Wired magazine has a pictorial and interview feature on “Secret Lives of Comics Store Employees” — where we get a look at the shops themselves and some of the people who work there. It’s the kind of feature we wouldn’t have seen a decade ago, when more stories tended to depict comics shops as outside … Read more
Some more stories about comics retailers in the press. The Chillicothe Gazette of Chillicothe, Ohio, covers the closure of Acme Comics, a fixture in the city since 1993. Kathy Hall, who cofounded the store with her late husband, told the paper that while traffic has not decreased, the number of regular purchasers has because of … Read more
I spoke recently to the reporter for the Northwest Herald, a suburban Chicago paper, for her piece on the local comics scene, recently posted. The reporter interviewed Al Armstrong of Al n’ Ann’s Collectibles in McHenry on surviving in the recession. “We’re established, and we’ve got a really solid customer base,” Armstrong said. “I don’t … Read more
With much of the comics world’s attention focuesed on New York for the Comicon, another mainstream media report about comics shops has appeared on the other side of the continent. Only this one, from the Seattle Times, involves the chain Comic Stop and presents a more hopeful outlook. Obama did indeed save January, according to … Read more
The release of Amazing Spider-Man #583 with the Barack Obama appearance and its attendant press is old news by now — and while presidents in appearing comics isn’t new (as many including myself have observed), the timing of the press push and the historic nature of the inauguration have already paid off for comics retailers. … Read more
Heidi MacDonald spied another media report on a California comics retailer battling recession — this one, Earth-2 in Sherman Oaks. The six-year-old operation saw revenue drop by 20% in the year to Black Friday, according to the Daily News report. There have been other newspaper reports noted here on how comics shops are weathering the … Read more