"Lack of availabilty in places that kids go like 7-11 and grocery stores"

When is the lasttime you saw a group of kids hanging out at a 7-11 or a grocery store?

Kids don't necessarily need to be hanging out at a 7-11... I got most of my comics there as a kid, simply by riding along with my Mom or Dad.  Almost every visit paid off with a comic book (and/or a Slurpee!).

Comics used to be the greatest "impulse buy" ever for a kid, regardless of the venue!

I understand what you are saying about stumbling on them in stores. I'm just suggesting that the stores don't want them as there aren't enough kids to stumbple upon them.  Consider the two stories...

Going with dad to get a Sunday paper...except in our world we have lost most of that audience thanks to the Internet and 24 hour news.

Getting out of the car when folks are filling with gas...except our world now is largely pay at the pump. How many people, let alone kids, go inside.

For convenience stores, even if we were getting Lee & Kirby quality work from the books, these would be a losing venture. Its a very high-priced item without a lot of margin that requires a great deal of work to maintain without a lot of people to purchase.

I know it would be great if we could get comics in more magazine racks, except the racks we do have are shrinking, getting smaller and smaller. The paradigm no longer works in today's world, which is why we need to find a new paradigm.

I think kids read a lot nowadays,they just read in a different way,short sharp bursts on Facebook and Twitter,conversely comics which told stories in short sharp bursts are now stretching out stories out to bloated proportions.Maybe the writers should go back to one issue stories? Also,my friend gave me his copy of Previews to look at.I noticed Marvel were hawking `Mass market` prose novelisations of comic storylines,it got me thinking...maybe they should be producing `Mass market` actual comic books.

"But the comics industry dumped those venues while they were still valid ways of reaching new customers, crippling the business long before it would have possibly fallen due to those venues drying up. "

I believe it was the venues that dumped comics. In the midwest, one of our main grocery store chains still has spinner racks. The bookstores in the area do too.  Heck, Waldenbooks (where I got my start as well) had spinner racks right up till they went out of business. Stores can carry traditional editions, they just don't have the customers to do so with such a poor pricepoint.

When is the lasttime you saw a group of kids hanging out at a 7-11 or a grocery store?

All the time. I live in a small town. Kids go to those places all the time. I would get my comics at 7-11 or High's after baseball, basketball, and football practice and games. My parents would go to the grocery or drug store and I go to the magazines which also had a comic book rack. I used to buy those 3 pack Marvel Comics at Apple Valley Supermarket and at Zayre's department store.

My LCS actually donates free comics to the local Alamo when any comic book movie comes out. Granted the comics and movies can be very different but the general idea is "Hey if you like the movie, maybe you should check out the comics".

There is an ironic kind of pyrrhic victory in the fact that many schools now use comic books to encourage kids to READ!!

I'm a special education teacher so the visual part of a comic book is more inviting to my students. Truthfully, I'm glad when they do any kind of independent reading even if it's the Ultimates.