Comic store tales thread? Comic store tales thread

Comic store tales thread? Comic store tales thread.

>New comic store opens up in a closed down bank in town.
>Haven't had a comic shop in town for five years
>Fuck yeah
>Pick up about a half dozen comics
>Owner comes up and asks me what comics I like
>I say Daredevil, some Image stuff, and some Deadpool.
>Owner gets excited and says he loves Daniel Way's run on Deadpool and said he met the guy last year
>Shit taste alert goes off and I immediately get mad thinking of Way's comics
>Throw all the comics I have on the floor
>Walk right the fuck out
>Even in the face of Armageddon, never compromise

How about you guys?

My local comic book store turned into a Hot Topic/Spencer's Gfits Lite. It's all just edgy shirts and invader zim backpacks

ITT: things that (I hope) didn't happen

Wow that's edgy OP
The guy at my LCS has pretty shit taste too
But I don't hold it against him because he's running a business all day

His wife handles all the money anyway so there's probably something wrong with him

Also he plays the latest superhero movie on DVD on repeat for a month when they come out, makes me not want to go in desu but I usually suck it up

My city is under-served by comic stores, there's one small one on the north side and one medium-sized one on the west side. Neither are great.

My cousin is working on opening a new one and he's extremely serious about it.

What should I recommend he carry in order to make it a great store instead of a good store? I think he should have a small section for locally-created comics.

As a female who knows how to shower, I feel very stared at in comic shops. They can sense that I hate capeshit and mainly read weird alt small press shit like pic related

Also my local comic shops are like how describes, it's all pop vinyl and marvel/disney merchandise

why are you even going to comic shops lol

just order online

I still have nightmares of my journey to the underground level of a local mall, where it turned to Spirited Away, old 1800-style,empty stores with the comic shop being in the far end.
Bought nothing out of how pissed scared I was and went back, only to never see it or the lower level again.

Is this post satire?

Because my normie friends drag me there >:( and I like some of the things they have. I feel the need to support local comic book shops so they have enough money to buy the weird shit i like

Are you seriously trying to use emoticons here?

>Because my normie friends drag me there >:(
>:(
I think you've been infected

I've told this story before but I think its appropriate since we always see women bitching about comics shops not being a safe space

>Be black
>Walk into a comic shop looking for Supreme Power OHC vol 2
>Sees everyone by the shelves with their bags and suddenly the white female worker comes up to me to tell me to put my bag up front
>I give her the side eye and walk out

I never got that from a dude before

None of them sell bandes-dessinees so I have no reason to visit them

>:3

>Supreme Power

Shame it ended on a freakin cliffhanger and that awful reboot.

>there is exactly one comic store in my city of a million people that stocks trades on release day
>but they're pretty far away
>they open a second location five minutes from my house
>had the last and possibly only copy of The Eternaut in the entire city

If this is real then you have some shit taste in comics.

>Comic shop in my home town is great, been open since '08
>Great little place, just owner and one staff member, both know a lot about comics and don't have shit taste, regular D&D games, etc.
>Meet a few people through said games, everyone has a pretty good knowledge of comics etc but not in a rub it in your face way
>Move away to uni
>2 stores there, at both the staff know fuck all about comics, don't even seem to read them
>Join university comic society and it's just a bunch of fucking weebs
>Go to visit friend at his uni, pop into store there, just like the ones in my uni town
>Realize the comic shop in my home town is the exception, not the rule

>Buy a ton of clothes from Goodwill because i'm a poorfag
>Go to local comic book shop
>7/10 qt comes up asking me if I need help finding anything.
>We get to talking about comics n shit
>Woman says she really likes my shirt
>It's a random band shirt I got from Goodwill for a dollar
>Make some shit up about how I like them
>She asks me if I'm doing anything later
>Walk out of there with a volume of Empowered and a date later that night

Moral of the story shop at good will.

god i'm so alone
pity me

Lots of vinyl characters.

Artsy stuff. He won't be able to beat IST or Amazon's prices on common stuff, so he should stock less of it and get weird things that people would only find by randomly browsing a store.

Of course, he does still need to stock a lot of common stuff for the normies, walk ins, impatient people, impulse buyers, and so on.

>I think he should have a small section for locally-created comics.

That would be good, and maybe he can get them to come over and sign or present their work. Bond with the community a bit.

Also has a good point.

he might as well invest into mtg or some other side thing other than comics

this. get him to order some mini kus, 2dcloud, small press stuff in anything with bright colours or art styles that stand out and make people want to look inside. if he can be a curator then it will give people a reason to keep coming back to HIS comic book sop rather than going to the other two.

sorry i made a mess of that second sentence

>get him to order in some mini kus, 2dcloud, or any other small press publisher's stuff - anything with bright colours or art styles that stand out on a shelf, the sort of thing people will pick up and open because they want to see what could be inside

I got a job in a comic shop. I don't read cape-anything more than once every few years, and don't much like issues as a format. What comics I've read are mostly older and well-read by now. I'm mostly a fa/tg/uy GM, but all anybody plays these days is 5e and PF, so what I do have to offer is pretty worthless most of the time.

I feel a little out of place sometimes.

>my LCS allows the wednesday group to drink beer in the store
>accidentally left my beer on top of the back issue catalog
>"GET THE FUCK OUT! IF YOU CAN'T RESPECT THE STORE, YOU CANT BE HERE, MOTHERFUCKER!"
>I hung my head... I hung my head.

Is the name of the LCS Star Toys? And is the owner named Gary?

Money-wise, high rent pushes stores out of cities. A lot of places set up as restaurant/gaming spaces these days, with sparse comics as a sideline.

If you wanted to do a more comics oriented version of this (and if your city is big enough) you could hook up with your local ASIFA chapter or equivalent for figure drawing, drinking and drawing, or comic jam sort of events.

>Go travelling around the world for 6 months in my twenties.
>Leave a long list for my local comic shop to collect while I'm away.
>Get a mate to go in every 2 months to pick them up.
>Forget to include 4-5 monthly books and was too autistic to email my shop to collect them for me.
>Spend six months finding comic book shops in weird parts of foreign cities.

Was actually really cool. I found this intersection in Paris near Nortre Dame Cathedral that had comic shops on each corner(on Free Comic Book day!), I found a comic shop in Tel Aviv and had to have all my bags checked before I could go into the mall that it was in because their security was ludicrous, fond a few massive multi-level comic shops in New York which was pretty cool.

My personal favourite was this place in Budapest(I can't remember the name of it and my journal from that day was more about this cute Aussie girl I was trying to get the courage to flirt with early that morning), I found the address online and then went there and found a shoe store.I looked everywhere around but couldn't see the comic shop anywhere. So I figured I'd chance it and asked the lady in the shoe store if the comic shop was around.
She spoke no English but I started going, "Superman, Batman, Spider-man..." etc and she got the idea and pointed to this door at the back of the shop.
I'd watched "Hostel" about a week prior to this and figured if I died like that today I'd probably get on the news.

The comic book shop was this tiny little room in the back of this shoe shop, it was the only comic book shop in all of Hungary. This guy working there was really chilled out and we had a good five-ten minute chat about comics and the city, he told me where I could go buy some cheap second hand clothes because my clothes were getting pretty tattered.
I got my copy of Final Crisis Issue 1 and issue 8 of The Sword and left, but the shoe lady just watched me the entire way out the building. Not trusting me for a second.

>I'm mostly a fa/tg/uy GM, but all anybody plays these days is 5e and PF
wat?

DnD 5th Edition and Pathfinder

>TFW the only two game books I have are Paranoia and Changeling: The Lost

I run roleplaying games as a hobby. Most people just play D&D, so my knowledge about shit like Unknown Armies and Jovian Chronicles is pretty well wasted.

owner of my LCS is practically completely blind, but he knows most of the regular customers by voice and will always greet people by name if he hears them. He can still read some but he has to use this huge magnifing thing hooked up to his computer that makes the letters about 6inches high so he can see em.

I got a black guy story. I went to my lcs one Thursday after work to get a new hellboy or bprd comic, I'm waiting to pay. Black guy I went to highschool comes in, looks kind of lost, I thought he came in to ask to use a bathroom or something. One of the staff asks him if he needs help, he starts asking about rebirth, ww, batman, and sups, they help him find what he needs. Looks like he is about to go to the counter to pay, starts walking back towards a rack and I'm not kidding he picks up mlp comic and goes back to the counter to pay. That threw me off because this guy use to be a thug, I remember him beating up a kid in class, hearing about him beat up a homeless dude pretty bad and seeing him get in a huge brawl after school one time. Hopefully he got into comics and calmed down.

I go to my comic book shop monthly, maybe even bi-weekly if I'm in a good mood, to pick up in piles rather than just pick up everything the day it comes out because I'm a lazy fuck and have scans.

So, I went in last week.

Now, and this is important, the people who run the place are generally really intelligent people who I have very nice discussions with about the stuff I read. Christ, they have like two people with MTMTE on their pull list, and they appreciate that so much that they drew a Rodimus Star on a sticky note and put it on my copy of Lost Light #1.

I asked them what they thought of CWII. They thought it was a great event that did an amazing job of setting up future plot points.

I think I inhaled the cancer.

Ah. okay. Sorry. I don't know shit about DnD/tabletop games. I've always wanted to play DnD but no one I know plays, so it makes me sad to know I'm going to die without ever even experiencing roleplaying...

It's pretty demoralizing being weird when everyone around me is normal...

Maybe they just have no taste like me and enjoy everything? It does feel great that I can pick up any random garbage and will probably like it.

It's not that strange if you grew up with black friends. I knew a couple guys that went full on autist when it came to comics and cartoons, but if you fucked with 'em or looked at them wrong they'd put your head through a wall.

Most of 'em have calmed down since highschool though and no one has been to jail last I checked. Only dude I still talk to is still into that shit, even likes his MLP shit. I personally wouldn't fuck with him though. Big ass black guy that works out everyday.

My LCS is run by a miserable middle aged man, and I'm not sure he's ever read a comic book.

He apologies and says the card reader has been running slow today at every purchase, then it takes about 2 minutes for the transaction to register on it. It must have been running slow for about 2 years now.

>beating up a kid in class, hearing about him beat up a homeless dude pretty bad and seeing him get in a huge brawl after school one time
dude sounds like he made a heel-face-turn. why not talk to him or something. also,

>Hellboy
>B.P.R.D.
patrician tastes my friend.

A good thing about Florida is that there's plenty of comic book stores.
There's one I go to in kind of a crappy neighborhood in Hollywood, which I love. Lots of different types of people go there. I get to see a lot of thug looking dudes buying Yu-Gi-Oh cards. There was this one girl who would come in with her ultra-hood friends, and she would be wearing cosplay wigs. I always thought that was really cute.
Of course some creepy-dude-hitting-on-me stories, but they're probably really typical.

>I get to see a lot of thug looking dudes buying Yu-Gi-Oh cards.

florida here, i can confirm this 100%

>Want comics for years
>Nearest store is an hour away and hard to get to
>fuckthat.jpg
>New store opens 5 mins away.
>Buy comics every forth day so they will never leave

You don't have a brother or a male friend you can pay to go pick up your comics for you? That's what I did.

That sounds awesome. Where the fuck was this?

my dream is to see hood dudes playing yugioh irl

Maybe they just told him it was great to get rid of the CWII shit Marvel overshipped.

Oh my god, it's great because these guys are usually really funny when they play, they talk so much shit with their friends.

just go to a game store in a more "urban" area on game night

There are a few online services for running games over the internet like Roll20 that you can check out. If there is a game shop nearby, look for people advertising games.

:P

Who was in the wrong here?

You both were. You fucked up, but he should've at least given you a warning, or something. He definitely shouldn't have flipped his shit that bad if it was the first time you'd done something like that.

>Roll20
I know about this but it's just not the same as playing the real thing with real people around y'know?

>If there is a game shop nearby, look for people advertising games.
thing is, there are multiple hobby shops/LCS/etc. near me but I only ever see them advertising or playing MTG all the time.

plus I have crippling social anxiety and the fact that they seem and sound pretentious when I hear them talk really doesn't help matters.

If anyone ever ends up near or in Victoria BC sometime we have 2 comic shops, a games workshop, a tabletop board game store, a used/vintage toy store, and a large used video store/pawnshop that has old vidya games.... all in one intersection.

Both the comic stores are cool, ones got more merch and other stuff and the other has a large back issue section right in the middle of the room with lots of tpbs and other cool editions of things around the outside. the people working at both are really cool.

Without anyone running an open group locally, and crippling social anxiety, online is your only realistic option. It can have some benefits due to the tools available to DMs and not having to deal with the hassle of meeting in person.

it was a local mall in northern NJ. They altered/revamped the whole place so its actually desirable to go to, but before it was like a barren wasteland. Hell, i think there was even a church down there or something with that comic shop. Its been such a long time i barely remember its original layout, aside from having an undergound level.

Start out as a customer at, become an employee of, eventually become manager of LCS.
After running the place for about 5 years, RICO busts the owner for various organized crime charges.
Suddenly, no more shop.

reminds me of that episode of RS where there was a secret level other mall in a post apocalyptic ruin.

...

lazer cheese

Roll20 is great, i also have no group to play with IRL and even if i did i would probably flake out too much, been playing games with friends on there for like 4 years now, theres even webcam and voice support if the people youre playing with are into that.

I haven't really looked around their forums but i would imagine theres people listing games they need ppl for, give it a go

The successful ones where I live fall into two categories:

1. Basically just a huge fucking warehouse. Has pretty much anything you could want. I wouldn't recommend this approach though since it seems it'd be hard to start from scratch.

2. Also a cafe with lots of card and tabletop stuff. The food and drinks are good because they bring in people who might not otherwise go to the store and they also are good for when doing tabletop events. If people are just hanging out playing dnd or whatever it gives them something to spend money on.

I wish we had ones that were also a cafe

I have a question. How is your guys' experience ordering through comic shops? Does it always take a while to get your order? I want to support the LCS's but man it's hard when you can get something on Amazon for cheaper and way sooner without dealing with people. Does buying through the shop support the artist more than buying through amazon?

>store is walking distance from my house
>is pretty current on releases and has good selection
>owner seems like a cool guy
>apparently worked at Microsoft during the tech boom in the 90s
>didn't like being a cog in the machine
>sold of most or all of his Microsoft stock while it was still hot to open comic book store
I haven't bought anything since I pirate most of my comics and the one time I was going to buy a trade, it was out of stock/print.

If I ever want to get a trade again, I'll go through them.

I don't actually have any good LCS tales. I've never really had a bad or even particularly memorable encounter at my LCS or any other comic shop. It's a pretty standard affair.

What am I doing wrong?

Mine does.

I always assumed it was a typical flop-shop neckbeard shitshow based on the game store it's attached to that i used to frequent.

Literally the best comic shop I've ever been in. Any Trade or GN you could want, any floppy. Tons of cool knickknacks too. They have this beautiful great red dragon statue I wanna buy soon as I feel like parting with $250.

>captcha: storefronts

>I asked them what they thought of CWII. They thought it was a great event that did an amazing job of setting up future plot points.

I've been going to the same comic shop for nine years now and it took about seven years for the guy who works there to criticise a comic book badly enough that I wouldn't consider buying it(it was a Marvel book and I don't buy Marvel outside of Miracle Man, Garth Ennis Punisher stuff(like Baracuda, Punisher Max etc which don't exist anymore) I pretty much gave up on Marvel after Ultimates 3 and Civil War 1). He knew I wasn't going to buy it anyway so he said it wasn't very good.
Guy shits on comic book movies and TV shows non-stop however.

They might be pretty cool with you but they have a boss to answer to and shitting on their own product isn't a good idea.

The best you'll usually get is them telling you that "This is a good book, but I don't think that you'd like it, given what you usually read." or some variation of that. Not attacking the product but letting you know that they think you'll hate it.

>Have to travel 30 miles to comic store
>Have a busy 2 months work and other family commitments
>Finally get to go up to grab my put backs
>shit faced, achy riddled greasy haired hitch pitched worker tell me they put all my comics out the day before since it had been 2 months
>been going to the store for 15 years
>Tell them whatever and will go online and buy it from now on.

Truth be told after the shit Marvel have done lately I was about ready to stop buying comics anyway

This is the most probable cause. Their DC and IDW sales have been going up (particularly after Revolution), but Marvel hasn't been doing them any favors. They have a hate-boner for Peter Starker (as I said, they're very intelligent.) More than likely they're just trying to get rid of it, because they said it's finally over like it was some kind of miracle. (I mean, it was, but that's beside the point)

Short story: user is most likely right. Shilling is a necessary evil to rid themselves of a greater evil.

I work part-time for a comic vender. AMA

Dang dude, you went full blown rigatoni. Spilled your pasta all over the floor

Not a tale so much as an observation about my LCS.

Moved to new neighborhood, check out comic shop, owner's real cool and a really great salmon. Almost pushy, but really attuned to your tastes so he sold me on a lot of stuff and got me back into comics. This is when RIP was kicking off. People would come in and he'd be like, 'oh what are you looking for/you might like these, etc' Did good business but still tough to make a decent profit.

Sells it to co-owners. One dude is literally Comic Book Guy. Too cool for school. "Hates" most comics. So people will come in, "Hey did you get the new ____?" "Ugh, why would you even want that?" Or "How'd this book been?" "Terrible!" Rather than suggesting books, indulging in conversation and enthusiasm he shits on everyone's taste. He's so cynical that i'm watching his customer base and sales plummet and it's really only a matter of time before they're forced to close.

>a really great salmon

oh jeez. "salesman"

Is the comic book guy in Tucson? I can think of a place.

>heehee I'm such a quirky girl
End your life

I didn't know this was a cringe thread

>Comic book store near my dentists
>only ever see neckbears with cargo pants and greasy ponytails go in there
>large MLP poster on the window
>the only thing visible since all the windows are blacked out
I honestly think they go in there to jack on into a bucket in the middle of the room.

>Sells it to co-owners. One dude is literally Comic Book Guy.
Who are the other co-owners? Do they even care they're about to be out of jobs, and why aren't they keeping CBG in the back or something so as not to scare off paying costumers?

But yeah, it's awful seeing the place you like about to shut down because of an idiot that can't keep his mouth shut. Happened to a local book store I favorited.

Philly, but it's certainly a type

The other co-owner (it's really just the two of them) is a little better but still snobby. Each week there's only a few books that meet their approval, everything else gets a 'meh' if not an evisceration. They're more opinionated fans than salesmen.

Whether it happened or not I laughed.

>live in illinois
>every single comic store which you can set up a pulllist with needs you to pull at least 10 comics for even a 10% discount
>go to college in indiana
>super small comic shop near college which is connected with a small bookstore/hippie jewelry place/record place/random shit store gives you a 15% discount on everything from trades to those pop figures just for keeping a pulllist of at least 3 comics

Why is this allowed?

Pic related: I got this a month ago from the indiana shop, I don't know how this hadn't been snagged by someone but I guess that can be atributed to the low volume of people who likely buy comics anymore since this first printing of Providence has been sold out everywhere for months as far as i can tell. Only downside is they don't get every new floppie that comes out but they only have like 1 shelf to display them so I don't blame them.

mine only requires 3, 10 seems excessive

Fantasy Comics?

You also likely make a much better margin on the drinks and food.
Although it should be noted that restaurants are a prime example of businesses that fail at a high rate, they're a gamble if not everything goes right. And they also require a lot of equipment or even staff that you wouldn't have otherwise.
t. Did some market research on opening a library-restaurant.

the cafe thing is a good idea, but you really need to focus on tabletop and card games in that case. set up tournaments, have some music playing, huge open floor with lots of tablets for cards and a corner or an event night for the tabletop stuff. make money off cards, dice, game mats, and drinks.

the food doesn't have to be anything exotic either. just focus on 2-3 kinds of things and you're pretty much set. like do fried rice (you can cook it with super cheap and long keeping ingredients), shakes or soda drinks, or maybe some sort of panini thing.

the bad thing would be your comic book focus would go down considerably since you don't want people eating or drinking near your comics, or reading them for free. you may have to focus on getting and holding books for people.


the purely comic book stores I've run into tend to focus on comic books and figures, focusing on making profits off figures. like they'd set up an online portal to also do preorders to bring in extra revenue. The store was small as possible to minimize rent and they'd hold most the goods at their own home or a warehouse or do direct preorders so the product leaves as soon as it comes in.

Even with very simple food you still have to follow regulations, which can be pretty drastic and have adjoined costs.

>work in local cinema for my 4 years of high school and a few during collage
>cinema shuts down to lack of profits
>years later new owners by the building and reopen
>add a comic section to their shop
>offer anyone with a pull list of 5+ titles a discount on all other items in the shop (aside from movie tickets)
>Real awesome, get myself a pull list
>come in one week, find that Spider-Man and Deadpool has been taken off my list without my knowledge
>ask the younger clerk who worked new comic days about this
>tells me that it's a shut title and shouldn't be supported, so he took it off my list
>owner finds out, removes him from that shift, gets me the back issue I need, pays for it out of his own pocket.

Hella good, the new owner is a total bro.

>that one creepy balding guy who's muttering to himself as he picks out his comics

I am sure that most of them don't care that you read mostly indie stuff. It is more likely that they sense you feel uncomfortable around them so they therefore feel uncomfortable around you.

But for the vocal minority of guys it does let them categorize you as someone who isn't a real comic fan, I have noticed this, it makes it easier for them to deal with the fact that there's a woman in their hobby. They're determined to convince themselves that you're a casual. I used to mainly read the big two and I was reading them before some of these guys were born, it's not my fault that they just don't publish that many great comics anymore.

Bonus story!
>Go to pick up my pull list one week, see Ostrander's Suicide Squad Volume 1 on the shelf
>Oh hell yeah.jpeg
>puck that baby up and thrown down that week's tips
>the same younger clerk tells me that we they have New 52 Suicide Squad on the shelf too
>I decline politely telling him I don't really like the new 52 run
>2 months later spot Volume 2
>again he pushes New 52 on me, again I decline
>tells me New 52 is better because it has Harley Quinn in it instead of a bunch of literally whose
>tell him I'm not really a Harley fan, pay for my stuff take off

>Suicide Squad movie night
>My date and I get our tickets
>owner tells me that there is a short easter egg in the movie that he's sure I'll pick up on that he had to point out to his crew
>after the movie I ask him "Was it the building named Ostrander?"
>He confirms, I tell him that the same building appear in the suicide squad episodes of Arrow
>watch him get blown away by this info.

And with customers like this, people wonder what happened to LCS

I went to Third Eye Comics while I was living in Maryland, even though I had to drive out an hour to get there, it was well worth it. Huge variety of stock, merchandise, and really nice staff. They also had a lot of signings and guest appearances that were nice to show up for. (I have All-Star Section 8 signed by Garth Ennis now, fuck yeah)

I moved for a new teaching position earlier this year, and even though my LCS (Beyond Comics) is smaller now, it's also closer to my apartment and has one thing I missed when I was going to Third Eye. Old back-issue longboxes. I love flipping through those things to see what random shit I can dig up.

>been to three local lcs shops
>never gone back to any of them
That's my tale

Haven't been in a comic store in a decade. The single store in my area is run by a guy who treats the store like his private playhouse, he is rude to customers for walking in and interrupting his MtG game and berates customers for buying big 2 comics. I like indie stuff too but the reality is that batman and spiderman are what will keep the shop open, its unlikely that enough copies of Maus will move monthly to keep you afloat.

I heard he comes from a fairly rich and very politically-connected family in the area, that they're funding him to keep his "small businessman" persona afloat, that otherwise the shop would've closed years ago.

Download comics here, sometimes pick up a collection from Amazon. I'm just not supporting my friendly neighborhood comic store when it aint friendly.

>Been going to my LCS since around 2000
>Used to buy DBZ and later Star Wars figures all the time with my weekly allowance
>Besides reading about heroes in those encyclopedias, the only comic I read was Exiles
>Stopped around 06 as I got into music
>It changed owners in 2014
>I knew the previous owner but not personally as I was just a kid when I went in there
>When Disney bought Lucasfilms and announced the new Marvel SW comics I decided I was going to start fresh with them
>The store had been remodeled (for the better) and the new owners were pretty cool. It's a pretty small store
>Every time I go on tour I will email them weekly with stuff I want
>Developed a pretty good relationship with the new guys who own it to where they will hold shit for me.
>Recently got the Black Series Darth Revan in and only had 2 so he saved it for me, and marked it down $5