Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by retailer Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in
As I'm still without an Internet provider this column is being written at the Cuyahoga Falls Public Library -- and considering the number of places that have free high speed wireless internet (even the Arthur Treacher's down the street advertises 'free Internet!' on its marquee) I'm debating whether I actually need one at all. Of course in spite of all these free portals if you're ever tempted, like I once was, to walk your laptop over to the nearby Borders and cruise the Internet with the other cool people be forewarned; they're going to ask you to pay $10 a day for the privilege.
This is an appropriate location given how comics/manga/anime friendly this library is; when I look up the first thing I see in the Young Adult section is a spinner (black cardboard with a red plastic base, Marvel issue, circa 1995) full of comics. And if you venture in a little further you'd find circulating copies of Wizard, Shonen Jump, and Newtype USA as well as a sign announcing weekly meetings of an anime club.
And (has anyone seen this anywhere else?) in the DVD section someone has gone to the trouble of putting all the free anime sample DVDs from those issues of Newtype into jewel cases so they can be loaned out.
Here's a real confession for any comic book guy; because of my current situation I didn't read any new comics last week and probably won't read any this week either. I haven't given up on mainstream American comics - I'll be getting my comics from Super-Fly Comics & Games in Yellow Springs via the mail on a monthly basis, but I have to admit I've lost a lot of my passion for them. These days I'd much rather read a 1942 issue of Captain Marvel Adventures I downloaded off the Internet than last week's copy of Amazing Spider-Man.
But when nothing less than being in an actual comic book shop will do (which still happens every Wednesday) I'm lucky enough to have JC Comics in Cuyahoga Falls, a tidy little shop which manages to pack a lot of merchandise into a thousand square feet. Its knowledgeable owner, John Cameron, has made me feel welcome there and has always served as a sensible sounding board for some of my more extreme opinions.
Like a couple of columns ago when I suggested pretty strongly that comic book shops should eliminate their back issue sections. Now while I stand by what I wrote, I'd be a fool if I didn't acknowledge that there are a lot of comic book shops that manage to sell a lot more back issues than Dark Star Comics ever did... like JC Comics.
Of course some of it has to do with how you define a back issue. At Super-Fly (and previously at Dark Star) we try to keep at least three months of recent comics on the shelves under the theory, once it's been bagged, boarded and stuck in a long box, that comic book has essentially been buried and its chances of being sold are negligible. We've had a lot of success selling compete runs of certain titles off of those shelves but John doesn't like the aesthetic of comics being piled on top of other comics, so his last month's comics are put into back stock. Hence he sells more back issues than Super-Fly.
Now there's nothing wrong with either approach; each one works for each store (and I'd be remiss if I didn't confess that Super-Fly has its own share of back issues in long boxes). But I do have to wonder if back issues are pulling their weight in most stores. Do they, on a day to day basis, sell enough to justify the large amount of space they take up? And if they're not, well, maybe it's past time they're replaced with something that does.
And finally I do sometimes worry as I grow older and become more and more disconnected with 'what the kids like,' that the problem isn't so much with the material as it is with me. That I've become too comfortable with the way things are to give the new the chance it deserves. At least I used to think that until I came across this page from Countdown on the Internet. As I said in a previous column, I stopped reading Countdown months ago so I was hoping that something so calculatedly awful and amateurish looking just had to be some kind of Mad Magazine pastiche or something.
But I did a little checking on the Internet and yep, Superman Prime beats the crap out of Mister Mxyztplk until he vomits. Wow, thanks Dan Didio; now I can honestly say I didn't jump, I was pushed.
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.