Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by retailer Steve Bennett of Mary Alice Wilson's Dark Star Comics in Yellow Springs, Ohio Ohio.  This week, Bennett offers suggestions for how to keep sales going in the wake of Civil War delays:

We're still a couple weeks away from theoretically seeing late comics like Civil War #4 (and, coincidentally the red-headed stepchild of the delay derby Albion #6, which hopefully hasn't doomed us from seeing more revivals of classic British comic paper characters; I want to see a Robot Archie mini-series bad), and I have to admit comic book sales at Dark Star are just fine.  As usual graphic novels are outselling pamphlets two-to-one, highlighting what's really wrong about the unexpected Civil War hiatus; what events like this have going for them is immediacy; making fans wait gives them just one more reason for to wait for the trade (and frankly they have plenty of reasons already).

Inevitably there's going to be a tipping point where graphic novels nibble away at the monthlies' circulations until major companies will have to be compelled to rethink their publishing strategies.  I doubt Civil War will be the thing that does it, but I wouldn't be tempting fate either.  I'll stop my bellyaching about late comics and go into my usual 'a problem is just an opportunity with a bad haircut' spiel and try convincing you this interruption is a perfect chance for you to sell something else.

Because your customers aren't going to put that $20 they were planning to spend on Marvels two weeks ago in an envelope, scrawl 'DO NOT OPEN UNTIL THE END OF SEPTEMBER' across it then stuff it in a sock drawer, they're going to spend that money somewhere.  And it might as well be with you on comics they previously had never considered buying because of a skintight comic book buying budget.  Hopefully that's why during this long lull between issues of Civil War there have been spikes of interest in titles as varied as Battler Britton and Jonah Hex and would explain the unexpected instant sell-out of Lone Ranger #1.

These delays underline just how dangerous it is to put so much of your store's bottom line in the hands of any single publisher.  As I've said before, one of the great things about Dark Star is we get all kinds of customers: different races, ages, gender, sexual and reading preferences. A couple of days ago a woman in her 60s bought a bunch of $6.95 Uncle Scrooge comics and when I told her Dark Horse had started reprinting Little Lulu, she went back and bought several volumes.

Now admittedly this doesn't happen every day; those Uncle Scrooge comics sat there for months, and up until then we hadn't sold many (if any) of the Little Lulu volumes, so it would be easy to say your average comic shop couldn't possibly invest so much money in material that produces such a meager return, that it's far better and safer to concentrate on something with a proven audience like superheroes.

That's certainly one way of looking at it, but I'd rather think that by being patient and placing the Marvel digests next to Walt Kelly's Our Gang (and Pogo) next to the volumes of Tintin and Asterix, we succeed in creating an area in our store that attracted the customer above and will bring in more like her.

It's also a perfect opportunity for comic shops to go wildcatting; looking for something new and different from small or self- publishers that just might produce an unexpected hit.  Odds are most won't be hits but every once in a great while we'll be rewarded with something like Mouse Guard.  It's had very little hype, has 'no name' creators and is even a strange size and shape, but so far we've been unable to keep any of its issues in stock, even after orders were piled on top of reorders (at the moment I wonder why we can't get any copies of Mouse Guard, but that's a topic for another column).

Marvel was rightfully proud of the amount of free press they'd gotten for Civil War, but word leaks out on the smaller titles, too.  Last week a man in his 60s walked into our store looking for copies of Mouse Guard, which was strange enough.  I just got through saying we get all sorts of customers, but truth be told we don't have a lot of regular comic readers eligible to join AARP.

And he wanted them badly -- not that he knew exactly what the comic was about, or even knew the difference between an issue number and a print run for that matter, and in a manner stuck somewhere between animated and agitated, said he wanted ten copies -- of each issue.  Now, I might be completely crazy but it seems to me someone had given this gentlemen a tip and was, in fact, something I hadn't seen with my own eyes for maybe fifteen years; a speculator!