O’Leary: You know, I remember going into a comic shop in D.C. And they had tons and tons of copies left over.Īs often happens when you hit a cyclical downturn, the businesses, the publishers and to a certain extent the retailers, they took on a lot of debt and it led to this just utter crash by the mid-90s. That was kind of the 1929 moment where, after feeling kind of burned by the death of Superman, because they under ordered, they ordered that rebirth of Superman like crazy. In that comic, the one where Superman comes back, many retailers will say that’s the one that led to the crash. In the end, the story where he comes back, he’s actually kind of fighting his way back through the afterlife. The problem was that, you know, six months or so later after the death of Superman, you have the rebirth of Superman. And what that did for retailers, and for buyers, it taught them, “my goodness, the next big thing, I need to make sure I get it.” It sold out almost everywhere the day it came out. People hadn’t seen something like that before, where it was you know supposedly this permanent change. The kind of key moments in this run up toward the crash - one was the death of Superman. And there was this idea that if you bought 50 copies of something you could, you know, you could sell it for 10 times of what you paid for it. Gearino: There’s this constant tension in comics between the idea of being a reader, reading and enjoying and appreciating a comic, and being a collector - buying a comic with the thought that you’re going to sell it down the road and put your kids through college. O’Leary: Well so how did things then get to a crisis point in the 1990s when stuff kind of blew up? These independent titles that would just kind of bubble up. And you’d have these things like “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” in the mid-80s, like “Elf Quest” in the late-70s. And this led to and contributed to all of these independent comics. A really good store leads to other good stores. And they tended to have a little bit more business savvy. That second generation, which you start to see in the late 70s and early 80s, are people who grew up going to the conventions and going to those early stores. Gearino: I call it the heyday because this was when the second generation came in. Why “heyday” and who was buying these things then? O’Leary: You use the word “heyday” to describe the sort of 1980s comic shop flourishing. It’s a non-returnable model, which despite many changes since then, has kind of, in terms of the central architecture, it’s largely the same. Now with the comic shop market, if they order 50 of something because they’re confident that their customers are going to buy it and they only sell 5, they’re stuck with the remaining 45. I’m so fascinated by this because it, it’s really very different from, kind of, traditional retail distribution. O’Leary: Yeah, this is a very like kind of tailored supply and demand equation, where the shops are getting exactly what their customers want. Where you could order a specific quantity of something, it wasn’t just this kind of catch as catch can system, like the way it worked if you went to a newspaper stand or a magazine stand. He got them to agree to this system in which he would actually act as kind of the middleman. He went to the big publishers like DC Comics, Marvel Comics. The guy who set this up in 1973, he was named Phil Seuling. For the first time there was an entrepreneur who set up a system specifically for supplying comic specialty shops. Until then, comic shops, they were buying them through the existing newspaper and magazine distribution system. But in 1973, is this this watershed moment. Lizzie O’Leary: When you talk about this business model, and sort of the weird characters and the specifics of it, how did the physical shops start, when we’re talking about, say, the 1970s?ĭan Gearino: Within the world of comics, whenever you start talking about the first of something you’re just - it is just this invitation for this kind of knockdown, drag out debate. An edited transcript of their conversation follows. He joined Marketplace Weekend host Lizzie O’Leary to talk about what he found in the process. His book, “Comic Shop: The Retail Mavericks Who Gave Us Geek Culture” chronicles that journey. It’s the latest in the saga of a fantastical industry that has seen its share of battles, both on the page and in its industry.Īuthor and journalist Dan Gearino decided to follow the comic industry’s origin - from the first stores to today - and look at how they’re trying to adapt to a new audience. That’s enough to turn heads, but overall comic sales are down about 20 percent from this time last year. Looking for a holiday gift for your favorite comic nerd? Well, the first ever Superman comic, “Action Comics” No.
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