So, to clarify my post from Friday, I have no problem with people picking out nice copies of comics for themselves. Even I still have the habit of reaching two or three down the stack to get a copy for myself, and I’m getting my comics before we even open the store’s doors for the business day. Most people want to get a reasonably good condition new comic for their money, and I know my customers don’t want to buy comics off the rack that are obviously pre-read.
The point that was being made that the people who carefully examine each and every spine for microscopic damage may be taking that behavior to a slight extreme.
Which reminds me: pal Dorian spotted a reference in a toy magazine regarding condition grading, in which a comment is made regarding defects that may not be visible to the naked eye. Um, if it’s not visible to the naked eye, is it really a defect? “I spotted a dent in the plastic bubble through my electron microscope…it’s not mint! It’s not mint!“
In case you’re wondering, the cover of choice for Supergirl #1 is the Michael Turner variant. More than once we’ve been left with nothing but the Churchill cover left on the rack.
By the way, there’s a second printing coming.
The comic still isn’t any good.
Random thought: the whole Robotech thing is pretty much dead for good, isn’t it? It used to be that Robotech was one of those comics that used to sell as a back issue rather than a new one…it would just sit there on the rack, but as soon as it was in the backstock bins, people couldn’t get enough of them.
But now? That last attempt at publishing Robotech comics (by Wildstorm, I believe) couldn’t have been more of a dog if it had fur and barked.
A couple days ago, we had a mother drop her son off at the store to shop, while she drove off and disappeared for about an hour or so to (presumably) do some shopping herself. Well, she came back, clearly unhappy about having to actually come into the store to get her son, and impatiently waited for him at the register while he paid.
As Dorian rang her up, she apparently said to her son, under her breath, “You shouldn’t be reading these…you don’t want to end up like these people.”
Like whom, exactly? The small business owner who’s run a business in this town for a quarter of a century? Like the doctors, lawyers, policemen, and the assistant district attorney we have as customers? Like the people who simply enjoy reading comics for the fun of it, and aren’t hurting or bothering anybody?
Like a woman who dumps her unsupervised child off on us for an hour while she runs off to do God knows what, and then comes back to give us a superior attitude? Well, okay, in that case, she might have a point: you don’t want your kid to grow up to be like that.
You know, it’s stuff like that which really makes me wonder why we bother. Dor touched upon this on his site a while back, echoing a common lament of mine: some of our customers just don’t know how good they have it. We run a nice store, clean, relatively organized, well-stocked, family-friendly…and apparently that’s not enough for some people. Just the very fact it’s a comic book store is enough to elicit contempt from the petty and small-minded. And when she said it, it’s not like we had a store full of freaks or something to trigger that response…Dor and I were just working, and we had a couple perfectly normal people quietly perusing the racks. No peculiar shenanigans were going on.
So, to my friends on the Comicsweblogosphere who recently opened their own stores…you have that to look forward to as well.
