Comments on: A Roundtable Discussion on Comics (part 1)…

By: Lt. Clutch

Lt. Clutch — Thu, 08 May 2008 22:22:35 +0000

You too, Julius? U-Totems around here turned into Circle K’s, then vanished altogether. They kept comics in a really wide shelf behind the counter, with all the Marvel corner boxes and DC bullets neatly laid out in rows. The guy who worked there was really cool. He let us know when new books had arrived and was always very friendly.

They also had a “dime store toy” spinner rack where I got stuff like a Spidey flashlight (w/ wall mount to hang it on!) a Scooby-Doo keychain, and a pack of Fantastic Four bubblegum. Came in four flavors, I even remember the Thing’s was watermelon! There were ads for it in Marvel comics around ’83 or so.

And yeah, it was a neat source for trading cards, too. I got the Star Wars: ROJ ones, some Topps baseball, and Atari sticker packs there.

Good times, man! Good times!

By: Texgnome1

Texgnome1 — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:39:21 +0000

A lot of your conversations mirror those I’ve had recently with my old friends. Sure, there’s a LOT of good storytelling potential in both Secret Invasion and Final Crisis. But the problem is, they both may undo so much of what we know. I’m all for changing the status quo occasionally, but it really seems like at this point, BOTH of the big two are just trying to see who can upset the norm more than the other.

My kids read a couple of the books I do, but that’s about it. They are both around 10, and I have to say at an age where comics would be a perfect medium. But there’s just not much for them to read. Too much sex, violence or language for them. I just don’t want to expose them to most of the stuff on the shelves. Which is REALLY sad, because I know at their age, I was reading dozens of comics a month.

By: JuliusMarx

JuliusMarx — Thu, 08 May 2008 17:31:59 +0000

U-Totem! Wow. Haven’t thought of THAT store in forever. We had those in Oklahoma too. There was one 2 doors down from my dad’s electronic store when I was a kid. I bought a LOT of comics and Star Wars cards from that place!

By: Lt. Clutch

Lt. Clutch — Thu, 08 May 2008 02:23:41 +0000

I hear you guys. With me, the good old days were spent at a U-Totem mini-mart (7-Eleven clone, long gone) in Southern California. This was in 1981, comics were 50 cents, and they had no Internet sites hawking them, no trade magazines, yet there were DOZENS of publishers putting out stuff month after month since 1938!

Somehow, Marvel and DC kept all their series running for decades with little advertising or promotions. There were no “blockbuster” events, no massive crossovers, nada. How did they do it?

Kids. Kids were their target audience. Half the people paying to see Iron Man last week are comic fans since childhood. There were no Marvel toys or movies back then the likes we have right now. The industry survived because kids bought comics. Lots and lots of ‘em!

That’s where we need to go with the current momentum Hollywood is giving us, right back to our children.

And by all means, bring back the spinner rack!

By: JuliusMarx

JuliusMarx — Wed, 07 May 2008 23:20:01 +0000

Part of the problem is that comics are SO d@mn expensive now! Back in the day you could trade’em with your friends or leave them out in the rain or roll them up and put them in your back pocket. Now that EVERYTHING is $3-$5 you/kids wouldn’t do that. Plus the STORAGE that is required for them. I keep almost ALL of them that i have ever read… yet there are really only a handfull that I would really go back and read multiple times. I honestly have 17 long boxes back at my folks house (and they SO don’t want them there!)

I also wish some store chain would have the guts to reintroduce the spinner rack.

By: The Superfly

The Superfly — Wed, 07 May 2008 16:44:41 +0000

NERRRRRRDDDSSSS!

just kidding. This is an interesting topic…I agree with much of what has been said. At one point I was getting 30-40 books a month, a dozen different companies. Now I’m down to pretty much only DC, Hellboy and the Joe book. And only about 15 titles a month too.

Maybe it is just out of habit?