Pulling Teeth
Reading comics has generally been a pretty solitary activity for me. As a kid, most of the people I knew either weren’t into comics at all, weren’t as into comics as I was, or, you know, just plain didn’t like me.
Feeling actually connected to the rest of fandom in any sort of direct way is a relatively new thing to me, and I still don’t really have a handle on it or get as deeply involved in fandom culture as I perhaps could.
But one thing I do know about my people is that we enjoy sharing our comics purchases with each other and having them shared with us.
It’s part of the reason the categories that have the most posts on this site are about showing off the comics I’ve bought: Mail Call, The Haul, and, of course, the Pull List.
The latter, and in particular the making of posts in that category, is the focus of this post.
One thing I’ve learned is that while comic fans do very much like to see the comics that their compatriots have purchased, they very much prefer to do so without having to stop doomscrolling on their social media app of choice and actually – ugh – click on a link to an external site.
If I just took a picture of my weekly stack of comics and posted it to Bluesky, I’d probably get a lot more eyes on it than any Pull List post has ever gotten.
And I mean, I get it. It’s hard to break away from the constant scrolling, especially if, unlike me, you’re doing your scrolling on a phone rather than a proper computer.
But I think the additional content I provide is worth more than a picture or two, and, well, I want people to visit this site. I also want to keep regularly updating the site, and I don’t always have the time or energy (mostly energy) to write Unbagging or even Short Box posts every week, so the Pull List allows me to get at least one new post up every week.
That’s not to say, however, that the Pull Lists posts don’t take a surprising amount of work to produce. They do, and that’s the whole point of this self-indulgent and admittedly whiny post in which I appeal to people to consider checking out the work I put in every week to make those much-unloved Pull List posts.
The Process
After getting home from the comic shop and putting away the groceries I picked up on the way home, I take the week’s books out and organize them in reverse alphabetical order.
Sometimes, when I’ve bought more than one variant of a particular book that can be a bit tricky, as I don’t always know what the variant’s letter designation is (if it has one).
And sometimes what I think is the book’s title turns out to not be how it exists in the system. Deadpool/Batman, as an example, might seem like it falls under D, but really, the title is Marvel/DC: Batman/Deadpool, so it goes under M.
Then I launch CLZ on my phone and I scan in each book’s barcode.
Sometimes this goes awry because there may be an issue with the, er, issue and the CLZ core database.
For example, CLZ might not have a specific issue associated with the barcode, particularly if it’s a variant cover. It might know that it’s an issue of Superman, Vol. 6, but not know that it’s #29, or if it does know it’s #29, it might not know if it’s #29E or #29F.
This happens less frequently than it used to, but it does happen.
However, it’s less disastrous than the comic not being in the core database at all.
I’ll explain why both of these issues are so disruptive in a bit, but for now, let’s assume that everything scans correctly.
Once all of the books are queued, I then add them to my collection one at a time in the same reverse alphabetical order, making any corrections I for flawed assumptions about titles or variant letters during the scanning process I need to make.
Then I sync the phone app with the cloud and launch the web version of my collection on my PC and head to the Comics Unbagged dashboard to create a new post.
And this is why I go with reverse alphabetical order.
I copy the information and cover images from CLZ into Pull List post. My default sorting in CLZ is by Series and Issue. When I’m creating a Pull List post, I sort it by Added Date/Time. This puts the newest comics at the top of the list and because I entered them in reverse alphabetical order, they display in alphabetical order in CLZ.
That makes it much simpler for me to transfer the info over to the post in the correct order without having to give it too much thought.
And that’s why it’s so disruptive if I have to manually choose a specific comic because there were multiple results for a barcode. Doing so automatically adds the book to my collection rather than queuing it for me to add later. That throws my list out of order. Not the end of the world, obviously, but it interrupts the flow.
If a comic is not found at all, then I have to stop what I’m doing and manually create an entry in CLZ for the comic before I can proceed with the Pull List post, which is very time-consuming.
Once everything is all set in CLZ, I go through and save local copies of the cover images so that I can upload them here to add to the post.
Then I copy and paste over some of the information from each entry and add the uploaded cover images.
This is what an entry in CLZ looks like:
This is what a Pull List entry looks like:
As you can see, there’s a lot of stuff I leave out. I decided to focus on what I think are the most relevant aspects.
Each entry has to be copied and pasted in sections, as some things won’t copy over and it’s easier to just not copy the parts I don’t want than it is to paste them in and remove them.
Here’s what it would look like if I just copied everything and pasted it in:
As you can see, the cover image doesn’t copy over. Any images pasted in – like the (incorrect) DC logo – don’t actually get properly saved on the site and eventually they just disappear.
For company logos, I have reusable components saved on the site that I can quickly add to the post.
There are some other tweaks I frequently make once it’s all pasted over, like moving the separator (the horizontal line) below the Creators section to separate the posts from each other, and when I include all of the variant covers in one entry, I manually add the artists’ names that need to be included in the Cover Artist field.
Also, sometimes CLZ doesn’t display the names of all of the creators by default and has a “View All” option to show any that are missing. This gets copied over as a hyperlink that I delete.
Then it’s a matter of adding appropriate tags to the post – generally the names of publishers – and hitting publish.
Before it publishes, I have to add in some text to the post that will be sent out by the OpenDoor Comics Bluesky account. Typically, I just put in the title of the post and add some relevant hashtags.
(I don’t know why it doesn’t include a preview image in the post.)
Then I post a link, with more of a personalized message, to my personal Bluesky account, as I have a lot more followers than OpenDoor Comics does.
Then it’s on to posting a link to the post on the OpenDoor Comics Facebook page, which is another ordeal in and of itself.
If I just paste the link into a post, it seems like it’s created a link to the post, as it shows a preview image and some text from the post, but clicking on the link will open a Messenger chat with the OpenDoor Comics Facebook account rather than bringing you to the Pull List post.
To post a proper link, I have to go into “Meta Business Suite” and create a post, find the “Link preview” option, paste the link in, wait until it indicates that it’s actually added it – if you click Save before it does that it will not add the link – then add in whatever text I want, publish it, and then ignore the offer to buy an ad.
Then I go to my personal FB account and share the OpenDoor Comics post, because, again, I have more reach as myself than I do as OpenDoor Comics.
For all that it matters.
Nothing I do on this site is popular, but the Pull List is the feature with the lowest return on investment.
On a good day, an Unbagging or Short Box post will get from 6-10 hits from Bluesky. Maybe 2 from Facebook.
A Pull List post generally gets around 3 from Bluesky and 0 from Facebook.
I have to say, it’s disheartening. Not just because it’s a lot more work than it probably should be, but because, like I said, checking out the comics that other people bought is very much our thing.
Reading comics has always been a solitary activity for me, something I’ve only rarely gotten to share with others. Finding like-minded people online has helped me feel like I’m finally part of a community in a way that I never did growing up. It’s why I do this. Any of this. All of this.
But as I look at the lack of traffic…well, maybe I’m not part of the community after all.
And, again, I get it. We’re all captured by apps that do everything they can to keep us from clicking away and looking at anything else, and I know I’m not entitled to anyone’s time.
But it would be nice to feel like the effort I put into the Pull List posts – and to the site in general – were actually worth something.
Pulling some views for the Pull List shouldn’t feel like pulling teeth.
And while I’m not entitled to your time, I don’t feel like I’d be wasting it if you gave a little bit of it to me.
After all, you’ll get to see some comics.
Born and raised in the sparsely populated Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Jon Maki developed an enduring love for comics at an early age.
