What is this site?

Heavy Ink is a store selling physical hold-in-your-hand comics, in all forms: comic books, graphic novels, manga, and more.

...but it's more than that: we also have customer home pages, quizzes, friend lists, and a lot more features normally featured in social networking sites. Buy the comic books, and feel free to ignore the social side. Or use the social side, and buy your comic books elsewhere. Or use all our features. No matter what you do, have a good time!

How does it work?

On the shopping side: add items to your basket, and then check out. When you create your account, you can decide if you want to enable auto-checkout for future transactions, which makes the process even easier.

On the social side: as soon as you register, you've got an account. You can express your opinion of reviews, you can customize your home page, you can surf around to other people's home pages and leave comments, or invite them as friends, or just see what their favorite comics are. It's fun, and free!

Who runs this site?

So glad you asked! Read more about about us.

When do you charge my credit card?

When your items ship. Not before.

If I order something, and change my mind, can I cancel the order?

Many comic book stores lock you in to orders. At HeavyInk, you can cancel an order at any time, right up to the moment it ships.

Are all comics in stock?

We do a really good job of knowing what's in stock, what's back-ordered, and what's out of stock, and we indicate this on the website. If something is sold out, we won't let you attempt to buy it. We do list items as soon as we know that they'll be published...which means that we often list items a month or two before they're in stock. We offer these items for sale, and let you check out with them, but we don't charge your credit card until they ship.

How does checkout work? How does auto-checkout work?

The first time you shop, you add items to your shopping cart, and then you check out. At that point, you can turn enable auto-checkout for future orders. If you do enable auto-checkout, in the future, there's no need to go through the checkout process - just click "buy", and we'll do the checkout for you, behind the scenes. You can always turn auto-checkout on or off via your account settings page.

Do you sell comics from self-published artist / small presses / independent publishers ?

We want to! If you're a self-published artist, or a representative of a small press, please contact us.

Do you sell used comics?

Not yet.

Do you buy used comics?

Not yet.

Do you have digital / online comics?

No.

Do you sell DVDs, toys, collectible cards, etc. ?

Not yet, although we plan to expand our selection.

What is a subscription?

A subscription is just a convenient way to get all of the issues of a given title. Unlike magazine subscriptions, where you have to pay up front, with HeavyInk subscriptions, we only charge you when each issue ships.

What can I subscribe to?

Most comic book stores just let you subscribe to comic books. At HeavyInk, you can subscribe to comic books, graphic novels, or manga.

How do I start a subscription / how do subscriptions work?

If you add a subscription to your basket, or buy it with auto-checkout, you pay nothing up front...until the first issue is mailed. Only at that point are you charged. You can add or drop subscriptions at any time. You can also specify what issue you want a subscription to start with

What options do I have on a subscription / how do I manage my subscription ?

Once you've subscribed to a title, you can manage it via your subscriptions page.

When you start a subscription at HeavyInk, you can select which issue to start it with. You might want to start immediately. You might want to catch up with a few past issues. You might have a few issues still coming to you on a subscription somewhere else, and want to delay your HeavyInk subscription for an issue or two.

You can also select whether you want to get all cover variants or not. For example, if you're subscribed to Ex Machina, and it's usually published with just a single cover per issue, but issue #100 comes out with three different covers, do you want us to send you three copies (one of each), or should we send pick an issue with a random cover and send that?

You can change the number of copies - maybe you want two copies of every issue of Ex Machina - one to read, and share, and another to collect. Just change the number of issues. (A quick note on the interaction of copies and cover variants: if you specify that you want all cover variants, and you also specify that you want, say, two copies every issue, then when a month hits where there are three cover variants, we'll send you three copies: one with cover A, one with cover B, and one with a random cover.

You can, of course, cancel a subscription at any time, with no penalty...but if you're just taking a break for a while, we also make it easy for you to put a subscription on hold. There's no obligation when putting a subscription at hold - you can resume, or you can cancel at any time.

How much is shipping?

Shipping is free to US addresses, on every order!

What shipping upgrades are available?

If you want to upgrade from Free Shipping (the somewhat slow USPS media mail), we also offer UPS. UPS costs just $3.99 per shipment, and gives quicker delivery, insurance, delivery to Canada, and the ability to track your packages.

When do my items ship?

If you use Free Shipping, we ship your items as soon as they're in stock...but occasionally we'll hold on to one item for a day or two to batch it up with another item and put them in the same shipment.

If you upgrade to UPS, you get to pick how many shipments you want: just one, to minimize cost, or multiple, to get you your items as soon as possible. We let you specify these details.

How do I specify which shipping option I want?

At checkout you get to specify. We also keep your shipping preferences on file, to make the checkout process speedier. You can change your preferences via your account settings page.

Do you ship to Puerto Rico / APO / FPO addresses?

Yes!

Do you ship outside of the US?

At this point, we ship to the US and Canada. Eventually, we hope to ship world-wide.

How long does shipping take?

When an item is in stock, orders placed by 8am EST ship the same day. In-stock items in orders placed after 8am ship the next weekday morning. Orders ship from Massachusetts.

Free Shipping (via the USPS) usually takes 2-9 business days, but may take longer.

Premium Shipping (UPS Ground) usually 2-3 days, guaranteed 5 days or less.

Can you tell me the tracking number for my order?

On Free Shipping, the Post Office doesn't use tracking numbers, so we can not give tracking numbers to you. Sorry. If you want tracking numbers, we recommend Premium Shipping.

All packages sent via Premium Shipping have tracking numbers. We email tracking numbers to you and display them in your "shipments" page on the website.

Why don't you ship to my country? Can't you make an exception?

In order to ship you comics, we need to

(a) understand the customs fees, workarounds, and waiting periods

(b) understand the shipping fees

(c) have legal recourse in the event of a loss of shipment.

(d) understand any legal restraints on content (Might certain words be considered obscene in some areas?)

(e) instruct our staff on different shipping procedures

To justify the research and work for each country, we have to expect a very large volume of business.

To date, we have only decided to ship to a just the US and Canada. In the future, we hope to ship to more countries.

Are you going to sell my email address to spammers?

We will never sell, trade, rent, share, disclose or make available personal information, including information identifying which merchandise you have ordered, to anyone without first receiving your permission.

How do I unsubscribe from emails?

Every email we send you should have an unsubscribe link at the bottom. Click that link. You can also manage your email preferences on your email preferences page.

I'm interested in the social networking feature on your site. What information about me is displayed if I use that feature?

HeavyInk.com offers an OPTIONAL social networking feature that allows people to create and maintain personal pages, and to link these pages to those of friends. Others, including non-customers, can view these personal pages, read and write comments, view and upload pictures, etc. To enrich these personal pages, we display some personal information which allows people to identify each other, and view their reading and buying habits. You can change your profile information at any time and/or remove or hide your personal page entirely.

If you choose to have a personal page at HeavyInk, displayed information will include nickname, uploaded photos, quiz results, recently purchased items, subscriptions, and list of friends.

If you choose not to have a personal page at HeavyInk, none of this information will be displayed, except in aggregate (e.g. "items recently purchased at this website", etc.).

How do I turn off my personal page at HeavyInk?

Go to your preferences page, unclick the checkbox that says "display my personal page".

I have a question about privacy not covered here; what do I do?

If ever you have a question about our privacy policy, please contact us.

We use encryption to protect credit card information. We only store your credit card in an encrypted form. If someone waltzed into our data center with a platoon of troops and a lot of guns and physically stole our servers, they still wouldn't have your credit card, because the data there is encrypted with a one-way key...and the other half of the key isn't in the data center.

During the shipping process, we decrypt the credit card information on a different machine in our secure facility, make a charge, and immediately destroy the decrypted information.

Please keep in mind that security can be increased on your end too. If you choose to use the auto-checkout feature, anyone else using your computer may be able to place orders from it, for which you would be responsible. It is up to you to secure your computer against unauthorized uses and, in particular, use the "log out" link on our website before closing the browser.