retailing

And so BAT-MONTH CONTINUES…okay, maybe it won’t be the whole month, but I am still going back and addressing some of your comments to my previous posts (1 2 3 4). I’m not addressing every single comment made, but if I skip yours, I still like you, I just didn’t have anything to add.

AWAY WE GO:

Bryan sez, he sez

“My recollection is probably skewed because a comic book store opened within a ten minute walk of my house in the spring of 1989, so I could suddenly go all the time, but I certainly remember ‘The Many Deaths of Batman’ (John Byrne and Jim Aparo! Together!) and ‘Legends of the Dark Knight’ (I don’t even want to think about how many different colours of that first issue I bought) and the ‘Arkham Asylum’ graphic novel, and the computer-drawn Batman GN that was heavily promoted, made the summer to late fall of 1989 feel like something huge was happening with the character, and DC was really able to piggyback the success of the movie to make me want to buy anything Batman.”

So I’d been wondering, since we last spoke, about whether or not I was overstating how huge of an impact that first Burton Batman made. Keep in mind at the time I was only about 20 years old, give or take, and thus squarely in that demographic Makers of Big Blockbuster Films prefer to target, and also I was, y’know, working in a comic book store, so maybe my awareness of said Bat-film was somewhat predetermined.

Now a lot of your comments seems to be supporting my asserting that the Batman movie was huger than a huge thing that’s huge, at least as far as cultural influence goes, so it’s not necessarily my biased memory coloring my recollection of history. One specific thing I remember is hearing radio deejays chatting about Batman and Batman comics and whathaveyou between songs…you know something’s big when Richard Blade is talking about Dark Knight Returns during his KROQ shift.

And yes, Bryan, as you say, DC Comics wasn’t bein’ run by dummies…they were squeezing every Bat-cent out of the character that year and pumping out all kinds of stuff to exploit interest in the character. The “computer-drawn” graphic novel was Digital Justice, and people sort of derided it at the time (while still selling well in the way all Batman was selling well), but I guess that book had the last laugh since computers are used in pretty much every aspect of comic creation now. And comics fandom. In fact, a computer is writing this very blog right now beep boop.

Some of those other books bring back a few memories of the time, too: like first issue of the “The Many Deaths of Batman,” which was dialogue-free except, I believe, for the very last page (or panel), which actually caused a customer to call the shop after he got home and read the issue, believing it was somehow misprinted and all the captions and word balloons were left out. Well…that sort of wordless storytelling was pretty unusual in superhero comics (though the famous G.I. Joe silent issue was about five years previous), so I guess I can’t blame the person too much.

The different covers on Legends of the Dark Knight was one of the early examples of multiple-cover variants in the industry, and at a time when nobody was quite used to the idea, the reactions were very mixed. There were the folks mad that they had to buy one of each version to keep the collection complete. (Keeping in mind the only difference was border colors.) There were the folks asking which one was the rarest, and therefore destined to be the most valuable. There were the folks who just thought the whole thing was a scam. And so on. Still sold of lot of them.

The Arkham Asylum graphic novel was greatly anticipated, and we had a waiting list at the shop that I can almost still mostly picture in my mind. I mean, not the names on it, of course, but I can still remember pulling that sheet out and adding names and phone numbers to it on a relatively regular basis. I was still going to college at that time, and working at the shop in the afternoons, so on the day of release, between classes, I got on a payphone (hey, it was 1989) and called the shop to make sure those jerks held a copy of the book aside for me. Guess I should have added myself to the waiting list. More fool I.

Jack notes

“My local comic shop, which had been doing okay but not world beating business, had a massive uptick in business. So big, in fact, that they moved out of the tiny location they were in to a much bigger one across the street, where they still are to this day. (They survived the 90s crash by pivoting to card games, and were ahead of the curve big time on the Pokemon phenomena.) Saying that the country had Batmania in 1989 is not an exaggeration, if anything it doesn’t do it justice.”

I believe it was in the very next year, 1990, that the shop moved across the street to its GINORMOUS location, easily 3x the size of the little shop we were moving out of, and we would never, ever fill up, never in our wildest dreams…so of course a few years later we completely outgrew that location and moved into a spot twice as large next door, where the shop still exists now.

In 1990, the boom was still booming. In, I believe it was 1997 when we made that final move, the business was…well, the crash had crashed, but I think things were slightly improving at the time. At the very least, we had adjusted to this new post-crash comics economy and were more or less ordering, planning, and spending accordingly. Plus, a full half of the store was dedicated to gaming (role playing and Magic: The Gathering) and that certainly helped the cash flow. Like Jack mentions about his shop, having differing stock lines (like the card games) at our store helped us ride out the lean years, though we still attracted plenty of comics business simply by reputation of having a large selection of new and old material.

I’m guessing the ironic result of Batmania was in encouraging stores to expand like we did, only to have the following market crash leave owners with newly-expanded locations they could no longer support. We were lucky that we were able to muddle through as well as we did.

“I was 11 when the movie came out. Only read a couple Batman comics at that time but only knew the Adam West version which was colorful and fun. Had no idea what to expect from the 1989 movie. The whole dark side of Batman was new to me. After seeing it I was smitten.”

And related, from Dean:

“From what I remember as a tiny child at the time (I was 12 years old) this ‘dark, serious’ take on Batman was HUGE. This was before we realized that Burton Batman was just as goofy and stylized as Adam West Batman, just with the lights turned down.”

I think that was one of, if not the major elements, to what attracted people to this movie, that we would finally be getting the dark and gritty Avenger of the Night we deserved this whole time, the one we knew from the comics, and not that silly old TV show Batman. And like Dean says, these Burton films are camp in their own way (or rather, they’re Tim Burton films more than they’re Batman films), but there are still moments of darkness mixed in with all the goofy stuff. When we first see Batman capture those ruffians, with his gruff “I’M BATMAN” — it’s been mocked a bit since then, sure, but it’s still an effective introduction to the character. And that scene in the “doctor’s” room, pleading with Napier that he’s done all he could, just look at the tools he has to work with (quick shot of bloodied knifes and other instruments), the swinging lamp, only seeing Nicholson from behind…it’s a nightmarish scene, probably the best in the film.

The sequel, Batman Returns, is notable for turning up the darkness — turning down the darkness? you know what I mean — maybe a bit too much. There were complaints about the Penguin maybe being a little over the top in grotesquery, for example. Can’t say if the inherent goofiness in the film was also increased accordingly, as it’s been a while since I’ve seen either film. I’ll have to put that on the list of things to do When I Have Free Time, Maybe After I Break A Leg or Something.

I know I already talked about this on my Twitterers, but I wanted to preserve the moment here as well, when I encountered something at the shop that I hadn’t anticipated.

Now, most of us of a certain age who remember, or even some younger folk who are a little more aware of the comic (or even film) industry’s history know what kind of impact the first Tim Burton Batman movie had back in 1989. It. Was. HUGE.

Now, I’m not going to get sidetracked here into a discussion of whether or not it was any good, or whether it’s aged well. That’s beside the point. What I’m talking about here is how it seemed like this new Batfilm just exploded onto the scene, and suddenly there just wasn’t enough Batman stuff in the world for all our customers to buy.

This was just after I began working in comics retail. Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen had just, not too long ago at this point, informed the general public that Comics Aren’t Just for Kids™, so there was still some measure of interest because of that. And the first big hoohar I was directly involved with on the other side of the counter was “A Death in the Family,” the Batman event where readers could call a phone number and vote on whether or not Robin the Second Boy Wonder Oh Goodness Not Dick Grayson We Wouldn’t Risk Him would LIVE or DIEEEEEE.

But it seemed like it was that Batman movie that really kicked off the big Comics Boom of the late ’80s and early ’90s. Well, sure, there were other factors as well (a crashing sports card market seemed to drive a lot of investors into comic shops in the ’90s, buying first issues and asking for “Comic Book Becketts,” but that’s another story), but it seemed like this film was the dividing line between the Comics Market As It Was Before, and the Comics Market As It Was After At Least ‘Til It Crashed Again. Batman comics, Batman books, Batman tchotchkes of all sorts, and Batman clothing…I mentioned on Twitter that we had enormous waiting lists of people special ordering Bat-shirts. I can still vaguely recall the full color flyer that we had with all the available designs our customers could pick from. I even got in on that shirt action, since back then I still wore t-shirts on a semi-regular basis, and acquired one of these snazzy numbers (image totally stolen from an eBay listing);

I think I liked it because Batman wasn’t on it, that it was a tad more evocative of the weirdly mysterious nature of the Caped Crusader…or I just liked bats. Something like that.

Anyway, the Batman movie was big, and had a hugely successful impact on our shop, is what I’m telling you. I’ve been trying to dredge up more specific memories of that particular period, and there are a couple of vague impressions. I remember being slightly frustrated by the parade of people coming through the store declared that they’d seen the film, and I hadn’t had a chance to make it yet. There were the folks, prior to the film’s opening, skeptical of Michael Keaton’s ability to properly represent the Dark Knight. (A common lament, one I can say I witnessed firsthand.) There were those who hoped that the movie would treat Batman with the seriousness he deserved, and that it could escape the long shadow cast by the ’60s TV show. (Again, this was back before we all remembered that Adam West Batman was Good and Perfect.) There was, again as related on my Twitter — y’know, you should just follow me on Twitter already), the young college student who was basically giving me her dissertation on Batman’s influence on modern pop culture…while she was waiting in line to buy a Batman shirt, of course.

Whenever a person drops in nowadays and remarks on their perceived notion that the current onslaught of superhero movies must generate extra business for comic shops, I think back on that first Batman film, probably the one time that a superhero film did directly contribute to an enormous increase in sales. Later movies would sporadically encourage some sales on items, particularly on graphic novels prior to the related film’s release, and then drop like a stone once the movie is out (which happened to me with Sin City, Hellboy, Watchmen, etc. etc.). Or it would sometimes goose some investing (like the guy who bought us out on the 60 or so copies we had of Amazing Spider-Man #252, the first appearance of the black costume, in advance of anticipated demand by that costume’s appearance in the third Spider-Man movie). And then there is just an increase in basic awareness of characters…I wouldn’t be selling Rocket Raccoon or Groot comics to kids if they hadn’t seen those characters in Guardians of the Galaxy movies, for example.

So why am I bringing all this up? Well, I had a young man, probably in his early 20s, come into the store the other day and ask me the very question I was just discussing: do superhero movies boost sales? When asked that, I usually say “yes, a little, not as much as you might think,” and bring up the example that it mostly creates awareness of characters not already familiar to the world at large…you know, like Groot, or Iron Man. But, for whatever reason, I mentioned that one time a movie really boosted the comics marketplace…that first Tim Burton Batman.

An incredulous look crossed this young man’s face. “Really? People got all worked up over that?”

Well, of course he’d think that. He wasn’t even born yet when that happened. It’s hard to explain how everyone lost their minds over what is now just one more piece of background noise in our cultural landscape, when back then it was New and Different and comics fans had pinned their hopes on it, and it turned out other people liked it too. I had just taken for granted that everyone knew what that Bat-film had done to our little industry, but time passes, and people forget, or never knew in the first place.

I still remember, however, at least this little bit, of sitting in the theater, listening to that stirring theme music, watching the Batman logo slowly reveal itself during the opening credits, and thinking “at last, everyone will finally take comics seriously!”

I’m pretty sure I was right about that. Don’t tell me if I wasn’t.