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

Comic Store In Your Future… On How To Be A Better Customer

In 2026, time to do some work on yourself and become a better comic book store customer for your local shop.

Collecting comics is a fun hobby. One fun part of collecting comics for many is going to physical comic stores. Looking for the newest release or back issues to fill that hole in their collection. Being actually social by talking about comics face-to-face with others in a comic store. Seeing a comic for the first time and knowing that it is a must-have. Comic stores play a significant role in the world of comic collecting.

For decades, I visited comic stores in search of back issues. I am old enough to have collected comics before the internet. Yes, back in my day, one had to get off their butt and go out into the world and get what they wanted. I tried mail-ordering comics once, and it did not work out. The internet has made comic collecting much easier. Though not nearly as fun as going to a comic store.

Do you enjoy your local comic store or stores? Want to do some easy things that will help them out? After being open for over fifteen years, more and more people are doing things that hurt us as a comic store. This is an attempt to educate and help people who are unaware that their actions are actually harming comic stores.

In a previous column, I asked who could end my store, Rodman Comics? The customers, I said.

Firstly, as a customer, when you order something through your comic store, you actually pay for it and pick it up. Sounds simple enough, right? As I have written before, when I first opened, people would tell us that other stores would not order something for them. I learned the hard way why. Often, people order something that comes in, we call them, and they never bother to pick it up. Worse, people will have us order something for them and then say they got it elsewhere when they come in again, even though it is now in for them. That is totally baffling. As I reviewed the unsold items from 2025 for our tax records, I noticed that there are many special-order items that were not picked up. Some comics, some even omnibuses. That gets expensive.

Recently had a person come in, and I pulled out the comic that was requested for special order by them, and told them, " Oh, I should have told you, I got that elsewhere. I thought, 'No, you never should have had us order it.' The reason you ordered it was that you said you could not find it at any other comic store. Comics ordered by comic stores are non-returnable, meaning comic stores buy them, and if we don't sell them, we pay for them and end up keeping them. We lose money on those special orders that we were nice enough to order. Then, to make matters worse, that person started asking about trade paperbacks to order. I did not order them because I had just put back the comic the person ordered, so why increase the store losses and get trades that may or may not get picked up? Why is it all right for some people to think it is fine to cost comic stores money?

The never-ending battle for comic stores, getting people to pick up their pull boxes. I do believe pull boxes are a mistake, one that comic stores make because they feel that if they don't, people will just go to another store that does. Pull boxes take the fear of missing out on a comic or comics and turn it into a box with my comics, though I don't want to spend money to pick up the comics for many. In many minds, the comics in one's pull box are considered theirs, even though they have not paid for them. Meaning, even though they are supposed to come in monthly and don't, and if they finally do, they claim we sold their comics. They are not your comics until you have actually purchased them from the comic store. If one does not have a legitimate reason not to pick up their comics monthly, such as being in the military, and is simply too lazy to stop in once a month for comics, then a comic collection may not be the right choice for them.

Back issue bins seem to confuse more and more people. I have people come in and ask where past issues of Batman are. I will walk over and point out the tab in the back issue bin that says Batman. No biggie, then the next question is where are your Birds of Prey back issues? I will walk over, thumb through the back issue bin, and show them the Birds of Prey there. Then, they'll ask, 'Where are your Captain America back issues?' At this point, I still show the person where they are, although I admit that I'm thinking it's alphabetical; it should be obvious. I have had younger past employees tell me they do not know the alphabet. Many people now seem to lack basic knowledge. I have told this story many times about one of my fellow business owners in the strip mall where I rent, who hired a college student to do filing for them. They learned the hard way that the person did not know the alphabet. The person actually bought a book with the alphabet in it to help them.

I was stunned; I took out my phone and looked up the alphabet. and was like, 'Why didn't that person simply use their phone to look up the alphabet?' Over the years, more and more people, for whatever reason, after looking through the back issue bin, would simply put the comics they had pulled out back, and then decide not to get them, instead placing them back in the bin. I was wondering why I had so few Venom back issues. Found them in the middle of the Wonder Woman back issues section. Not quite where they should have been. I have people who pull out back issues and just leave them on top of the back issue bin. Essentially, they claim they are too lazy to put them back. Had an Iron Man back issue, which is bagged and boarded and priced for some reason left in front of the newest issues of Hyde Street, which is not backed and boarded, and, on the shelf, today, for some reason, the DC KO one-shot Red Hood vs Joker was in front of it. People need to put things back where they found them. How would these people like it if I went to their workplace and just created more work for them? Or cost them money? When someone comes in looking for something, and we cannot find it, that is a lost sale. When I find out it is because someone decided to put a comic back where it didn't belong, that person costs me money.

If spending hardly any money, use cash. We have a dollar bin to move out unsold stock or comics that we purchased specifically for the dollar bin. We have Magic: The Gathering customers who come in and spend twenty-five cents on a card. These sales are unlikely to have a significant impact on the daily sales meter. When using a card to pay, a percentage of the transaction is paid to the card processing company. Feel free to use cash for transactions. When I go out to eat, I use cash to tip so the server gets more money than if I had used a card. Some servers have told me that they receive cash tips more quickly than card tips, because where they work, they only get paid out tips from cards on certain days. The server receives more money and receives the tip money more quickly, which is better for them. Cash transactions for businesses mean no card fees, saving money on the transaction.

Don't be rude or dumb when dealing with local stores. Just like other people who deal with the general public, there are people who can be challenging to deal with when running a comic store. For our last sale of 2025, someone I had never seen before was upset that we had a Magic: The Gathering card on our Facebook page that was being auctioned off, and it had a bid of 99 cents. Posted on the store's Facebook page that the card was only worth 50 cents, according to TCGplayer, which had the card listed at a market price of 60 cents. The card was for sale for 50 cents plus $1.31 shipping, although the person left that part out. Trying to make it sound like we are ripping people off with a 99-cent sale on Facebook is pretty weak.

If a Magic player cannot afford 99 cents, then maybe it would be best to quit playing Magic: The Gathering. Many stores do not sell cards at TCGplayer prices; some Magic cards listed on the site will have prices significantly less than fifty cents, whereas other stores will not sell cards for less than fifty cents. It just is not worth a store's time to sell cards for just pocket change prices. We do not charge less than 25 cents, and I have been told we are the cheapest in the area by customers. Truthfully, 25 cents is not worth our time, and we should consider increasing it. When I don't like the price of something, I simply don't buy it and move on. After I saw that person's Facebook post, I simply clicked on it so that no one would see it.

Asking for a discount on an item when a sale is scheduled for the following week is generally considered in poor taste. Why? It won't be much of a sales day if, two weeks early, we just let everyone get the discount. A sales day is an effort to encourage people to visit the store on that day and make a purchase. I have learned that once a discount is requested and granted, that person will then continue to ask for a discount and become upset when told no. As a result, all previous instances where a discount was given will be forgotten. They do 99 good things for a person, and it will be forgotten due to one "bad" thing. Sadly, that is human nature. Additionally, these same individuals would likely refuse to give up any of their pay, so why should a comic store owner?

You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. That saying means kindness and politeness are more effective at winning people over than rudeness. Be kind to your local comic store, and may they be kind to you, keeping the fun in comic collecting.

2026 has just gotten started. I hope it goes well for everyone.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!