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Dammit jim7/14/2023 With all our 'Death of Superman' money, why not stock more?” Of course, that was the boom before the bust the '90s were very rough on comics and comic shops. I once heard a retailer say, “We were buying up everything in the damn catalog. The growth for this kind of content at the shops and in magazine form on the newsstand exerted pressure on the dominating forces at DC & Marvel who have alternate successes trying to do more “mature” books throughout the '70s and '80s, until or around about the introduction of the DC Deluxe Format (I believe only available via the Direct Market at first) which begets Vertigo, which brings in yet another audience of fans not common to the comic market. Those with a burning desire for the four-color funnies would, invariably, track down their local comic shop and be introduced to a wider range of books they never even knew existed!Ī strong example of the power of the Direct Market is the "black-and-white boom" of the late '70s and early '80s, which was far more successful selling to the “tuned in” crowd at the local comic shop than the earlier underground comics of the '60s and early '70s had at head shops and alternative/adult magazine stands. How so? Well, in conjunction with the very robust newsstand market of the day, comics readership grew in leaps and bounds readers would come across a comic at a young age at the grocery store, pharmacy, toy shop, newspaper stand, or local corner store. For comic fanatics it was a godsend, and when it finally took off nationwide it not only helped sustain and boost sales, it actually created and perpetuated entirely new generations of readers and creators. The Direct Market, as it was conceived, was implemented to help readers of comic books find, and be kept appraised of, the comic books they were often unable to track down easily in the willy-nilly world of newsstand distribution. I have no way to prove to you that what I am stating is true, it’s just how I see the lay of the land from where I am standing and my limited understanding of the history of the Direct Market.īear with me, because I need to get my basic and probably incorrect version of the history of the Direct Market in here, to help make my point. ![]() Therefore, please feel free to disregard everything written here. To be fair: I am an inexperienced, sloppy, unorganized comics-shop owner with less than ten years of experience and an operation on a different scale than most of the aforementioned names. Or rather, I suppose I should say, to stop trying to resuscitate it. ![]() ![]() Yet, in this little curio I’m going to argue that as retailers our focus should be working toward the death of the Direct Market, the backbone of comic sales for decades. In fact, this ComicsPro meeting has been advertised far and wide as the place to have a hand in helping to fix it. In the last few months, many experienced and intelligent comic retailers (Brian Hibbs, Chuck Rozanski, Joe Field, Phil Boyle, and more) are postulating a pivotal moment for the Direct Market. (An anonymous, shorter version of this essay was given out as a pamphlet this week at the annual ComicsPro meeting between publisher and comic shop retailers in Charlotte, North Carolina.) Features Dammit Jim, I’m a Comics Retailer, Not a Doctor!
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