Kirt Murphy of Comic Heaven in
Over the last week I have spent a lot of time speaking with the Owner of Comic Heaven, Jim Williams, about his thoughts and feelings about the Captain America #25 situation only to discover we both share the same feelings and could not be happier with what Marvel is doing with their comics and events lately. Please allow me a few moments to explain his thoughts and mine as to why we feel this way.
Marvel, I agree, did drop the ball a little on Captain America #25 as far as availability was concerned, but they offered us yet another major opportunity to catch new readers with the increased foot traffic again marching straight into comics stores such as they have these past few months, first with the hype of Civil War making news, second time with the unmasking of Spider-Man catching media attention, a third time when they released Stephen King's The Gunslinger Born Darktower series, and yet again with the 'death' of Captain America making headlines in newspapers, on television, and even the Internet.
The name of the game as always is business, this is the one thing almost all of us working in our industry can agree upon, and at the end of the day in order to keep our doors open we need to make customers happy and do everything in our power to provide them with the merchandise they wish to purchase and the best possible customer service, if for no other reason to assure they will return to purchase from us in the future. Sadly this week I could not provide every customer that wanted one a Captain America #25, instead what Jim and I offered them was a few moments of our time just to talk to them about Comic Books.
Over the week, I personally spoke with many people about what led up to Captain America's death, telling them about Civil War, and giving them a brief overview of the Marvel Universe Storylines for the past three to four years and the major events that occurred such as House Of M, Disassembled, and even Planet Hulk, which for some played a direct result into Cap's death. Though they all left without a Captain America #25, very few of them actually left empty handed, and some of them even requested phone calls when Civil War was released in trade on April 11th. Some of these people had never read a comic before, and others were readers that had stopped reading comic books years ago, only to now find out that the characters they grew up with had now grown up with them, and were even having to deal with equivalent issues we deal with in our own lives such as families, jobs, and government. There were, as well, a few customers that could have cared less about what was going on in comic books or the Marvel Universe, and I am actually thankful these customers did not take a book away from a reader that would enjoy it more for the story it told, and not the fast buck they could have made selling it somewhere else.
Today we were lucky enough to get a few more issues of Captain America, enough to fill for our regular customers that had sadly missed it the week before, the few remaining were either placed on the shelf for anyone to buy (limit of one, of course) or set aside for those people that we spoke with earlier in the week who could not make it in today. Again we sold out today in about 5 hours, which was 2 hours longer than we had made it the week before when we sold out within 3 hours of opening, but this time we had gained a few new faces from the week before that were actively looking for comics in the back issues and even flipping through the trades for the stories we had happily discussed with them.
When all is said and done, I believe Marvel may have to work a little harder at having faith in their own books, enough at least that if they want to keep surprises (which is great, I like surprises too) at least be willing to go along with those surprises enough to overprint accordingly or overship something if it seems appropriate. But so long as Marvel keeps new and old readers coming into the store, whether it's a good story or a headline on CNN, you can just Make Mine Marvel.
The opinions expressed in this Talk Back article are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
