Episode 1349 - Super Show Updates/Let's Talk Shop with Wild Pig Comics
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CGS hits the road! We travel to Wild Pig Comics in Kenilworth, NJ for their Grand Reopening Part II and stick around after closing to record. After some Super Show updates, we talk with Wild Pig owner Chris Eberle about the challenges of operating a comic shop today - how to get/keep customers, what books to order, what kind of in-store events to have and more. (1:16:31)
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Comments
Matthew
PS
No I didn't buy Superman For Tomorrow in Absolute even I have limits. Azzarello sucked major league huge on that story arc.
I'm old. I never got into gaming. It's like 3" GiJoe. I don't get it. However, when my kids were younger, they really got into the Pokemon card game. At the time the big Mile High Comics store ran Pokemon tourements on Wed. nights. My kids loved going to the store and playing. Unfortunately, there was always a couple of old guys that just reaked of pedifilia. Every though I was sitting right there with my kids, these old guys made me very nervous and we stopped going.
Does this sort of thing still go on and what do stores do to deal with it?
I'm right there with Jamie on All-New X-Men. I've enjoyed the stories thus far, but of all the Marvel Now titles ANX seems the most ... precarious. It has the feel of a house of cards.
I stop by the LCS now and then just to be there, but after being used to digital reading the print books look dull and lifeless, IMHO. The glare on the page, etc. just drives me nuts.
I'm admittedly a bibliophile by nature -- I like the feel and smell of the paper as much as the craft of the book itself.
Frankly, my reaction is the opposite of yours -- it's the digital copy I feel to be artificial and lifeless, not the book.
- i like the guided view reader
- i like that my collection is now in the cloud and can access it from anywhere at anytime on any device
- i like that i don't have to physically store and manage my collection any more
- i like the event/storyline chronology feature... for instance u can buy the blackest night storyline in its proper order
- i dont like the price, i wont pay more than 0.99 for a digital copy, i'd rather pay 50 cents for a physical copy in the back issue bins or buy 50% off trades
- i dont know if i will eventually buy the digital version of all the physical comics i have, but i am tempted at times to reread my old books and not have to dig it out of the garage
QUESTION
- are 50% off trades that you can find at conventions cannibalizing the LCS? i'm suprised that wild pig does 50% trades sale in his store, because how do you make money selling at that price?
- i think once amazon fixes their viewers (which sucks for smaller devices like iphones) comixology will face a lot tougher competition and prices should come down significantly, coz u know amazon will squeeze the margins out of everything
1. I love the idea of the customer loyalty card. Ten bucks isn't a hard total to reach during a typical comic shop visit, and on weeks where I came up short, I'd probably buy something else to put me over the edge and get the stamp so I could move toward the eventual discount. I'm willing to bet I'm not alone in this regard, either, and I love to hear if this is indeed helping to drive more sales. I wish my LCS would do something like this.
2. I'm not opposed to comics hardcovers, but I generally only get them if I can find them on steep discount, even for the stuff I really like. I'm likely to pay full retail for a trade (provided it comes in at $15-20 or less) at a shop, but hardcovers are almost solely Amazon/DCBS/eBay territory for me.
3. I'm not opposed to digital comics, either, but they're not my preferred format by any means. I've spent less than $20 on digital comics in the past two years, and none of those have been more than 99 cents. Digital is okay for me if that's the only format in which a given work is available, or if it's cheaper and easier to find them online than in physical form, but I've yet to find a screen where I can look at a full page in the same size and clarity that I would if it were an actual printed object. Like prose books, I can read comics on a device if I have to, but I prefer the real thing whenever possible.
As a graphic designer who looks at a monitor all day and who even recently had a ritual for years of reading floppies with a cup of coffee after my morning workout, I never thought I'd adapt to digital. But now that I've gotten used to it, it would be hard to go back.
As far as digital comics have gone so far, I think the Geeks did an excellent job going over it on the show. The one group saying "The sky is falling!" and the other group saying "Welcome to digital utopia!" were both equally wrong. What proved to be the case was that digital comics are just another "tool" or avenue of media. Do they replace physical comics? Sometimes they do, for some people. Do they bring in new readers? Err, I guess, SOME. But they're supplemental to the industry far more than they are cannibalistic.
Put it this way: Over the last year and a half I've heard an awful lot about how titles like Walking Dead, Saga, and Batman are doing great on an issue-by-issue basis at LCS's. Compared to the amount of attention that these PHYSICAL FLOPPY sales have gotten, I've barely heard it remarked upon that these series are also day-and-date digital. It's barely worth commenting on. The option is there. It makes sense for the option to be there. Some people use that option. But that's all there really is to say. No stories of servers crashing when the new Walking Dead issue is released. The remarkable thing since September 2011 has been the resurgence and resilience of printed issues, when a lot of people thought they'd be dead by now. The New 52 kicked it off, but what's most remarkable is how the tide of independent comics keeps slowly rising. When the average independent title in the top 300 is selling higher than it has in at least 15-20 years, the direct market isn't dying. When Batman is selling 150,000 copies a month again, printed comics aren't dying. When Saga #7 far outsells Saga #1, and then goes back for a second printing, people want printed comics.
That's not to say that sales are all great and the LCS market is stable. There is particular cause for concern about the hopelessly declining sales of about 26 of DC's New 52. But overall there has been a big uptick in interest, where once we thought there wouldn't be. At the very least, there seem to be more readers willing to give first issues a chance. Titles seem to be debuting higher, even factoring out the sales due to variant covers. A big potential and a tremendous amount of goodwill is there. Unfortunately, many titles that lack staying power seem to fall quicker on a monthly basis. They debut higher but fall quicker, even 7-9 months in (when, normally, titles that were going to stick for a good long time would have held their figures a lot better by then, instead of continuing to decline 5% every month).
Lastly, I'll just go on record as saying that, YES, reading things on a backlit screen can definitely get annoying! Scientific studies have actually been done that show how people retain less information and have more difficulty immersing themselves in the material when they read things on backlit screens vs. paper. And in fact, the people who tend to protest the loudest about how they actually CAN get into the subject matter more when reading on a computer screen--they tend to be the people whose comprehension falters the most!
On the other hand, when reading comics printed on slick shiny paper... I often get annoyed by the GLARE!
Nothing's perfect; there's positives and negatives to everything...
I think Remender's Cap run looks like a lot of fun, although I haven't read more than previews so far.
And yes, $4 for a 10-15 minute read is not a great value. I just can't see how you can get a new reader to get floppies at those prices.
*UPDATE*
I finally read Remender's first Cap issue. I really liked it. It's a nice refreshing change, plus I enjoy Remender's dialogue a lot more than Brubaker's.
I'll occassionally dip my toe in for a freebie digital book, but that's been the extent of it. For me, a part of the process is the weekly trip into the shop to check the new release shelf, pick up a title or two (the things that I'm most excited about) and maybe look for a back issue or two. I use DCBS as well, but that's for the stuff that I enjoy, but don't feel compelled to be passionate about with people in a face to face exchange. I really enjoy the weekly shop talk and find almost as much value in that experience as I do in the reading experience, so much so that I make a point of going in to browse, or buy some back issues on the weeks that I know that I've got nothing new coming out.
With regard to the episode, I've really enjoyed most of the content. I'd say all, but there were some pretty terrible issues with sound levels. Some mikes seemed like they were too far away and others seemed to have way too much bass (no pop filter or windscreen?).