If it takes a quarter of growth to end a recession, count this one over — at least in comics. While the market notched some positive quarters in the wide overall category last year, those gains weren’t always reflected in the narrower categories, like periodical unit sales. This quarter was different. Orders placed for comic … Read more
Wall Street reports often speak of “market leadership” in tracking intraday rallies and slides; what’s happening with the big issues often drives the market. On the new comics racks, market leadership counts for even more — instead of thousands of stocks, we’re looking at a few hundred new issues each month. And as we’ve seen, … 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
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
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
In the vein of a similar report from California earlier, a report of a comics and games store citing the overall recession as its reason for closure. Torrance, Calif. store Third Planet Comics & Games closes Monday, according to the Contra Costa Times. “The deciding factor in this decision is that sales have fallen to … Read more