Late titles

I received my shipment from Westfield today and, as has been the case for the past several months, several titles were not included because they had not arrived at the retailer in time for shipment.

Now, Westfield orders are placed three months in advance and orders are shipped the month _following_ solicitation. So the titles I received today were titles available in comic shops in September, many of them during the early weeks of September.

It's never bothered me to wait a little longer to pick up titles. Westfield has always been an excellent service and has been tops in customer relations and I have a hard time believing that the fault lies with the subscription service.

Most of the late books have been Marvel comics. This month, one DC title was late. Most dissapointing was that I did not receive a somewhat expensive New X-Men hardcover collection slated to arrive with this months order.

Anyway, the point of all of this, other than venting a bit

I haven't noticed any particularly obvious lateness in any of the half dozen or so Marvel titles I collect, at least not in the last few months. However, with respect to trade paperpacks and hardcovers, things have been somewhat more spotty.

In order to check whether the problem is with Marvel or with Westfield, what I would do is check the recent Diamond shipping lists to see what has actually come out. Here's the URL : http://www.diamondcomics.com/shipping.asp

Besides giving lists for this week and next, they have an archive of lists going all the way back to 1998. Looking at some of the recent lists, it looks like the last X-Men related hardcover that was shipped was the Ultimate X-Men, vol. 1, which came out Aug. 7.