CCW 3.88: LAST RANTS (or Why Some Comic Shops SUCK)!
Posted: August 18, 2010 in CCW OpEd, CCW TV, Last Rants, videoTags: Comic Books, Comic Shops, Dark Horse, DC, Elliott Serrano, IDW, Jose Melendez, Manga, Marvel, Rants, Reviews
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Tags: Comic Books, Comic Shops, Dark Horse, DC, Elliott Serrano, IDW, Jose Melendez, Manga, Marvel, Rants, Reviews
The CCW*TV Companion Blog 
I haven’t watched yet but 26 min, that’s what I’m talkin about.
I could only Imagine going to a comic store that look s like Buffalo Bills house. 🙂
Thankfully, my comic shop is great and I’ve never had a problem with them. There are 4 shops in my city. 3 are perfectly fine. Only one shop gives me a weird vibe. It might be because I’m a woman but I think that it’s due to the fact that I’m not a regular customer. The 3 or 4 times I’ve been in there I feel like I’ve invaded their private clubhouse or something. How they plan on having new customers -no idea. Super creepy vibe.
Luckily my shop is closest my house out of all the ones in the city and treats me (along with everyone else) with the utmost respect.
I used to see this kinda of stuff in the mid-90’s when the X-Men geeks would make fun of everyone that didn’t follow every obscure plot-line within the convoluted X-history. Since the big Hollywood Marvel movies (Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Iron Man, etc), the fans and comic book staffs seem more friendly and accessible to the general public.
i like my shop here in detroit. Green brain comics. it gets alot of awards and oddly people from canada
they put all the comics by alphebet. mature titles on top, (the ultra violent stuff) and kids on the other wall. with book shelves full of indie comics in the middle. trades on racks allover the place.
and in one corner, indy comics made at home by local people, usually one of a kinda stuff.
also they organize awesome. say new amazing spiderman 650 comes out. they put a cardboard title behind it, and then they put all the recnt past issues behind the new one, each seperated and labeled. it makes hunting back issues so much easier.
oh an no toys. thank god! almost all the other michigan shops are full of toys. lame places like liberty and bobs comics
Great rant guys. I guess i should give my LCS owner some props for always treating EVERY customer with respect and for keeping a clean, well lit shop! There is a pretty good mix of people, young, old, male, female, who go through there and they all seem to have a good experience. They even have a female employee who works the cash from time to time (and she’s kinda cute too 😉 ).
Now if only they would order some independent books from time to time, or at least remember to order the ones that i ask for! Still waiting on The Unwritten Vol.2… sigh. I’ll probably end up getting it from Coles (where i ended up getting the Scott Pilgrim volumes i needed) or some other shop. And when they do finally get it in, it will sit on the shelf and gather dust. Most folks ’round these parts only like readin’ ’bout them there super hero’s!
Or maybe I’ll just start ordering stuff through Dreamland 🙂
another post. we have one shop that looks like a cat ladies house. comics all over. new stuff honestly thrown on top of random boxes. movies posters and porno everywhere. weird collectables nailed to the walls for sale(damaged by nails)
and a fucking dog that shits everywhere. i went their once. gross.
sweet jeebus, that sounds like it might actually be buffalo bill’s basement.
ewwwwwwwww
vegedge, please go take pics. That sounds like something to look at!
Tell her you want to take pics and send them to friends… So they can see what “real comic shops” should look like. 🙂
Bonus points if you photograph her dog in mid-shit and throw an issue of New Avengers under his ass. I WOULD PAY YOU FOR THAT PHOTO. 😉
Sometimes there is a dog in my shop but he is nice and does not shit on things.
I pay almost over $200 a month on comic books so i expect to be respected by the guys in my comic book shop. Some times it takes more than a week for them to order an item for me and i order trades two to three times a month. I constantly send emails some times they reply sometimes i send them a second email. They have their own website which i add comics to my pull list each week and i also get a store discount for being a member. Yeah they are good guys but some times i get that feeling they might be pulling a fast one one me, I don’t go to store every week at the most i wait till the end of the month to pick up my collected comics and i do chat with the guys about whats going on in comics and movies.
The shop that I frequent is pretty cool,but when they were under different mgmt. about 17 yrs ago…I remember a guy bringing in a box of comics, around 100 or so. They gave him 5 bucks for the box. When he left… one shop guy said to the other; “hey lookit this”…he had held up an IronMan comic and stated that he could get 50 dollars for that comic alone. My issue wasn’t so much that he profited off of that guys’ naievete, but that he was gloating about it quite loudly with other customers still around.
I’ve witnessed such behavior at my shop, although it wasn’t the owner just some bad seeds he had working there.
Shouldn’t matter. The owner (or manager) hired those “bad seeds”. He is the one that the blame ultimately falls to. While I was managing the old shop that I worked at I had to personally hire every person who worked there. If something they did or said reflected poorly on the business I fired them. It’s that simple.
J.
I’ll talk to him about it.
Didn’t want to be all up in his business, but your right he hired them.
I think he would appreciate you telling him that. I know I really appreciated it when someone (a customer/mall employee) would point out something bad that happened while I wasn’t in the shop.
J.
Heh! I guess I’ll be doing it twice.
😉
“Bad seeds” in all
I think he will appreciate you giving him a heads up too Deemar… and if he DOESN’T, at least you’ll know he’s a FUCKWIT too. 😉
While the cat’s away…
No he’s a fuckwit we established that from the start.
🙂
I’d see if me and Hackslash had a friendly repor like I do with Ballsack and Heck, but I barely speak to the guy if ever.
I see no problems with Bad Seeds, or with Nick Cave for the matter.
My Lcs is pretty much a boys club, it’s dark and not very clean.
I’ve been fortunate. The shops that I’ve been in ‘roumd the Michigan area have pretty much all been fairly clean. My only recent gripe is that the shop in Ann Arbor doesn’t have the most personable people. Though I must say that I’ve only been to that shop once… so it’s possible that I caught them on a bad day.
At least you have more than one shop to visit.
I like my LCS it’s close to work and I get good discounts, but yeah my options are limited. The other shop I used to frequent closed about a year ago.
Great rant guys! Thanks for the shout out!
Elliott, I really appreciate the kind words about my Blog. I work hard on it (sometimes wrestling with a post to 4am or 5am in the morning) and even though I do swear a lot… I like to think I do it to get my points across in a straight forward, no fuss style– not because I have a limited vocabulary. 😉
My goal is to never lie… Even if the story I relate is embarrassing to me or casts me in a strange or bad light.
I am so glad you guys talked about this subject (not because you mentioned me or my Swear All You Like blog) but because I knew a rant like this would engender the EXACT kind of response you are getting.
People WANT to tell other people HOW GREAT their stores are (if they are)… Maybe even more so than they want to admit they go to a shitty shop.
What bad comic retailers don’t seem to understand is we geeks DO talk NOW. Used to be we didn’t… And if we DID complain– it was just to a close friends or family (just like Elliott’s retailer and the ridiculous “lay-away” story.)
When I was growing up, I didn’t have ONE FRIEND who was into comics. NOT ONE. I had to find all my fan friends in OTHER STATES… Through the mail, fanzines, other comic related publications, etc.
But like I wrote in my original post “Quit Spending Your Money with Assholes” http://wp.me/sZr1Y-3646 … With the dawn of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and the internet in general (and with the hundreds (thousands?) of comic comment boards and blogs out there) we NOW post all the time about comic book related matters that UPSET us… And we post a LOT about unsavory comic book retailers.
So wake up fuckers. As Urban Commando wrote above– it seems that more and more retailers are understanding the need to act right toward their customers. I think it is safe to say that some of the shit I saw comic shop owners pulling 15 years ago would probably cause so much NEGATIVE internet reaction now that the retailer could find themselves out of business within a year or two.
Thanks again guys. Everyone in the CCW Nation is welcome to come to the blog anytime. I very much appreciate your reading and posting whenever you can!
I also wrote a FOLLOW-UP to my original post called Quit Spending Your Money with Assholes Part 2 http://wp.me/pZr1Y-Yg … The second post was based on a lot of READER REACTION– folks kindly reminding me I forgot a few of the things in my original post that bad comic retailers do quite frequently.
Hey dude like I said your blog is pretty damn bad sweet.
The Church of Serrano
E sounded like a pastor at the end
More horror stories continued from Insideman’s
Like I said on Insideman’s blog I use to go to a shop where the shop didn’t have a register and the owner gave you the change out of his pocket. The shop was so dingy that they bagged all of the comics that were on the shelf. When you walked in there was a flattened cardboard box as your door mat. I could go on but that is in the past.
And that is why I am willing to drive 25 to 30 minutes depending on traffic so I don’t have to go to that shit hole ever again.
Sounds like a third world enviroment.
The place was ran and looked more like a pawn shop than a comic book shop.
Wonder how much they would pawn a Wolverine Art Appreciation Variant for? 😉
Heh, unfortunately that’s most comic shops.
I guess I am that rare bird of a comic buyer that moved back to buying my comics at a local comic store rather than mail order or buying trades at Borders. Part of the enjoyment I get from reading comics is the thrill of the hunt, actually going into a shop and wandering the racks looking for something really cool I have never seen before, running across that rare comic that sparks my interest and feeling it up in my grimy little hands like a drunk prom date. Standing in Borders at their trade comic aisle looking at all of those poor trades crammed in so tight together in order to squeeze every last inch of available space that every become a colored blur, I mean how the hell are you suppose to appreciate the hard work of the cover artist if all you can see is the spine of the book?
Searching for a comic online can be an even more sterile process, search engines online don’t try to surprise you with a cool comic that it thinks you might like, it gives you exactly what it thinks you want. Which isn’t a bad thing if you know what you want, but what if you are looking to expand your horizons a little and try a book a little outside the box of your familiar tastes?
Part of going to a LCS was also the social experience for me, as a teen growing up in a rather boring part of Michigan where if you weren’t playing some sport or working on a piece of shit car in order to become a gear head someday you were pretty much left out of the normal social circles. There wasn’t a lot of social options for a Dungeons & Dragons playing, comic book collecting nerd like me back in the day, other than a game of run for your life between classes at High School. Comic book shops were a chance to interact with like minded people with similar interests in comics and gaming, this was of course before the internet was around, so the only way to get the latest news on comics and gaming was to go to a comic shop and talk to the people who were there buying comics like you. After awhile the shop owner got to know you and you got to know the other customers who also shopped there, I would often spend a couple of hours just hanging around the store talking to people, it was all very relaxed and friendly, a perfect place for a nerd to act like himself with out fear of being stuffed in a hall locker.
Of course today the internet has made it very easy to interact with like minded people, and great sites like the Comic Culture Warrior make it very easy for people find a friendly environment to discuss all thing comic and comic culture related. Thanks to Jose, Elliott and everyone on the CCW site I finally got the motivation to start collecting comics again old school, actually heading out to a store and doing the dirty work myself.
Sadly though, things just are not the same anymore, my LCS is just fine, it has most of what I am looking for and the very kind lady running the place is helpful and friendly. But the store is very sterile, everything is lined up neatly in alphabetical order and the store itself is very well lit and clean, with elevator music playing softly in the background. Gone are the days of rifling through dusty long boxes while sitting on a creaky wooden floor, people steeping over you because the aisles were so narrow. Another thing I have noticed in my LCS is no one really speaks to one another there, with clubs and pull lists now, most people come in head right to the counter, get their comics and leave. No more small groups of kids and teens hanging around chitchatting about stuff. Actually, no kids period, I have always been use to the idea that girls didn’t hang around in comic shops or even like comics that much in general, but what I found most surprising about my LCS now is the almost total lack of kids or teenagers there buying anything. Admittedly, I tend to get to my store right at opening, before most kids are out of bed, but most of the people I seeing buying comics there are people around my age, I don’t think that bodes well for the future of comics stores in general.
I hope I don’t come across as an grumpy old man, I still enjoy going to my LCS store every week, even if it isn’t the same experience that I remember from when I was a kid, but combining my LCS trips with hanging out with everyone on the CCW site does bring a little bit of my childhood back to me in an otherwise pretty mundane world.
IM
InB4 Deemar complains you need an editor, IM. 🙂
J.
Heh…lol
Well I’ll read it this time
I like to think of it as free form writing..
Plus it gives everyone a chance to see all the crap you have to go though to make my stuff readable =)
IM
Ha!
Well you are quite the writer, speaking of which whens the new Muskrat reviews?
Ill try to get something done this week, been a little busy this week trying to arrange some medical care for my mother-in-law, not an easy task when she is on the other side of the planet with no health insurance.
Plus I think Jose will be busy this week and don’t know if he will have time to perform the proper editing on my reviews.
IM
Sorry to hear that Musky, hope everything works out
Thanks D!
I feel your pain IM. I had a friend who had to RETIRE (and she’s NOT old… she was 35) because the relapsing/remitting MS she had been suffering from since she was 20 finally took it’s toll and she had to quit her job.
Luckily, she had insurance but the BYZANTINE SHIT I had to go through to set her up properly with the government, the state, her insurance company (let’s just say they WEREN’T HAPPY she was availing herself of the benefits she was entitled to) was 1,000% crazy.
Everyone else abandoned her. I am her only friend now. She has 2 family members that both live in NYC across the country so they are little help.
It’s one thing to be alone. QUITE ANOTHER to be alone and ILL– with no one to look after you. You can’t go out by yourself. No one else comes in.
As trying as what you are doing is– it takes a special person to do it… As very few will ever even bother… Leaving it to the “caretakers” of the world to handle these messes. Unfortunately, the reality of what you are doing is that it will mostly likely get harder before it eventually becomes easy… Especially if you are just starting the process. Given time and a LOT OF EFFORT– it will eventually work out– I promise.
I’ve never written this here but I feel the single, saddest thing about the American government is the HUGE AMOUNT of PAPERWORK handicapped people are FORCED to complete to get ALL these “wonderful” BENEFITS we as a nation are SO PROUD to “offer”.
How does a person who considers putting on their clothes every day a major accomplishment fill out a TWENTY PAGE FORM and provide all the NECESSARY DOCUMENTATION to prove they’re eligible for benefits? HOW?
I’ll leave it there before I have to start looking after Deemar. 😉
There is a fellow who boards at my grandmothers house, who is a U.S. Marine veteran and hero to his country, who had to move here to Canada to get the proper medical care he requires. I forget what his exact condition is, something to do with his liver, and he is on medication for PTS. Yet, he STILL defends his country and it’s government even though they clearly don’t give a fuck about him.
Yeah, it’s tough Insideman, especially since the country my mother-in-law lives in doesn’t seem to under any obligation to help people that don’t have health insurance, and only the very rich have that. Doctors there take cash up front and unless your willing to pay, you have to supply the food and bedsheets at the hospital.
A very stressful situation to say the least..
IM
Musky your old school and the hunt is part of why I like going to the LCS.
Plus it’s nice to be around other comic geeks.
agreed, oh and great post Musky!
Thanks!
Well, it won’t surprise anyone that I thought IM’s post was a GREAT length. 🙂
I can understand going into a comic book on occasion… But as Jose and Elliott discuss in the vid, Dreamland carries almost all of the obscure titles and a ton the obscure trades and hardcovers on their website.
As you know, you can browse all you want but if the store doesn’t carry the indie stuff– you can’t buy it.
true enough, but i already spend enough time sitting in front of my computer. 🙂
But i will probably try ordering through dreamland the next time i can’t find something.
I must be spoiled then, cuz I’ve never been to a crappy comic book shop. Every store in the NYC area is top notch. I’ve never once gotten shitty service, or been bullied, or whatever. And I’m going all the way back to when I was a little boy being brought there by my parents. Moreover, I always see lots of women shopping in them.
As The Wolf said, “Move out of the sticks, gentlemen.”
If only the shops here in GA where as good as the ones in NYC.
Your in the comic Mecca!
Lucky bastitch
🙂
my comic shop pet peeve of late is the PULL LIST. i frequent 2 shops and split my pull list i get the bulk of my books from them, all my favs . and i big time comic junkie just check my whatareyougettingthisweek post so i spend some bucks.for the most part they treat me like a vip costumer and i enjoy both shops but if i ask for a book i usually dont buy they fall all over themselves to try to get me to put it on my pull list. I am not looking for a lifetime commitment i just want to check out a book i usually dont read. or they say to me thats not on your list. do i have to order all my books months in advance? i cant do an impulse buy?
every once in while ill go to another shop to find a book i missed or just change of scenery ill buy a few books and ,the guy behind the counter, whom i have never seen before ,because i may have never been there before , asks me if i want to sign up for a pull list. again i dont want a life time commitment i just want to buy the books i put on the counter.
its like browsing is becoming extinct. i understand thats shops have to play it close the vest when it comes to ordering and being stuck with excess inventory but its like the pull list is the end all and be all of comic shop buying!
on a good note earlier this year i couldnt get to the shops for over 3 months and they held all my books and gave me a big discount when i picked them up. one of the shops gave me $350 worth of books for $175 you cant beat that.
I feel your pain Kuru. I am also a slave to the pull list. as i’ve stated many times, my shop does not order much indi stuff at all, so i have to order it months in advance if i want to get it. So browsing, or checking out new stuff is virtually impossible. And i also run the risk of them selling out of a particular title that i don’t have on my list, which happens quite often. So, I have to commit to practically every book i want to read.
weird comic shop/ girl story
one of the shops i go to is run by the parents of the owner and they are “off the boat” korean
very christian like many of the korean immigrants around here. very nice but a little odd but hey who isnt
so this store is probably more of yugi store then a comic store and there is always kids in there playing yugi mostly but some magic and pokimon. last week they had to have 50 kids in the playing when i picked up my books
so back in the 90s they had a girl a regular yugi player i would say jr high age to HS and she could draw very well so the regular crew she hung with would brag about her art work and show me her sketch book, mostly anime characters but some super heroes, thats how i met her.
but the woman who ran the shop told her she couldn’t come there anymore because the whole sexual tension thing with the boys that hung there and i think the one kid who was a few years older then her that worked at them.
i remember it was a big “scandal” at the time and all the kids were whispering about it
i felt bad for her i remember thinking they kicked her out because she was a girl.
thought it was weird
oh my god…that’s terrible. poor girl
If you head over to the you tube boards for this video you will see another horror story (though not as bad as Kuru’s story above but bad none the less) from one of our female viewers.
J.
where at, i couldnt find it?
Double click on the vid above.
J.
That’s pretty messed up.
That is just wrong.
CBR had a guest columnist that did a piece about how she didnt like going to comic shops and what they should do to make them more gal friendly. some her suggestion sounded crazy to me that they would completely ignore the bulk of the customer base in order to sell some indie books that could never dream of selling in the numbers books from the big 2 sell.
one that cracked me up she suggested they put free chocolate on the counter because women like to nibble while they browse or something like that.
it was probably back in may it was up on cbr
I go to a online mail order place to get my comics shipped to my home one or twice a month. I get 99.9% sanctification from them. On a rare occasion, they have to back order something for me & I get in my next shipment. I get a large discount & no hassles. It truly is the nest of both worlds. If I miss out on something I get the tpb/HC on something that E & J suggest reading (example Doomwar, Monster manga, JLA The Nail, Beasts of Burden).
Matthew
EDIT:
best of both worlds.
i dont think i can ever do that i like going and hunting down my books
I generally know what I like. Unless there is big buzz about something like The Walking Dead HCs from three years ago. I bought the 4 Walking Dead HCs then the 9th tpb & now I am on monthly issue bandwagon. I am a big DC Nation fan, then indie titles & just a handful of titles from Marvel. I read plenty of tpbs/HCs and space out reading my issues over the month.
I generally avoid spoiler comic websites & join a few select comic forums that have a good no spoiler policy. So I can talk about my comics when I read them.
Matthew
A question about everyone getting it through one distributor…couldn’t Comic Shop A get a lot of product and then sell it to Comic Shop B. The reason I wondered about this is how on Free Comic Book day, one shop I visited wasn’t participating so maybe it’s not as fluid as I thought…
“couldn’t Comic Shop A get a lot of product and then sell it to Comic Shop B?”
Ummm…technically they could but that scenario would not work at all and there are SO MANY reasons why it wouldn’t work that I just don’t have the energy to get into it right now. Just know that if you are a comic shop and want Marvel, DC, Dark Horse and Image books in your store and you DON’T buy from Diamond Distributors you are fucked since those companies sell EXCLUSIVELY through Diamond.
J.
Thats the way the direct market worked in the early days before air freight and UPS got on the scene. There were a number of regional distributors (iirc Diamond originally only covered part of the north-east US) and then dozens of sub-distributors.
Chuck Rozanski did a series of blog posts on it on mile high comics site starting with http://www.milehighcomics.com/tales/cbg95.html
thanks L
No worries mate, I was trying to remember another good link, this is the comics journal giving their view on it, its a pretty interesting summary:
http://www.tcj.com/history/a-comics-journal-history-of-the-direct-market-part-one/
i found this bit very interesting
This is a critical number, because comics are a unit driven business. What I mean by this is that the majority of the cost of publishing any given comic book is in the editorial production (i.e. plot, pencils, inks, colors, and editorial staff costs). Once you’ve paid for the cost of creating the comic, the cost of printing/paper/ink per issue is negligible.
And thats still the case today. Don’t believe the bullshit that companies try and fool people with about “increased paper costs” and all that crap. Paper is dirt cheap and companies have far more choice in where they get comics and trades printed now as opposed to 30 years ago when there was just World Color Press in Sparta, Illinois.
I think Minnesota has been blessed with good comic book stores. I’ve never been to a consistantly bad comic store. Sure, every now and then something crappy will happen, but eventually they manage to get out of that bad situation. If the store is a small store than I cut them some slack if there store is messy.
Good video guys and relevant. I’ve always had this problem. The world is getting more and more stubborn, that’s for sure.
i hate hearing that comics are dying or on life support but damn why arent any of the companies trying to reach out to more demographics and changing the superhero shit?? its so depressing to me.
I switched to a different shop. it’s on the way back from Rugby/the bar I work at. The people there actually helped me look for some back issues instead of pointing at the box and saying “Have at it”.
I just miss Central PA. Route 11 in between Carlisle and Harrisburg was the BEST store. Great staff, D&D Minis nights, a HUGE collection of TPBs. Loved shopping there. Little light on Back issues on displays. but they did have my Art Teacher friend working PT (I SWEAR he was only working there for discounts given the state of his apt).
I realize that I’m in an extreme minority. And I understand that many people might not realize that there’s someone light in the loafers in the store. However, doesn’t mean I’m not taking my money elsewhere.
I am in the fortunate position that my lcs likes me really much. We became friends in the 3 years that I visit the store. I even got invited to his wedding.
The downsides are that he orders very limited quantities of new comics in stock(only pre-order) and especially the independent published floppies are hard to get.
Therefore I need to be very sharp when pre-ordering and not to miss one book, or I am screwed.
I always get a cup of coffee when I visit. But we never talk about comics. Especially not the new ones. It is I, that have to tell him whats going on with spidey or how sucky the avengers are right now. He primarily wants to talk about videogames.
i buy sometimes older back issues in the USA from Superworldcomics(The owner Ted is a true oldschool comic fan and a genuine nice guy) and for modern back issues I go to Mile High(when the discount is at least 50%)..but for that I could go to Dreamland comics as well I guess..
As long as we’re still cool that is(after my devestation-walk yesterday, D and J?) 🙂
If Dr. Laura was a comics geek she would be you.
Somehow that remark pained me AND made me laugh out loud.
My LCS closed a long time ago because it made the mistake of making the store bigger and filling it with Nascar stuff. The idea bombed and the store went byebye. My only other option is about a half hour away and is an absolute sty. Now I’m exclusive to mail order. I would love it if the comic shop near my house reopened, but the building has been vacant for about 10 years. 😦 I miss walking around in that thing.
God, that has to sound like this MOST IDIOTIC thing I have ever heard of… Just as the mini-Nascar surge died out too. Wow.
Comics and Nascar (and don’t rag on Nascar)… But could you imagine 2 MORE DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED audiences?
Twihards and Avitards?
J.
Metal-heads and twihards
Oooh, those are both good.
also in the running are furries and motorcycle gangs
priests and sex offenders… oh wait, never mind.
J.
Aren’t most cycle thugs furry? 😉
hahaha yeah in most cases I believe your right 😛 -scratch that one
I love my local store, One of the main reasons i started collecting weekly/ monthly titles is because one of the dudes who work there approached me one day asking if i would be in tomorrow as it was free comic book day (little did i know at the time) We have since become good friends and i regularly pick up recommendations from him and the other dudes in the shop. I’m moving next month and have been thinking about setting up a mail order, there is a shop where I’m going that i’ve never been in (it could well be just as good for all i know) but i want to support the one i go to now, even though i am one of the ‘reads everything in one night’ kinda people I’m willing to forgo that fix in order to keep them ticking over even if my contribution is a small one
Good point about comic shops not being hospitable to female customers. My wife once went with me to my lcs “see what it was like”. It was during the weekend and there was a Pokemon tournament in the back, so the place was packed, and my wife was the only female in the place. Well, when the other fanboys weren’t blatantly staring at her ass, they looked at her like she was some kind of alien that was just beamed down from the mothership.
my comic book shop is on the 9th floor of a business building in the middle of down town. the store is a half comics, half coin collectors shop, but coin collecting is the main attraction. anyway, my pull box works like a subscription. i always get my comics on time and when i ask for with free bags and boards. not to mention at american price with a 30% rebate. it`s a weird spot for cs but it works well for my budget. the only catch is it is like a subscription to the point where if i wanted to drop something, i have to get 2 extra comics i dont want because the original order time was missed (at that point). anyway ive had experience with a ton of stores but in the end its the convenience factor that wins.
My local comic book shop is worse than anything you’ve ever experienced. Dave’s Comics in Las Cruces is the only comic book shop in town. I’ve been waiting four months for the American Virgin 2 trade paperback that I had to pay for up front. They don’t even get comics every week and they can’t even get issues right. I have I, Zombie #2 in my box but they never had I, Zombie #1! How awesome it would be if customer service was my main concern, Dave’s Comics just outright sucks! What’s worse is the better shop The Cave closed down because the owner couldn’t afford his lease, while Dave was a millionaire before he even opened his shop, which needs to be renamed, “Dave’s Magic Cards (We Don’t Sell Comics)”.
Guess I’m lucky, after 25+ years of on-again-off-again comic book reading, I haven’t had any terrible experiences (no getting ripped off, no name calling retailers). Geographically, I live in a major city and have a choice between a few decent stores.
The worst I can think of is back in the day one retailer “close” to where we lived in the western suburbs got into this habit of opening the store later and later.My friend told me couple times he went and it was well over an hour! The owner would come in semi-disheveled and apologize. I think ppl put up with it cuz he was a friendly guy who actually liked comics. He eventually hired some help (2 surly teens) and the store started opening on time again. We found out that his wife/girlfriend(?) had a baby, so I guess he had a good excuse.
Also, there was this guy way on the north side. It was actually two stores. One was spacious and had lots of back issues, graphic novels, magazines and independents.It was well lit and inviting. The other was how J+E described some stores.It was small,cramped, and boxes just stacked randomly on top of other boxes. The owner was skinny but he was just like comicbookguy on the Simpsons. He didn’t like getting up from his chair if he wasn’t ringing up a purchase and he was visibly upset when ppl distracted him from the cubs game. We thought it was funny until one day my friend overheard him muttering something about “little kids” in the store. We were kinda shocked. Like “Dude, you run A COMIC BOOK STORE! How are you upset about little kids?”
anyway I stumbling across this clip looking for something else but I thought it was relevant to this discussion
is it me? does she have a light lisp or am I drunk early this afternoon?
It’s is a realy good video and I live in the UK in the middle of no were a Comic Book store is like very fer away frome were I live
I now some Comic stores are clean I have not been in a comic store but I would like to were film these realy good videos.
Very entertaining guys. Yea a lot of people don’t see the big picture, I just wanna know where Elliot falls in his hierarchy gym theory? Weekend Warrior perhaps? I need to get back in shape myself. I’m holding out hope that the Xbox Kinect will lead me to the promised land when it comes to fitness, but I’m not holding my breath after the Wii where I thought the same thing. Jose if I could afford another console I’d have a PS3. You guys should put on seminars for shop owners and workers around the country at the next Chicago Con C2E2. That would be pretty interesting and get people thinking a bit more about that very important subject.