Posted in: Batman, Comics, DC Comics | Tagged: Batman, bob beerbohm, comic shop, dc comics, killing joke

The Man Who Ordered 7000 Copies Of The Killing Joke For His One Shop

It's Killing Joke time! One of the earliest comic book retailers and comic historian Bob Beerbohm (author of Comic Book Store Wars) set up the first comic book store chain store, before doing the same again with Best Of Two Worlds. Bob Beerbohm writes, with permission for BC to republish, of what the scene was like thirty-two years ago. With the release of Batman: The Killing Joke by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland. And why he ordered seven thousand copies for his one comic book store.

BATMAN early May 1989. Bat-Fever had been in the air once again since early 1988 the previous year. Building even more intensely since Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's The Killing Joke. I had taken a huge risk gamble pre-ordering 7000 copies of the first printing "green" logo cover. But that throw of the dice paid off.

Its then-relatively high cover price point and hard lessons won in the "no-returns" wars inside the Direct Market since Code comics entered in late 1973 had me convinced most of the other comic book store owners would severely under-order it.

[Just like most stores with GI Joe #2 being non-returnable after the returnable #1 try-out. Had ordered 35,000 #1, then 17,000 #2. Every one else ran "out" of #2 and I cleaned up re-wholesaling in the intense aftermarket as "retail" in some stores hit $17. But I digress….just sharing my then reasoning]

This time though, just with the one store, and no more 23 employee overhead in multi-locations. Too many employees had been stealing (just like in ALL the other comic book store chain operations like C&C, Pacific, Dream Factory, etc, but I digress again), I made these first print Killing Jokes cover price – and just One Per Person.

After the 86 flood destruction aftermath of close to a million comics, I changed my mental sea lane. approach to netting and landing cash flow. In approaching the constant desire to bring in more new souls to baptize in the joys of reading comic books which I had been in the trenches since 1972 fighting for. Speculators went nuts trying to talk me out of a bit of quantity. They were driving in from more than a hundred miles out to score a green first print as yellows, pinks, blue, etc kept seeing reprint after reprint. I simply kept saying, One Per Person, which had some guys sending in daughters, mothers, grandmothers, etc which also got me a chance to show these new souls non-super hero stuff.

As in maybe make 'em repeat customers, bringing in the whole family after the Bat Fever died which I knew it would at some after the release of the first movie. (And come back with the 2nd movie, etc) (By this stage I had lived thru a lot of fads come & go)

But how to bring new customers to his store? Bob went big.

What would get me media attention back in that day & age in San Francisco having absorbed learning tourist traffic flow patterns since 1973 when as a then-partner in Comics & Comix we opened our 2nd location at 720 Columbus Ave which was a major tourist fare to Fisherman's Wharf. Back before the Oct 89 Bay Area earthquake destroyed it, the Fell Laguna Exit off 101 was "the" main way most tourists took driving to Golden Gate Park. [The exit no longer exists] The "Panhandle" of the park goes right along Fell. In its middle is a "cut thru" on Masonic. Two very short blocks over was my store near at the corner of Haight and Masonic where seven SF bus lines converge making for a major transfer hub.

I contacted the billboard company at the corner of Fell and Divisidero as that seemed like one of the best billboard site on what I thought I might be able to afford if I got all the ducks to line up in a row. All 4 lanes of traffic went one way coming down a long incline hill where at the bottom is a gas station with this billboard still above it off to the side along Fell.. [Back when I had the chain of stores one of my then empire building 'dreams' was to put up a billboard along the SF freeway heading east to the Bay Bridge. Then with stores on both sides of the Bay, catch em coming & going.]

First I called long time pal (back then, hope so still) Paul Levitz to see about permissions as well as other aspects to get that ball rolling As it turned out, that billboard was so "hot" in demand in San Francisco precisely because it was the ONLY billboard then on Fell St leading to Golden Gate Park, one could only rent it two months at a time. Billboard company said Moosehead Beer in Canada had it for two months May June. So I called Moosehead Beer HQ in Canada, talked to some VP guy there who cheerfully said sure I could have it. They always had 200 billboards up all over USA at any one time. The guy called the billboard company, they then called me, I called Paul to start the paper work fax chain.

My first choice for it was putting up "the" Brian Bolland interior Joker panel from inside The Killing Joke. (Do I really have to show which one? )
45 feet long, 35 feet tall of sheer Joker insanity terror i figured will grab a lot of attention. It sure grabbed mine. (And I am a bit "jaded" when it comes to attention grabbing comic art. I mean this out of humble respect of the thousands of comic artists I have enjoyed learning about stretching back a couple hundred years full time for over half a century now>) The billboard artists made up half a dozen potential designs. Time Warner rejected the Bolland Joker panel. Instead, saying I had to use this Joker image sent here from a card set I was told.

I almost canceled in dejection but inner voices said to trust this design, maybe the Time Warner lawyers were right. The Bolland Joker from TKJ was too intense. Might cause a traffic accident, etc. Dang lawyers. Then I learned this billboard was 4500 a month. For two months.

Sales of Bat T-Shirts had been steadily picking up. Vintage comics. SF Rock concert posters, much more broken down in categories. I took this hard sales data to my then local Bank of America at the end of the Panhandle on Masonic.

Talked with the bank manager who could easily access my re-growing cash flow. He loaned me the $9000 and away we set off on what felt at the time like at the time, Pee Wee's Great Adventure.

When it went up in early May 1989 that week every media outlet in the Bay Area did a thing on my store I was now calling Best Comics on Haight.
ABC, CBS, NBC TV affiliates in SF, Oakland, San Jose, even Sacramento came thru filing and interviewing me. Likewise, large spreads in SF Chronicle, Examiner, Oakland Tribune, San Jose Mercury. And other west coast newspapers picked up on the wire service story generated. My in-coming "traffic" went up 10,000% overnight. Sold over $150,000 in just Bat T-Shirts (lots of Jokers) that first month. Created a "bat cave" of sorts on the left third of the store. Peaked out at some 389 different Bat products in-coming from everywhere it seemed.

As far as I have been able to determine, this was the first ever major comic book store billboard put up in the USA. If there is an earlier one, I surely would like to upgrade accuracy of Comic Book Store Wars.

Does anyone care to challenge that claim? Post in the comments if you can…

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