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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132609
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| Posted: 13 April 2013 at 4:36am | IP Logged | 1
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They used to be sold almost everywhere at times. I discovered a Spider-Man comic in a railway station. Yes, a railway station, where people go to catch trains! Not to buy comics, but it was there.•• I used to look forward to occasional visits to the railway station, when I was a kid. Distribution in my part of Canada was erratic, to say the least, and I knew I would find something there I had not seen anywhere else. +++ The local post office had occasional titles. Greengrocers did. Even a petrol station in our area had a few superhero titles. It's how I discovered them. •• Picked up the SHOWCASE issue with the first Silver Age appearance of Hakwman from a magazine rack at the end of one of the aisle in the grocery department of one of the big chain stores. Again, a place I liked to check for comics that had not shown up at my usual sources.
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Steven McCauley
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 23 June 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 1431
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| Posted: 13 April 2013 at 4:47am | IP Logged | 2
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When visiting London in the 80's, I picked up a few titles in Harrod's. That was one of the delights in my trip to Europe, stumbling across comics in every city we visited usually at newsstands. I would imagine if I were to made the same trip today, I would need to actively seek out a comic venue.
It is probably too late, but I believe a concerted effort must be made by Marvel and DC to inject comics back into places the non-comics-buying public frequents. Although, I also think that price point is another issue. My parents were willing when I was growing up to shell out the price of a candy bar for a comic -- but I remember my mom and dad being a bit shocked when they discovered I was spending a $1.00 a comic. I cannot imagine any parent plunking down $2.99 or $3.99 for a comic.
Edited by Steven McCauley on 13 April 2013 at 4:48am
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Robbie Parry
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 June 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 12186
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| Posted: 13 April 2013 at 4:55am | IP Logged | 3
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It was so much better and more fun. I mean, I still remembering discovering EAGLE COMIC (I'm not old enough to remember the original, but there was a version relaunched in 1982, which ran until 1994). I think my mother was out food shopping in a supermarket. There were no US comics available that week, but I found EAGLE, the cover of which is below.
Sorry if that image is too big. But I quite like it (the character on the front is Detective Zed, a robotic detective). I didn't know there was an EAGLE, I had only heard about the 1950s version which my father had read. So to be greeted by that was a nice surprise, it more than made up for not finding a US title that week.
If things had been different back then, I'd have had to have first of all been aware of the existence of that title. Then I'd have had to have gone to a comic shop to find it. And, well, how boring and unspontaneous (is that a word?). Much prefer serendipitous discoveries.
Thing is, I think having a list, which you've written down after reading PREVIEWS, is a little anti-climatic. It's so clinical, if you know what I mean. Serendipity was much better. True, I had regular titles, like THE INCREDIBLE HULK and ROY OF THE ROVERS, that I collected, but sometimes it was nice little discoveries. I may go out looking for a superhero title, but the greengrocer wouldn't have any that week - so in the post office, I'd find something completely new, that I was unaware of, like WARLORD, a British war comic. Those were the days!
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132609
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| Posted: 13 April 2013 at 4:57am | IP Logged | 4
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…EAGLE…•• How are the mighty fallen!!
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Kip Lewis
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 March 2011
Posts: 2880
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| Posted: 13 April 2013 at 6:11am | IP Logged | 5
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Even when I was a kid in the 70s, my very first exposure to
superheroes was probably from Hanna Barbara's Fantastic Four and
Spider-Man, not the newstand. Today, I would suspect licensed
products from clothing to toys plus cartoons would be everyone's first
exposure to superheroes. Kids today have way more superhero
options than we did. Even the accidentally finding one in a drugstore,
that many of us grew up with, would not be anyone's first exposure
today. (Sometimes, I think my first exposure to a comic book was the
barber shop. It was in the pile of his reading material.)
And internet becomes more and more the prefered method of
shopping, impulse purchases are becoming a thing of the past. That is
why I prefer real bookstores over Amazon. No suprising finds.
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Shawn Kane
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 November 2010
Location: United States
Posts: 3239
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| Posted: 13 April 2013 at 6:24am | IP Logged | 6
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I love my LCS but I miss walking into a convenience store and seeing a spinner rack full of comics. Marvel and DC have said for a while now that the "business model" doesn't allow for 7-11 and others to have comics and not lose money. I guess when you try to sell a $2.99 or $3.99 comic in that environment you're not going to have a parent willing to spend that when they're buying their child a Big Gulp or Slurpee. Heck, my dad would complain about spending an extra $.65 to $.75 after we would stop in after baseball or football practice. I assume Marvel and DC are willing to totally leave that marketplace in the dust just so they won't have to lower the cost of a comic book.
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Kip Lewis
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 March 2011
Posts: 2880
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| Posted: 13 April 2013 at 7:10am | IP Logged | 7
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The urban legend is that it was 7-11 that got rid of
comics, not Marvel and DC pulling out of 7-11. The
profit on comics was too small. More than one store I saw
turned that space into video tape sales/rentals, which
was becoming popular at the same time. I remember a video
store owner(?) saying they could make more money renting
videos in that space than they could selling comics.
And it is not just comics. You used to be able to buy
magazines at any gas station convenience store, but
today, I have seen several that don't sell any
periodical, except the newspaper.
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Stephen Churay
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 25 March 2009
Location: United States
Posts: 8369
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| Posted: 13 April 2013 at 7:18am | IP Logged | 8
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When visiting London in the 80's, I picked up a few titles in Harrod's.
That was one of the delights in my trip to Europe, stumbling across
comics in every city we visited usually at newsstands. I would
imagine if I were to made the same trip today, I would need to actively
seek out a comic venue.
======
My old, soon to be new again, job required that I travel from time to
time. I spent a week in Kansas City and 4 months in the Richmond to
DC area. The first thing I did after getting a hotel was find the comic
shops. It's amazing how many still listed are now closed. It's also
amazing that KC had 21 shops in the area, although some were a
local chain. It's sad I had to go through the trouble because there's no
way of just happening upon the books anymore.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132609
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| Posted: 13 April 2013 at 7:21am | IP Logged | 9
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Side Note: Every time this thread title comes up on my screen, my brain wants to turn "Diversity" into "Disney", and the mention of the "Newsstand" causes my heart to skip a beat.Not much chance of the House of Mouse making THAT corporate decision, I fear!
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132609
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| Posted: 13 April 2013 at 7:23am | IP Logged | 10
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I love my LCS but I miss walking into a convenience store and seeing a spinner rack full of comics.•• It's hard to imagine that scenario with the audience the industry has spent the past few decades so carefully creating. Too many COLLECTORS who would suffer seizures at the sight of the books bending forward, crammed into those wire slots!
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Robert White
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4560
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| Posted: 13 April 2013 at 7:47am | IP Logged | 11
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There was a youtube video series I watched a few weeks back that featured Midtown Comics. There was a frequent customer that would spend hours and hours going through comics and trades trying to find copies that were "perfect." He commented that he didn't have much time to actually read most of the stuff he bought. Is it wrong that part of me wanted to send my fist through my computer after he said that...?
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Stephen Churay
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 25 March 2009
Location: United States
Posts: 8369
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| Posted: 13 April 2013 at 10:29am | IP Logged | 12
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I assume Marvel and DC are willing to totally leave that marketplace
in the dust just so they won't have to lower the cost of a comic book.
======
I'm guessing that the price point is here to stay. I do agree that a
lower price pint would be needed for the newsstand market. If I were
the Big Two, instead of passing the higher production cost to the
consumer, I'd try finding ways to lower my production costs.
Without getting into numbers, I would be interested to learn the
differences in price, if any, from going to gloss paper stock to a flat
stock similar to JB's TRIO, but with a slightly lighter grade of paper.
Also, one of the things that makes me scream about the big two is the
number of titles they sell. There's only so many dollars out there. The
higher the book count the lower the print run. A higher print run would
bring down the cost per issue. The main cost in printing is the initial
set up fee. If you go from 90 books a month to 35 books a month you
save a lot of money. It would surprise me to learn that DC dropping
there number of titles to 52 regular books is what brought the price
point down on there books from $3.99 to $2.99.
How far would you have to cut to get a $1.99 price on a book?
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Topic Closed)
