Posted in: Comics | Tagged: comic shop, comic store in your future

Comic Store In Your Future: 2025, The Year I Felt Handcuffed & Beaten

Comic Store In Your Future: 2025 was the year in which I felt handcuffed and then beaten... and not in a good way

2025 is almost over for Rodman Comics in Ankeny, Iowa, Comic Store In Your Future, and everyone else, I suppose. I caught a break in November when we had a Black Friday Sale instead of a Small Business Saturday Sale. A snowstorm arrived on Friday night and continued into most of Saturday. Saturday, needless to say, was dead. Safety, of course, should always be the top priority.

How would I sum up 2025? The year placing simple orders became a guessing game. Comic ordering was almost the same as it always was. As I type this, I am waiting for Lunar to get back to me about where this week's comics are. We received three boxes, but their online site shows that we are supposed to receive them with tracking. We received the three, but there is only one big issue. The three boxes contain only comic supplies, such as bags and boards. As for the comics that are supposed to be with this shipment, not a single one. I am hoping to receive an email stating that a fourth box of our comics is on its way.

The guessing game started with Pokémon, which is red hot right now, thanks to stores being allocated products in quantities less than they ordered. Make something difficult to attain, and people want it more. With such a low number of Pokémon, I am no longer concerned with Pokémon products. Obtaining a box or two of the latest set means that to make any money, the store selling them would have to raise prices, which could turn off customers. I get annoyed having to tell people who call asking about Pokémon that we do not have any. There have been no significant Pokémon sales this year, as the amount we received has been the lowest ever, even after the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Though there are other products to sell, or at least, that is what I thought. Magic: The Gathering released its Final Fantasy set, but just before the release date, it told stores they would not receive the amount they had ordered. This created even more demand.

To add salt to the wound, I would get notified by customers that weeks later, big chain stores like Target got restocked with Final Fantasy and Magic: The Gathering products, while game stores that host gaming events for their products and push Magic: The Gathering far more than big chain stores received nothing more. The Magic set Edge of Eternities comes out, and after the release weekend, no more are available to order. Gone are the days when Magic: The Gathering products would be available for years after release. Magic: The Gathering released a Spider-Man set, and, of course, it was allocated. I was very disappointed at the time, but this set ultimately proved to be a dud. Being shorted badly saved my store a lot of money. Avatar: The Last Airbender is the latest Magic set, of course, we were allocated. I just looked at one of my vendors' websites for reordering, and they look to have none on hand. Recently, it was announced that Magic: The Gathering boxes will be discontinuing their "buy it by the box" promo cards, which were given out for free to people who purchased a box of Magic, a program that has been in place for a long time. There is no need to provide freebies to buy what will sell out anyway.

So Pokémon sales are down for Comic Store In Your Future, and so are Magic: The Gathering sales in the store. Supply is less than demand, oddly enough. In previous years, I had no issues getting the card game Flesh and Blood; this year, they would also allocate their releases.

At least it is just the card games allocation, right? For the first time that I can remember, right before the new X-Men '97 Heroclix set was released, I received a call informing me that we would be receiving three bricks (each containing twelve boosters) instead of the ten I had originally ordered. That hurt. I took pre-orders for the Heroclixes and had to let people know their pre-order was cancelled. We had already stopped taking pre-orders for card games due to allocations that we often would not know the actual number before the release date.

I've gone from feeling cuffed when ordering in early 2025 to a beatdown. I never thought comic ordering through multiple vendors would be easier than placing orders for games. I am now leaning more and more into comics because, as crazy as it sounds, when I order comics, odds are I am going to get what I order. Ordering games is now hopefully close to what I need. Running a retail business, even though we place orders months in advance, we may not receive what is ordered, which is unacceptable. And odds are we'll have as much of that in 2026 as we did in 2025.

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