For those concerned about their local comics shops

[MicromanZone]

Pretty much agree with this. All of my fond comic book memories come from getting comics at the local newsstand or scoping out comics at other newsstands. Comic stores always seemed a bit alien to me. Nowadays even moreso. But honestly, print is just dead so no shuffling of business models will change that. It’s only delaying the inevitable.

Perhaps but Diamond is not only one who put the knife in the back and twisted it
back in the 70 most people got there books at the corner store and comic book shops were few and far between then the 80s hit and comic shops started poping up everywhere and you had Captail and Diamond as the main suppliers and at this time the corner shop pretty much stoped selling comics cause everyone wanted mint copies not sold in metal spining racks and thus the comic store became everyones source for books
but with the corner store no longer carring comics we lost a great deal on new comic fans
Then came the 90s and a new type of buyer unlike the buyers of old people who read the books these new buyers didn't read the books they wanted the next hot ticket item with dreams of buying Turok number one putting it direct in to mylar then after a few years selling it for the price of a new corvette
These are the yahoos who killed the comic shops cause the companies started carting to them putting tons of crap out there who made the true fans running away holding there nose

[ctc]

>back in the 70 most people got there books at the corner store and comic book shops were few and far between then the 80s hit and comic shops started poping up everywhere and you had Captail and Diamond as the main suppliers

By the late 70's you had comic shops popping up, but they weren’t like the ones now: they were places where you got stuff you couldn’t get elsewhere. Marvel, DC, Gold Key/Whitman, Charlton.... the “mainstream” stuff was readily available everywhere. Comic shops sold stuff like First, Eclipse, Warp, Fantagraphics.... books only available at specialty shops. Two things conspired to wreck this setup. The first was the indie glut of the early/mid 80's. SO MANY books were coming out each month that stores couldn’t possibly stock them all, and there was no way to guess what was going to sell ahead of time. Stores shied away from new stuff, and stuck with the old; including the “mainstream” books. Facilitated by Marvel and DC edging into the comic shop market with their “direct sales only” books. The other problem:

>the corner shop pretty much stoped selling comics cause everyone wanted mint copies not sold in metal spining racks and thus the comic store became everyones source for books

....the speculators. You’re exactly right that people wanted to get 10 copies, pre-sealed in Mylar and unfolded. ‘Cos they’re worth more that way.

>with the corner store no longer carring comics we lost a great deal on new comic fans

Yup, ‘cos non-fans were never exposed to comics. If you already liked ‘em you already went to a comic shop. If you weren’t already a fan you never saw the, so you never thought to pick them up.

>Then came the 90s and a new type of buyer unlike the buyers of old people who read the books these new buyers didn't read the books they wanted the next hot ticket item

Oh yeah! They weren’t actually NEW; but that’s the problem. The 90's were the era of “designer comics.” (As my buddy Wayne called ‘em.) Folks bought a book based on who was doing it, not the content. Content didn’t matter ‘cos nobody was reading them anyway.

>the companies started carting to them putting tons of crap out there who made the true fans running away holding there nose

Well.... think the “readers” had long since fled by then. Once it became obvious that a book with a million issue print run, that everybody bought twenty copies of and sealed away, wasn’t going to be worth anything; the speculators fled and sales tanked.

>Even the institution that is The Silver Snail appears to be in a bit of a precarious position if Diamond goes away.

That seems weird to me.... not because I doubt the truth of it, but because I remember the Snail as more than a comic shop. As a kid I used to bypass the first floor entirely and head upstairs for the games and imported model kits. The Snail (of the time, anyhoo.... I haven’t been for a while) strikes me as the sort of thing we’ll see comic shops metamorphing into: all purpose suppliers of nerd-dom.

Don C.

[thunderbolt]

^^ They are already changing into "dork stores". We drove to Orlando to go to a "new" comic store and there was way more floor space dedicated to overpriced statues and action figures than comics. The place will be gone in 6 months.

[VintageMike]

I seem to recall Marvel titles with a bar-code on the cover also had a CC designation near the cover price for Curtis Co.,(not CC for Comics Code)?



Mike, support your local comics shop. I worked for B&N in the early 1990's when their Superstores rose and gobbled up every other smaller book chain. They will gladly do the same to comic shops and that need not be. That chain is run by a family known as the Riggieo Bros. They're a bunch of bastiches! They are evil. If no-one buys comics at B&N it will be better for comics & comic shops. It won't even put a dent in B&N and they'll move on.

Curtis was Curtis distribution who I believe stocked the regular stores comics were carried in back then. It's mentioned the "Marvel Guide to collecting comics" in the early eighties.

Oh, believe me I do everything I can to the support local shop. Up until last year I had supported my local shop for many, many years.
They finally shut down. I then found a place on the way home from work and bought my books there every week. They shut down their physical store this year. Since then I've found a place about ten minutes from where I work and buy my books from that store very week. Even though most of the time the experience includes listening to the owner complain about his personal life or the store in general. So I actually don't buy my new books from BN. I was just thinking of them as as last possible physical haven for comics if the last of my LC shops ceased to exist. Right now I have at least two more I can go to and plan to if this guy closes up.

[raider5gt]

My local comic shop closed it's doors last month,i had been going there since 1995 it was quite sad but he was being left with peoples orders from Preveiws and they never came in to pick them up and pay for what they ordered,it was killing him financially,especially the rent and overheads,he did say he had been doing it for 30 years plus and wanted to enjoy what time he had left.

[UnderdogDJLSW]

If my LCS closes up, I wouldn't set a pull list anywhere else, I would just start living in the past, looking at my old paper comics and talking about how those young, crazy kids on my lawn have their newfangled digital comics.

[samurainoir]

Perhaps but Diamond is not only one who put the knife in the back and twisted it
back in the 70 most people got there books at the corner store and comic book shops were few and far between

well, the question to ask in this case, was WHO put that particular knife in the back of newsstand comics? It certainly wasn't necessarily those companies producing the comics themselves.

It's a well documented fact that comic book readership was on a huge decline throughout the seventies, and even the decades prior to that. Television certainly was a factor, as was the 50's anti comics scare campaign.

With rack space becoming more of a premium in the eighties and retailers choosing to prioritize rack space for the higher price point glossy magazines rather than comics.

Discounts were dreadful, with most ID wholesalers only offering a 30% discount rate. On a comic book with a 20 cent cover price, you earned a whopping six cents per copy for each issue sold.

As my local wholesaler once candidly pointed out to me, it cost him exactly the same labor to distribute comics as it did to distribute PLAYBOY or BETTER HOMES & GARDENS, but due to the dramatically lower cover prices on comics, the earnings were vastly less.

Tales From the Database - Mile High Comics, Chuck Rozanski

It is actually a well documented fact that the Drect Maret SAVED the medium of comics... Particularly with the ability to duck the code and recreate an adult readership which had disappeared along with the adult material of the pre-50's. The medium certainly wasn't going to expand via newspaper comics which increasingly catered to the lowest common denominator and now has been reduced to the three tiny panel gag strip. Diversity in readership and content is the key to the medium's continued health and survival... History has shown us this. Getting the kids and then keeping the kids when they grow up is equally important.

Direct market comics also took away almost all the risk that was the downfall of many comic companies. Comics were sold directly to retailers at a higher discount than newsstands and a No Returns policy. Comico was one if the companies that was the victim of their own success in the late eighties when they decided to go the newsstand route and got horribly burned by the returns, which ultimately was a major factor in their decline.

Think of digital comics as a return to the news stands... The phone and tablet is where a younger generations are consuming... And actually PAYING FOR their media. It's not our cup of tea, but we should be embracing it at least as a concept so that the medium does survive the death of print readership within two decades.

[samurainoir]

I might be wandering off topic a bit, but we should also remember that the direct market was also heavily the creation of the underground comix movement which created their own distribution and retail channels outside of news stands via head shops in the sixties and seventies. Again, catering to a young adult clientele... Albeit a counter cultural one.

[samurainoir]

That card co. may have been Panini? They were connected to Marvel and Marvel somehow was connected of Doctor Who Monthly in the `80's in the UK. Today I think Doctor Who Magazine carries the imprint Panini Publishing.
.

A quick google reveals that the card company was Fleer. I'm not sure if it survived the bankruptcy and restructuring. The most fascinating part of the battle for Marvel is the fact that once the Toy Biz faction got controlling interest in the company, they eventually put their baby... Toy Biz, to the knife in favor of turning themselves into a licensing company ( marvel characters), and movie studio.

Panini has at different times been the foreign licensor of Marvel and DC comics in various overseas territories.

[aquatroy]

If my LCS went **** up I would move to one of the mail order services.

[johnnystorm]

I expect to see my local shop gone next year. It's tough anymore, the buyer bae keeps shrinking and I suspect that Magic The Gathering is keeping things afloat.
My pull list from the Big Two keeps getting smaller...but by contrast my browse & buy of new independents has grown.
And then I attend a comic -con (Baltimore this weekend!) and see row after row of new comics for $.50 to a buck. I wonder why I pay full price at all?

[Tothiro]

we should also remember that the direct market was also heavily the creation of the underground comix movement which created their own distribution and retail channels outside of news stands via head shops in the sixties and seventies. Again, catering to a young adult clientele... Albeit a counter cultural one.

On the one hand... But you also had a lot of mom and pop drug stores/convenience store in the 70's that happened to sell comics and special interest magazines, which saw sales of everything else fade off and many eventually just sold comics. A lot of early NYC comic shops began that way.

The other problem you had early on with newstand (and still will at Barnes and Noble) is the inability to special order at all as a vendor, and just getting drop shipped whatever was bundled. Gold Key star trek, fifty sugar and spikes and a batman or a dozen... People couldn't go and get regular runs week to week. The horrible inefficiency and lack of sales tracking was what initially pushed the new distribution model, that later fed the Comix supply to indie shops.
Then of course you have that being responsible for the creation of the Graphic Novel thanks to Eisner and his A Contract With God. Mags like Heavy Metal and Spiegelman putting out Maus in Raw - that stuff pushed an envelope and introduced people like Moebius and crew to US audiences.

Problem is that culture has changed, and the LCS used to have the early indoctrination/market saturation help of the local toy or drug store.
In the 80's as a parent you could be walking out of a TRU and pick up a ten comic bundle pack as a shut-up for little Timmy. The local drug store sold close out reships on the shelf too... you don't see that anymore.

Early readers got it on the newsstand, and then graduated up to the LCS. There aren't any new readers in the same numbers coming in anymore - I mean a lot of parents would love to buy comics for their kids but they don't know what they're looking at or where to find it. Manga is daunting for parents these days because so much of it is pervy violence porn and they can't tell what from what. Worse yet they may go to pick up a 28-36 page Batman issue and look at the price tag... which is absolutely out of control for what it is. All of that hurts saturation and character familiarity with the new blood that would be coming in to support the market.
The LCS success as a niche, that siphoned sales away from the drug stores, has kind of caused their downfall as a niche. Then you have the early 90's with people waking up and realizing they were buying 17 variant covers of single issues a month and not actually getting any reading enjoyment for it - then just giving up buying comics all together.
My buddy's LCS has a boatload of back-issues... most of it isn't Cadillacs and Dinosaurs or Fish Police... he's got nice silver age, golden age, etc. The money only walks in for that infrequently though - the sellers these days are Japanese snacks and Sonic the Hedgehog wallets.

I'd like to see more Walking Dead, Tiny Titans and dare I say it, another European Underground Comic invasion... but what the industry needs is younger kids getting familiar with it by availability.

[johnmiic]

It's a well documented fact that comic book readership was on a huge decline throughout the seventies, and even the decades prior to that.

John Byrne got into some trouble predicting the comics industry would go out of business in the early `80's. I have never seen the interview where he stated that.

[Tothiro]

^Yeah that's a good point. I don't myself think that "print is dead," but I do think it's been mishandled into sickly pallor.
I'd point out that comic readership in the 30's and 40's was HUGE. I don't think we'll ever see that level of readership again... but yeah, that's largely due to it being the preeminent form of entertainment then. TV took the wind out of those sails.
The days of the comic section selling the Newspaper are long gone, but the industry could still use a new business model.

It's a well documented fact that comic book readership was on a huge decline throughout the seventies, and even the decades prior to that. Television certainly was a factor, as was the 50's anti comics scare campaign.

[samurainoir]

The LCS success as a niche, that siphoned sales away from the drug stores, has kind of caused their downfall as a niche.

Yeah. It was totally the serpent eating it's own tail for the past couple of decades.

The Lite Beer analogy is used... abandoning the mass market base in the seventies in favour of courting the most ardent consumer (the guy who has a beer now and again vs the guy who will drink a six pack on a regular basis). The checkout line is potentially one impulse purchase, vs the LCS as a destination for their habits in multiples.

I've kind of got a theory I've been noodling about where this big shift corresponds to the comic industry slipping from the control of regional organized crime (newstands, the distributers and pornographers) to the big corporations (who needed to maximize profits for the fat suits above and shareholders below). Not unlike Vegas.

There were some fascinating things going on behind the scenes that shaped the Direct Market as it developed. Including anti-trust lawsuits, Marvel and DC responding to each other's terms and policies... going from one direct distributer (Phil Sueling) to many (around twenty), before shrinking again and disabling sub-distribution, ultimately pitting Diamond against Capital in a last man standing scenario.