In passing on a link to a comics store closure story earlier this week, I was tempted to say that we’re far more likely to learn of a store closure from the Internet than a store opening — hence, we can’t always tell much about the market from how many such stories are out there.
Of course, the very next time I look, there’s a story about a new store opening in Maryland — an online dealer whose business grew to the point where brick-and-mortar became attractive. “Opening a storefront and expanding to other games and comics was the next logical step,” Scott Campanella tells local site Eldersburg.net. There’s some store photos with the piece.
I do have some data on the number of comics shops, both now and across time — but it’s fairly scattershot and unpostable in its current state. Project #17 of a series…
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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