Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio. This week, Bennett talks about Hastings opening a national chain of comic book shops and tests out a digital download comic.I've never actually written out my mental list of "things I never thought would ever happen in a million years" I sometimes refer to but somewhere in the top five would definitely be the opening of a national chain of comic
book shops. Direct sales retailers have feared this since the inception of the direct sales market but I was sure it would never happen for most of the same reasons why we'll probably never see a national chain of Chinese
restaurants. Which is a small business that has relatively low rent and overhead with a loyal customer base is a business model that big chains can find difficult to compete with.*
But I was wrong again. There are no Hastings stores in Ohio but the store locator at the company's website says the closest one to me is fifty miles and an hour and forty-six minutes drive one away in Richmond, Kentucky (thank you Google Maps). So clearly they're not in direct competition with Super-Fly Comics & Games and though I am curious unless someone wants to pony up half of the gas money I won't be visiting it anytime soon.
My first question about this is, does Hastings know something we don't? I mean, they're trying to deal with slumping music sales by bringing in comics at the same time that a lot of us are afraid digital downloading is hurting comic sales the way they hurt music sales. I know it's just a coincidence but it is kind of interesting that the day after the Hastings announcement word came that DC was finally ready to get into the digital comic book business.
Me, I'm still fairly convinced digital downloading won't become a major problem for comic books until the devices for electronically reading comics become ubiquitous, and given the economy that might take a while. But then I never thought there'd be a national comic book shop chain. The most obvious question of course is whether Hastings will bleed sales from our stores or actually increase readership. I've long wondered if there was a potential audience for comics that just doesn't have easy access to them, an audience that doesn't want the much vaunted "comic book shop experience." That and whether comics designed specifically with a narrow niche market in mind can appeal to a larger mainstream one. It looks like I'll get the opportunity to find out.
Hastings will definitely increase comic book sales which I think we can all agree is a good thing. But if you want to be nervous about something by them suddenly becoming, as Rich Johnson put it over on the Bleeding Cool website, "the largest buyer of monthly comics in America" Hastings could soon have a substantial say on what kind of comics are published here.
Me, I plan on taking a tentative wait for future developments and see approach, but just in general I must confess it's hard for me to imagine anything that cracks open the hermetically sealed world of American comic books could ever be a bad thing.
For the record I decided to take the digital version of the ten page preview of Superman #700 out for a spin and found I really dislike the intense zoom on individual panels method of comic reading one bit, but that's just a personal preference. I hope a lot of people who don't ordinarily read Superman do the same because it is, I don't belief I'm overstating this, a blessed relief from the nearly unreadable, seemingly endless mess that was the last two years of Superman comics. With J. Michael Straczynsk DC has someone who gets Superman; now it's only a matter if whether they have the sense to leave him alone and let him write.
* Though there are those who have tried; I refer to China Coast, sister chain to the Red Lobster and Olive Garden that went out of business in 1993, supposedly due to over expansion. But I can tell you from personal experience it didn't help that the food was mediocre at best, took too long to reach the table and the restaurant forced the mostly Caucasian female wait staff to wear stereotypically "Chinese" uniforms.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
