Why I avoid Comic Shops

By Tyson Hinton

Wolverine and Psylocke from my Deviant Art account Zerochanges

        I used to me quite an avid collector of comics. I have 4 long boxes of comics which were almost all bought since the the turn of the century. Before that time I could not afford to by comics with all my other hobbies. Comics have always been expensive for me. When I first started collecting comics in the nineties comics as a kid many comics I purchased at Wal-Mart which came in little packs which had three or four comics bundled together. I always keyed into the Spider Man and X-Men comics. The Avengers and Fantastic Four characters didn't interest me much in those days though I was aware of them all as characters. The most prized of my comics was the round robin Spider-Man story which was drawn by the great Mark Bagley. I never got the first or last issues of that story but I read those issues so many times. Those comics are in horrible shape. I didn't have bags and boards back then. 

        Once I started to buy comics on a monthly basis was around the time of Chris Claremont and Salvador Larroca's X-Treme X-Men. I had subscriptions to many comics as well. I preferred to get my comics that way because even as a teenager I knew it was way cheaper than buying them at a comic shop. I grew up in a small town that just didn't have a comic shop in my area.  The closest shop was a store called Dragons Keep which was twenty miles from my home. I made to trip every two or three weeks and had quite the pull list. The owner of the store knew I liked variant covers and he would put those in my pull list without ever being asked. I happily bought all the variant covers for the books I enjoyed. A year after high school I moved across the country to New Jersey and New York where I lived for a couple years before moving back home to Utah. I soon had things set up like I did before I moved. Marvel had stopped their subscription service so everything was bought at the comic store though I was getting all the variants for the comics I collected. Soon after my return however the owner of Dragons Keep sold his business after 20 years. Things soon changed at Dragon's Keep. They moved the store across the street to a new building. The building was much more spacious than the old store. Things were cleaned up, new employees made things more organized than ever before, new shelving allowed for more diversity in product, new lighting made the building much brighter, and the new owner seemed passionate about comics. However the bad things that fanboys are known for soon affected the shop. Some new employees and customers were the epitome of the fan boy hygiene stereotypes. Rules that "The Keep" once had we're gone. In fact they began to keep body spray in the bathroom. 

I will at least point at the those holes in the wall in that picture are not the norm for their building. It is quite clean and spacious for the most part. I think they were remodeling when I took that picture. 


        Many long time customers like myself were soon disenfranchised. The Keep soon started to under order on comics causing many to not receive what was supposed to be their pull list and some like myself we're not given the variant covers in our pull list. Instead those books were now sold at premium prices much higher than the cover price. It's not uncommon to see those sell for 10-20 dollars depending on the title. Frankly after 15 years of patronage I no longer felt like a valued customer. This was going on during the same time as price increases to the monthly titles. I soon drastically slimmed down my pull list while I looked for alternatives to the expense of the comic shop. I was no longer willing to pay what I saw as  exorbitant pricing especially on smaller books I felt I was taking a chance on. I remember having a discussion with one of the employees at The Keep about how I had began to purchase more trade paper backs (TPB) and graphic novels since they were often cheaper than buying the books as individual floppys and often include extra interviews and sketches. The Keep offered trade paper backs and if they didn't have a particular book in stock they are willing to order it in for you. I declined citing I could get the books much cheaper than they would sell it to me for on Amazon. I asked him why i should be a loyal customer when I no longer had any benefits or incentives to remain a loyal customer. I no longer had an option to buy variants which I enjoyed to collect. 

        To this day I can't understand the pricing for individual issues of comics. With all the advertisements in floppy issues their prices continue to rise. Even with all the ads which should help offset the cost, the average trade paper back on Amazon would cost a buyer 10 to 15 dollars. There are normally four to six issues in a TPB. The cost of comics are now 3.99 to 4.99 for most issues. Buying four to six issues of a story arc will easily put you into the 16 to 30 dollar range. Comics have made progress in the last 20 years with the quality of the books. I'm not referring to there being better artists and writers because in some cases I won't believe that is true. What I am referring to it the quality of the the paper comics are printed on. If anything has improved in comics in the last 20 years that in un-debatable it would be the quality of colors in comics now. With that increase in quality comes the need to have higher quality paper to print it on.  

        The cost is very apparent in the price of comics. As a graphic designer and sometime illustrator I can appreciate the strides that have been made to the art in that respect. However I can't afford to buy as many titles as I once was able to. I'm sure there are many others who feel the same. I would love to see a return to the old newsprint comics that we're made in the eighties. I would much rather the prices of comics be affordable than to see prices continue to skyrocket.
        With the lack of collectibility in today's comic book market it is quite easy to see what offers a better value for a customers money. There are now other options for a comic book buyer than a comic book store. There are several companies such as DCB Service which will let buyers buy comics at much cheaper prices than one could find at a brick and mortar store. I stopped buying individual floppies about six months ago and continue to buy a few trades through Amazon. Comic book companies have an uphill battle if they want to retain customers nonetheless get new ones. They have been saying for years that there are few young readers who are joining the hobby. With prices the way that they have become, attracting new readers and keeping old readers will become an even bigger challenge then it has ever been.