[ClevComicMan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frank Richards

Ok...lol...so, what I am about to say may come across as cold, callous, and completely unsympathetic, and I apologize if anyone finds this offensive.
I've been to so many awful, dingy, under-stocked, poorly staffed comic shops in my time, that I think that the entire dynamic of the "local comic shop" needs to change. Frankly, I wish that Diamond Distribution would open their own chain of comic shops. I truly think that there is a need for corporate-owned comic shops. You may be shaking your heads is disagreement, anger, or disbelief, but hear me out:
When I was slowly transitioning from a kid who occasionally read comics into a more dedicated reader, I would buy my single issues and TPBs at my local Media Play. For those not familiar, this place sold CDs, DVDs, books, video games, and so much more. They even had an impressive action figure selection, as well as an impressive manga section. AND, they even hosted meetings for a local anime and manga club. Unfortunately, like many stores of its kind, the growth of Amazon and digital media led to the company collapsing, but.. let's not focus on that for now, lol.
It wasn't until Media Play stopped carrying single issues that I began going to my local comic shops. Quite honestly, I preferred Media Play over my LCS, hands down. Before they dropped the single issues, they were superior to the local shops in selection, service, prices, and even atmosphere. And, with the manga club, they established a sense of community; something the local shop has never done

Also, while my comic shop has a great selection of single issues, whenever I want to buy a trade, I go to my local Barnes & Noble. B&N has MANY IDW, Image, Dark Horse, Oni Press, etc... trades, while my LCS mostly has Marvel and DC trades.

So, again, I would like to see the emergence of some sort of corporate-owned comic shop. I have nothing against small, local shops, but, as I said earlier, there are soooo many terrible independently owned shops. These new stores would force the less than stellar ones to either make some serious improvements, or just go ahead and close their doors. Sorry if that seems cruel, but would anyone truly miss those crappy comic shops?

I imagine the corporate stores and independent shops having the same sort of relationship that video rental stores (before that industry collapsed) and music stores (again, before...) had over the past few decades. For instance, when I was younger, I loved Blockbuster Video for its immense selection and reasonable prices, but I also loved my neighborhood video stores for other reasons, like their HUGE anime sections, large independent and horror areas, and knowledgeable staff. Both of these types of stores had their advantages. Furthermore, the local shops had to step up their game and offer the consumer something that the big chains couldn't. If they were unable to do so, they had no choice but to close their doors.
The same goes of music stores. Best Buy was always a great place to buy inexpensive CDs of typically well-known singers/bands, but for more obscure stuff, as well as vinyl, local artists, out of print albums, and elaborate box sets, smaller independently owned record stores were the best option. While many may argue that the big corporate stores callously put the smaller ones out of business, I, and many others, see that scenario as the stores like Best Buy simply forcing the smaller ones to basically evolve or die. In my eyes, the big name stores served to, proverbially, separate the wheat from the chaff.

So, yeah, maybe Diamond, or a similar company should open their own shops. I've been to many comics shops to which I have no intention of ever returning, and I honestly would not be bothered by their disappearance. Again, if this seems callous, I'm sorry.
Meanwhile, the good shops would continue to thrive, and some currently mediocre and bad shops may actually improve and become places worth buying one's comics. That's just my opinion, anyways.

I do recognize that the corporate comic shop scenario could go horribly wrong as well. This corporate comic shop that I'm wishing for could became WAY too big and become the next GameStop. That's a thought that's just too horrible to fathom at the moment

Anyways... I realize that this is the "scalper" thread, so sorry about going off on a tangent, but all this talk about FCBD and shady comic shops got me fired up!

So after reading the complaints about comic shops I need to throw my two cents in as a comic shop owner for over 30 years. First off, Diamond is the only distributor that we can order comics from. They have a monopoly. I WISH we still had Capitol Comics. They also screw over comic shop owners on every level on a daily basis because they have us bent over a barrel and they know it. We HOPE what we ordered comes in. If it doesn't, oh well. Diamond says they packed it so we must be lying. Something comes in damaged, Diamond says " no way", and refuses to reimburse us, even though it is in the contract that they have to. They breach contract EVERY WEEK! We special order stuff for our customers. If it shows up broken or damaged? We have to eat that cost, because Diamond says nothing of theirs ever gets damaged. If our variants don't show up? Oh well, Diamond says they shipped them so we must be lying. Most comic stores (baring Graham Crackers, Midtown, Mile High, etc...) cannot afford to order 5000 copies of every book, or 30 cases of every figure that come out, so we are stuck paying almost retail on all of our toys and merch. to give you an idea, for every case of marvel legends we sell we make $10. That's $10 per case. We cannot order direct from Hasbro or mattel or other big name toy companies because of minimum order levels. So yes, If we want to make a profit, we gotta mark this stuff up.
As far as free comic day goes, we do pay for them. Is it cheaper than a $3.99 book? yes, but when you have to order over 30+ titles, and hundreds and hundreds of copies of each that adds up. Our store limited free comic book day comics to 4 per person. We notify them of this on free comic day and also let them know that they can come back Sunday the 4th they could grab any extras we have left. We had 1 free comic book day comic title left after Saturday. Are we supposed to screw over 80% of the customers who come in on FCBD because a few people want to grab everything for themselves? If we didn't most of our customers would not have gotten any. I have seen people walk in and try to grab 5 copies of each title. I have seen people shove kids out of the way trying to grab free comic book day comics. If you really want us to be able to let you grab as many as you want, contact all the comic companies and diamond and tell them to make the comics free to the stores as well. We dropped over $5000 on "free" comics this year. That is not "FREE" for us. It is a huge expense. Yet you complain about being limited to how much "free" stuff you can get? WOW.
As far as Diamond or anyone else starting up a national chain, it would kill the comic industry. If marvel/ Disney and dc/TW did not have independent comic stores to distribute to they would get out of the floppies business altogether. They don't want to deal with the distribution business at all, that is why they went with a single distributor back in the 80's. Now that magacorps own them, they would HAPPILY eliminate the comic arm of DC/MARVEL because the publishing of comics makes them SO little money, they just want the character rights to pump out movies and merchandise. That is where their money is. They will go strictly digital so they don't have to worry about over production costs, shipping costs, damage costs, and it would kill the industry completely. All secondary publishers would go out of business as there would be no distribution for their product. Digital is fine for them IF they can overcome the piracy issue, which they cannot. It would also completely eliminate the collector market. Comic Companies and Comic Stores would see almost 70% of their sales disappear overnight if they did that.