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Can Comic Book City Recover?
By Billy Ingram
Greensboro, NC has a few nicknames; Gate City, The 'Boro, Greensboring spring to mind. Another moniker is Comic Book City. Why? There are an unusually large number of comic book shops here, 4, when most cities our size (>300,000) have none. Talented comic artist have originated from here including legendary DC sci-fi artist Murphy Anderson (1926-2015) and Marvel's Randy Green.
Comic books came into vogue during WWII when millions of issues of Superman, Captain America, and the like were shipped overseas for our troops.1 out of 4 magazines shipped overseas was a comic book during the war. Comics outsold every other category of magazines by wide margins.
But sales have been in steady decline since the 'Golden Age,' the 1940s and early-1950s, when around 80-100 million copies a month flooded the newsstands. A brief resurgence happened in the mid-sixties when a combination of the Batman TV series and the emergence of Marvel Comics once again sent sales soaring for a couple of years.
In the late-1970s, tradition magazine distributors dropped comics because of low profit margins, just as drug and grocery stores were removing their comics' racks. That's when Phil Seuling and others set up a distribution network for dedicated comic book stores that were beginning to pop up all around the country.
There was a brief period in the late-1980s/early-1990s when comic book collecting - and investing - once again lit a fire under the industry, thousands more comic book shops opened. When the speculation bubble burst a few years later, most shops closed their doors or started carrying Magic the Gathering and other card games to supplement their income.
Those shops still hanging in there after the 1990s are the only reason we have print comics as opposed to an entirely digital format. But a 2 month or more shutdown could lead to many of those survivors going belly-up. Given that virtually the only place to buy comics is in a comic book shop that doesn't bode well for the 4-color versions.
On March 23rd Diamond Comic Distributors, the nation's sole comic book distributor, ceased shipping anything and told publishers they would not be paid for the last shipment, at least not right away. Retailers, however, still had to pay the bill for comics that, 4 weeks later, remain on shelves in shuttered stores, no buyers.
As someone who recently worked part-time in a comic book store right here in 'Comic Book City' I can tell you one problem for the industry is that DC and Marvel have too damn many titles. Add in the independents, which often outsell the majors, means there are hundreds of titles every month. As a shop owner, you've got to be pretty savvy to know what books to order and how many. There are trade paperbacks and hardbacks released weekly that need to be stocked as well, no one shop could possibly carry everything.
Another challenge - there's no way to know ahead of time what's going to be a hot seller so that dealers can adjust orders accordingly. For instance, if a character was killed off in Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead, hundreds of people would flood comic shops looking for a copy. Retailers had no way of knowing this was going to happen. Ordering 3 months in advance, the catalog synopsis gave no clue that this would be a sought-after issue, so a normal shipment of 20 or so copies would sell out in minutes.
The newest blockbuster superhero motion picture release or TV series at one time moved comics off the shelves (Netflix's Daredevil especially) but not so much anymore, if at all. As great as the Wonder Woman movie was you'd have expected the comic book to fly off the shelves.
When Diamond Comic Distributors once again begins shipping, assuming they survive, how many of these mom and pop operations will there be for them to service? And will Greensboro still have 4 shops for four-color fans? My guess: yes!
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