarfing up the thousands of freebies being given out throughout the building. It's just one giant love-fest, where almost everyone seems to be having quite a good time. (click on image for larger view) While we're here at the convention trying to deal with having 30-40 fans in our booth non-stop, our staff in Denver is trying to cope with an unprecedented level of orders flooding in via our website. The incredible 30% Off SANDIEGO codeword I put into effect two days ago has proven to be the single most popular sales event that we've ever held during the normally slower Summer months. The good news is that we're coping with filling all of these orders quite well, and that the SANDIEGO codeword sale will continue through next Tuesday morning for those of you who have yet to take advantage of this great offer. Please don't forget to place your order before the Tuesday deadline, however, as this is one sale that I simply cannot extend. When you consider that the SANDIEGO codeword allows you to multiply discounts to the point where almost all of the comics available on our website are available to you at prices 65%-86% off of list price, it's somewhat amazing that I can even go that far. That having been said, I genuinely want all of you who were not able to come to this year's show to be able to enjoy the same great deals on back issues as those who are actually here, so I'm going to keep the sale running for you through Tuesday morning. After that point, however, I have to return some sense of reality back to our pricing, or I'll have a heck of a time restocking all of the books we're blowing out at such wonderfully low prices... In other news from the convention, we finally received our first shipment of Rich Koslowski's THE KING this morning. This new graphic novel from the Harvey Award-nominated creator of the THREE FINGERS GRAPHIC NOVEL and the hilariously funny THE 3 GEEKS comics, deals with those nether days at the end of the life of Elvis Presley. We had a bit of a tempest in a teapot when the books first arrived, as the printer (in their inifite wisdom...) failed to include the black ink on several of the pages near the end of the story. Rich's first reaction was that he wanted to reject the entire print run, and to not put the copies of THE KING, which were specially shipped in by air, on sale at all. (click on image for larger view andn ordering) In the end, however, I was able to talk him out of such a rash decision. You see, dropping the black plate from those particular pages leaves them with very cool blue plate effect (the entire novel is created with only those two colors). While that wasn't Rich's original creative vision, it actually looks quite innovative. In fact, while I was typing the previous line of this column a young couple came up and grabbed two copies off of the stack next to me! I showed them the blue plates, and they also thought they were great! That creates a real dilema for us, however, as the order has already gone into the printer to reprint the blue pages in the balance of the print run of THE KING. They will then hand strip out the blue line pages in all the books remaining at the printer, and replace them with the specified black and blue originals. That means that the 400 copies of blue line edition of THE KING for sale here at the convention will be the only ones allowed to exist. So, which edition do we ship to those of you who've ordered THE KING online? My general thought is that I'd rather ship the limited blue line edition to everyone next week, rather than waiting a month for them to "fix" the standard edition. But I don't want to make such a judgement on my own. If you have an order in with us for THE KING, please let us know if you'd rather have a copy of the limited edition or wait for the regular edition. In both instances, the books will be autographed by Rich Koslowski. It's your call... That's it from me for today. I asked Pam to try and get some pictures of some of the young women running around the convention today who personify the avante-garde fashion sense that I described in yesterday's column. She wasn't able to spend too much time searching, as we've had her chained to the cash register all day. But during the one brief moment that we let her loose, she was able to snap some quick, representive images. Tomorrow will be really great for pictures, as Saturday is the day that the costume folks go crazy! We should have a huge number of pictures for you in tomorrow's newsletter. (click on image for larger view) Happy collecting! Chuck Rozanski, President - Mile High Comics, Inc. Advance Previews of next weeks comics from Marvel and DC Friday Pictures Fashion of the Convention A Fashion of the Convention B Fashion of the Convention C Fashion of the Convention D Line outside the convention at 10:30am. Sean helps out at the register. Fashion of the Convention E Fashion of the Convention F Fashion of the Convention G Fashion of the Convention H