Winston World and Other Important Info for CNJComics

Hey everyone! John D here hoping you’ve been enjoying Raf’s weekly picks.

Here’s an email about some important stuff coming up at the shop! Here we go!

First up, Winston World!

Winston World is returning to CNJComics on March 4th to the 6th!

What is Winston World? It’s really sort of an inside joke where we would piggy back on Wizard World’s social media when they first came to Cleveland, to draw people from the convention to our shop for a sale. Well, Wizard World is gone (to be replaced by Fan Expo at a later date.) but Winston World is still here! All weekend long you’ll get 50% off back issues, as well as 10% off everything else in the shop. (including supplies, which are ever so difficult to keep in stock right now.) Come on in and spend some money! Half off sales will not be as common as they were during the pandemic so be sure to make the most of the oppertunity! We’ll also have some brand new small press dollar bins out that have never been picked through before!

Second, the George Perez JLA/Avengers book.

Since the announcement of it’s release, we have been overwhelmed with requests for this very limited graphic novel. On December 7th, 2021, George Perez made a very heartfely public announcement to his fans that he was dying of stage 3 pancreatic cancer, and had from six months to a year left to live. George is responsible for so many of the comics I have loved throughout my life, much like many others I’m sure. His work for both Marvel and DC was equally important, and this led the Hero Initiative <https://www.heroinitiative.org/> to secure the rights to reprint one of his most important works, the Avengers JLA mini series that came out in 2003 as a four part prestige mini series. (No small feat as you’re basically getting Disney and Time Warner to agree to something.) One caveat though was that this printing will be limited to 7,000 copies. Doing the short math this means about 2-3 copies per comic book shop, if that. George was a founding member of the Board of Directors for the Hero Initiative, an organization dedicated to helping comic creators who may need mergency medical aid, financial support for the essentials of life, as well as being an avenue to help them back into finding paying work. Stan Lee was a fan, and donated over $100,000 to the cause in his life time.

The conclusion from those closest to George is this: “JLA/AVENGERS is solely intended as a Heroes Initiative fundraiser, and that Perez and heirs “are taken care of, and don’t need more money”

It is with this in mind that we have decided to raffle off the copies we recieve, with 100% off the money going to the Hero Initiative as per George’s wishes. The book is slated to be releasd on March 16th, and we will wait until we have the books in hand to begin the raffle. If all goes according to the shipping schedule, tickets will be available from Wednesday March 16th until Sunday March 20th. We will draw the winners at 6 pm on the 20th on Facebook Live. (you don’t have to be in the feed to win.) Tickets will be $5 each with no limit, and we prefer people come in to fill out their own ticket stub. We will not accept ticket orders over the phone from people we do not know, we would like the books to go to someone in our community. I will start this off with a $500 (ticket free) donation to the Heroes Initiative out of my own pocket. I met George when I was twelve, and that smile of his gets burned into your memory forever. We understand if people might not agree with how we are handling this, but it’s our call and it’s all about the wishes of this guy.

We’ll keep you posted about when the books come in. (and how many we got!)

Thanks for the understanding everyone. By my count “my” personal era of Avengers starts with his first issue, #141, so it’s important to me to get this right.

Lastly, more big news!

Jim Shooter will be our guest of honor at Free Comic Book Day this year!

Break out your Secret Wars comics! Jim has an incredible history at Marvel Comics, and like George, is a huge part of my love of Avengers in the 70’s and beyond.

I credit Avengers #165 as being the book that got me into comics, and Jim wrote it.

For now, all we can tell you is:

  • Jim will be doing an open signing in the shop on Saturday, May 7th from 10 am to 7 pm.
  • Everyone will get one free signature in the spirit of the event. The price for more signatures has yet to be determined.
  • There will be a VIP event the night before from 6 pm to 9 pm on Friday, May 6th. Tickets will go on sale at noon on April 1st.
  • The VIP event will have a Q and A between Jim and me, where I hopefully won’t get shredded as I did with Steranko and Claremont.

Seriously though, I’ve had dinner with Jim in the past, and he has the best stories.

Here’s a link to Jim’s Wikipedia page and bibliography so you can start digging through your back issues:

Stand by for more info!

That’s it, everyone! We’ll see you this weekend at Winston World!