Postmodern Barney shares more believe-it-or-not moments from the life of a comics retailer, and comics.212.net thanks Dark Horse for thoughtfully re-evaluating their price point… for Barnes and Noble and absolutely no one else.
Over at Comics Reporter, Tom Spurgeon takes a look at comics shops from the customer perspective. Like Tom, I find a lot of retail experiences irritating, including shopping for comics. I’m pretty fortunate in that there’s a pretty good shop in town. It isn’t perfect, but it’s new, and I think it has the right idea in a lot of ways.
As Tom points out, “the vast majority of the best comic shops get an economic lift from related items,” and the shop I frequent is no exception. The thing is, despite the fairly wide range of stock — DVDs, action figures, trading cards, etc. — the store is organized well. (They could come up with a better way of displaying new TPB and digest releases, but those cycle fairly quickly onto the regular shelves.)
The staff is friendly, and they’re fans with a fairly diverse range of tastes. They’re eager to order something they don’t regularly stock (though it can take some time), and they listen to their customers. When enough people request a title that isn’t on the shelves, you can be fairly certain it will be there before long. (The only exception so far has been Scott Pilgrim, which I did order through the store. I think I’m going to have to go all Team Comics over this, because this is a college town, and keeping a regular supply of Scott Pilgrim seems like a no-brainer to me. They know enough to keep copies of My Faith in Frankie on the shelves.)
While I try to confine most of my purchases to this shop (in part because I like these people, in part because I’d rather support a small business than a big chain), I still can’t resist the lure of the big box all the time. They have the advantage of volume and space, and they can keep more on the shelves than a small shop can. I went to Borders this weekend and, every time I’ve gone there, they’ve had a full run of Kindaichi Case Files on the shelves. And since I’ve purchased the last copy of some volumes from this same store on past visits, they obviously pay enough attention to keep popular titles in stock in as much of a full run as they can. (The sci-fi section is right next to the manga and graphic novels in this store, and my partner was gaping in horror at the ever-expanding manga shelves. “They’re eating the other comics,” he said.)
And I even got a nostalgia burst at the racks of pamphlets Borders keeps, watching little kids flip through the super-heroes and Archie Comics and what have you. But then, reminding me that it was 2004, I heard a father say to his son that he could have two of the comics he was browsing or one of “those Japanese comics upstairs… your choice.”