This one is from a September 27, 1984 letter to my brother Bruce:
"As you may know, Don was here for a two and a half day visit this past weekend, which was a lot of fun. One thing that he was amazed at was the amount of favorable reaction to our TMNT book from both the comics press and the comics-buying public. I showed him all the reviews and a bunch of the niftier letters that we have gotten. He really thinks that we have a potential goldmine on our hands, and we should act quickly to take advantage of all this initial success.
I tend to agree… in fact, this past week I've gotten calls and letters from four different distributors asking about the reprint of#1 and the expected printing of #2. One of them, Seagate Distributors, we haven't even sent any material to! They have just been getting a lot of requests for the book from their dealers, and would have ordered 1000 copies of #1 right away if we had them. Westfield Comics wanted 500 #1's, Bud Plant wants 1000 #1's, and Capital wanted about another 1000. Seagate wants a first order of 2500 #2's, and Westfield wants 800 #2's, and I'm pretty sure that Bud Plant will want at least 1000 for his first order of #2. Yow!!! We have got to get this book out soon."
[I have to give my brother Don credit for having some significant foresight here.
I wonder how many of the distributors mentioned in this letter are still in business? -- PL]
Westfield Comics still exists and has a couple of brick-and-mortar stores here in Madison, Wisconsin. The guys there are wizards at finding me any book I want, which maybe is part of how they've stayed in business so long.
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