Posted in: Comics | Tagged: dc, marvel

Comic Store In Your Future – Is This Business Or Craziness?

As a small comic store owner, what do I see in the current comic book market? Some strong signs and some not-so-strong signs.

Currently, the state of my comic store is good. Some great things are going on in-store, and some things that I would like to see improvements on, and things I just flat out say, why do people come up with such bad ideas?

• Back issues are red-hot sellers. People want to buy comics. I bought an Amazing Spider-Man collection from the 70s and 80s a few weeks ago, and those are flying out the door almost as fast as I can get them priced.
• I wish we could get more Iron Man and Hulk issues into the comic store from the 70s and 80s. We have customers who want them. They move on in a hurry if and when I manage to get more in.
• New comic sales here in the comic store are increasingly slowing down. The recent death of Ms Marvel in Amazing Spider-Man was not a big deal at the store. A few people picked it up just for the death, though not many. I over-ordered it.
• The latest issues of Iron Man and Hulk are low sellers. The characters have fans, but few are interested in their latest adventures.
• Marvel has some odd marketing strategies. Avengers, the main title, did not sell well, so what does Marvel do? It comes out with so many spin-offs people are confused. Avengers Beyond, Avengers War Across Time, Avengers All Out War, and Avengers Forever.
• Green Lantern Hal Jordan is back; DC even had promotional rings for the first issue. People who did buy the first issue were surprised about the rings when we gave them out. Green Lantern did not have a stunning return here.
• The renumbering of first issues has had fewer and fewer returns for sales over time and is not boosting sales numbers nearly as much as in years past.

So much product is coming out so quickly; as I write this, a new Pokemon set came out Friday. Heroclixs had a new set called the Avengers 60th Anniversary out on Wednesday. Next Friday is yet another new Magic the Gathering set. The good news is this Magic set looks much more popular with the players and collectors than the last set, which was a total money grab. The set was called March of the Machine Aftermath. It cost the same as regular packs did in the past; the catch? Far fewer cards in each pack than before. Aftermath went over like a lead balloon. Boxes of it can be bought for less online with free shipping than I can buy directly from vendors, which is how bad the set did. The only good news I see is. Hopefully, this is a clear message to the makers of Magic the Gathering (Wizards of the Coast) not to try such a painfully obvious cash grab again.

Marvel decided to copy DC with various foil cover variants. No problem, some people like them. Marvel decided to have either a meager discount for foils or none at all. Meaning the cover price is what stores pay for most of them. That is a pretty weird idea. I do not understand why Marvel, who had a mess when they did lenticular covers years ago, decided to make another mess of gimmick covers. To make things even more complicated, days before the cut-off to order the foil reprint of Wolverine's first appearance in Hulk 181, Penguin showed the discount for stores ordering it at 50 per cent, while it is being reported that is not the case. I just double-checked Penguin, and it still says 50 percent off. I feel bad for the comic stores who ordered it, thinking they were getting it for half-off the cover price and then getting a bill showing no discount. This also puts comic stores in a bad situation; we can change the price, so selling Marvel foil variants is profitable by bagging and boarding them and setting a new price on them; then we can listen to people get angry that something that just was released we raised above cover price because they will assume they were bought with a store's regular discount factored in.

Marvel should follow what DC does with foils and increases the cover price to factor in the normal profit margin stores should get for selling their product. The message as a business owner that I get out of this is to push DC foil variants over Marvel's foil variants. When ordering a DC foil cover variant, we get 55 percent off. To make it even more confusing, most of Marvel's various foil covers have no discounts from the cover price, while one does have a discount. Ordering Star Wars Dark Droids 1 foil variant stores get a 16% discount. Why? Who came up with that idea, and again why?

After years of owning the store, I do not understand these curve balls thrown by Marvel. It is not quite as bad as when Marvel did the lenticular variant month years ago... though it is close.

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