A micro-level market indicator we don’t see too much these days in the mainstream press: the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin reports on the closure this week of Comic Bookie in Claremont, Calif. According to the report, the store has been open since Nov. 1, 1990, aptly characterized as the boom period for new shop openings. The piece suggests the store never recovered from its move to a smaller location, a 600-square-foot space in a business park.
The piece quotes owner Chris Peterson: “People say, ‘With the movies, you must be doing really well.’ Actually, the last few years have been among the toughest I’ve had.” The report says the closure leaves three area stores: Comic Madness in Chino, 4 Color Fantasies in Rancho Cucamonga and Funny Business in Pomona.
It isn’t the mission of The Comics Chronicles to detail every store opening and closure, but as I’m sifting reports from both the hobby and mass media, I want to pass along both good news and bad. It’s also helpful to look at reports from the trenches to see what events seem ascribable to local conditions, and what things might be part of a larger trend.
Comichron founder John Jackson Miller has tracked the comics industry for more than 25 years, including a decade editing the industry’s retail trade magazine; he is the author of several guides to comics, as well as more than a hundred comic books for various franchises.
He is the author of novels including Star Wars: Kenobi, Star Wars: A New Dawn, Star Trek: Discovery – The Enterprise War, and his upcoming release, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – The High Country. Read more about them at his fiction site.
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