Superman Through the Ages! Forum

I have four seasons of Smallville, two of the Animated Series, one of the Adventures of Superman, four animated movies, and the Max Fleischer cartoons. I have Kingdom Come and other assorted graphic novels, the Great Superman Book (and Quiz Book), the Man of Tomorrow Archives, and the Superman Radio Show (and scripts.)

However, I have never purchased a new comic book from a comic shop, until today. I bought All-Star Superman #1, a feat frought with hardships:

- When I went to the localest comic shop available to me, it was closed. However, I couldn't really tell whether it was..so I went in anyway. The shopkeeper said that she's closed on Monday, but was cleaning and didn't mind if I looked around.

-After yelling "we're closed!" at some teenagers who came in, she told me that All-Star Superman hadn't come in yet. I told her that it had been out for a couple of months, and she said she didn't have it.

-I found All-Star Superman and went to the counter, also getting a large comic box. The total was around $9.60...so she pointed me to a sign that said no credit card purchases below $10! Fortunately, my girlfriend had come into the store and had some cash.

Now that I've survived buying a comic at a comics shop, I have to say that All-Star Superman is really good. It has all the classic elements of Superman in it... a new power, Superman's "Last Day of Life," and Lex Luthor done just right. I really like this comic...but I still maintain that it's really hard to buy them!

My local shop closed here in NYC and I odnt have the time to run around so I just ordered A*S*S* 2 online from Midotown comics.

Who needs the aggravation and the fannish chatter?

Gimme my funny books and Im outta here...

I took a break from buying comic books that lasted several years, but now I quite regularly go to Forbidden Planet here in London. It's a weird sort of place, full of overpriced statuettes, T-shirts, videos and toys, and one of the girls at the checkout has more tattoos than a sailor. Man, that place makes me feel old. I still prefer to go there than to order comic books online, though, because it's the best way to pick up little gems that I might otherwise have overlooked.

By the way, that's the first time I've seen All-Star Superman expressed as an acronym... Now I know why.

I liked browsing in stores myself much more than online - but then I usually end up spending more than intended!

Oh, tell me about that... I spend money on comics I hate! I will never forgive Ultimate Avengers for their stupid Bush-era francophobia, but for some reason I still pick it up.

I haven't bought any new comics in I don't know how long.  The stories to me just don't seem like any fun.  If I do buy anything it's back issues or reprints of them.

With the constant speculation about why comics don't sell like they used to, I wonder how many people have had the guts to come right out and admit that experiences like yours are not uncommon; that, to be blunt, comics shops can themselves be a major turn-off to potential new readers.

One of the things American consumers have come to rely on is the ability to walk into a store in one city, or state, and have pretty much the same experience they would in any other city or state.  A McDonald's in North Carolina is going to be pretty much like one in North Dakota, for instance.  You also expect a certain degree of civility, politeness and professionalism from store clerks...it may be forced on them in annoying corporate seminars, but by gum you do tend to get used to it and even appreciate it.

At comic shops, the very definition of a mom-and-pop, independently run franchise, you can't count on any of that.  Here in Richmond (VA) we have a number of shops, and every one of them provides a different experience.  One of them is a huge affair, actually three old shops in a strip mall connected to each other to make one big shop.  A third of it is old books and the rest is comics and related merchandise.  It's an old place, with the unmistakable smell of yellowing pulp paper, tons of trades and hardbacks stuffed onto shelves every which way with little effort made at organization, pegs and shelves full of toys, some of them old and shoddy relics of someone's last garage sale (think old Mego figures with scuffed paint jobs and tattered capes and you get the idea); others are new but relatively "rare" figures and vehicles scalped off the toy aisles at Target and slapped with a ridiculous mark-up (if you've ever wondered how brand new toys can be "rare," it's because of places like this).  There are hundreds of long-boxes full of comics, mostly Bronze Age and almost uniformly in bad shape.  I've seen books there that had the kind of water damage, tears and scribbles on them that, if they were my books, would have earned them a spot in the trash can, but here they're poly-bagged and offered for ridiculous sums.  Except for the impossibility of finding a bargain, this place gives the feel of a flea market, which can be a good or bad thing depending on your personality, but for me it's the kind of place that would be run by that obnoxious kid in grade school who always undervalued the trade value of your cards and comics while insisting his own were priceless.  On the other hand, if you can get over all that, the staff is helpful...if you don't mind over-paying for a book once they find it.

Another shop is the near-opposite; everything is meticulously organized into neat sections, every book is bagged the second it arrives and practically enshrined on a shelf.  This is the place run by that kid you knew in grade school who bought Star Wars figures and refused to take them out of the box, ever.  Once I bought a book here and the guy almost didn't let me have it...it was an import dealing with the Avengers TV show.  The guy realized it was his last copy and as he held it in one hand while the other hovered over the cash register, you could watch the struggle in his mind...do I let this go or keep it on display?  Finally, grudgingly, he let me have it.  Another time I bought a Calvin and Hobbes poster created for store displays (Bill Waterson never authorized C&H "merchandise" of any kind) and I got a lecture before the guy rang it up.  "I hope you're not planning on giving this to a kid...this is a very rare item...frame it and care for it"  On the rare occasions I enter this place, I'm immediately swooped down upon by one employee or the other, all asking what I'm looking for and how can they help, and coming across like that annoying little dog in the cartoon who says, "I'm your pal, right Spike?  You and me are buddies, right?"  This guy is a major dealer in back issues who advertises nationally in Marvel Comics, but his shop, packed as it is with comics, toys and the latest fad (pogs, Magic cards, whatever) is about the size of a phone booth, which makes it hard to get to stuff no matter how well organized, and impossible to avoid those clerks.

Another shop has a laid-back staff, which is cool for a guy like me who likes to browse unassaulted, but they also can't be bothered to unpack half their boxes and a display area in the center of the store has, for the last 8 years or so, just been a place to stack cases of folded t-shirts and cardboard boxes the contents of which must forever remain a mystery (they all say "Diamond Distributors" on the outside, but beyond that who knows).

Eventually you find the shop that best suits your temperament and you stick with it.  But it's a dicey proposition at best entering a new shop...you never know what you'll find.  Comics collectors can be an exclusive lot, people who live and breathe their obsession but seem to ward off anyone new from joining in.  And I'll bet good money that more than one parent has brought their kids into a shop only to have a negative experience and judge all comic shops by that one bad one.

Thank heaven for online resources like Tales Of Wonder and DCBS that take all the icky personal interaction out of the equation and give you a big discount, besides.

Sure sounds a lot different than me begging my mom to toss a new comic in the basket at Woolworth's in 1968... 8)

On the other hand I ordered some back issues of Plastic Man on Saturday and they arrived today! And thats with yesterday being a ntional holiday- now THAT's service! :D

I gave up completely buying new comics, and now only buy collections and graphic novels, the rule I have is that if I can't buy it at a real bookstore or Amazon, then I am not buying it.

Beppo, how the heck did you shrink and why start live in Alan Moore's beard!   :shock:

Mr. Moore is is rather large fellow with a rather large beard, there was no need to shrink. He said that I could play with his typewritter :)

I bought plenty of new comics when I was a kid 10 years ago and you could buy comics in a regular store... and now I can't get rid of them. These Iron Age comics are nigh worthless, and not enjoyable to read either. I've finally decided to donate them all to Salvation Army, as I would get more money from a tax write-off than I would selling them on ebay.

As for All-Star Superman, I'm going to keep buying this. It's really good, and I think the next issue ships tomorrow.

I absolutely love going to buy things at my comics shop, but that may be because I, unlike my shy friend Nightwing, am rather more of an outgoing type.

I love the store ambience, where I can go and chit-chat with the mildly autistic but kindly bearded guy that runs the place about topics like why Supergirl wears a headband when Kryptonians do not wear headbands, the differences between Amazonium and Adamantium, if it is possible that Doc Savage might be a Vulcan, the sort of weapon a paladin might use, and why it is that Black Panther was stated to be the greatest boxing champ in the entire continent of Africa but he never used that skill after his first appearance.

It's also very bizarre (but fun) to go after 5pm, when work stops and you get all these white collar types leaving their computer programming jobs, and heading to a comics store. So the conversation always drifts to either comics or how much they hate their jobs.

Loathe as I am to say it, though, because I *DO* so very much want to support the local store, one of the best places to buy comics these days is E-bay. Especially if it is a less well-known series.

For instance, I got AMETHYST: PRINCESS OF GEMWORLD series on there for less than a dollar (!) and the entire run of CRYSTARR: CRYSTAL WARRIOR for less than that.

Here in London, that scene doesn't really exist so much, though I have been known to get embroiled in the odd "Who would win in a fight: Thor or Superman?"-type discussion. Most of the customers at Forbidden Planet seem to be goths (or maybe it just seems like most of them since they stick out so much), and I just get unnerved by shaved eyebrows and multiple piercings.

And then, like I say, there's that tattooed lady at the cashdesk. I'm a liberal, easy-going sort of chap, but she really makes me want to go "Young lady, if you were my daughter..." Middle age, here I come!

Well, to back up a moment, I'm not saying it isn't fun to get in touch with your inner geek and have a long chat with a shop owner about some esoteric element of pop culture.  But even that creates a sort of "members only atmosphere" that can be off-putting to kids just getting into the hobby, or parents who already think comics are for nuts, anyway.

Back to my local shops; the first place I mentioned, you might get that kind of discussion depending on who's working.  Or they might want to talk about Buffy, anime or Stargate in which case I'm lost.  At the second place, you're more likely to get a lecture on the investment potential of a certain book than a loving dissertation on a character's half-forgotten history.  And at the third place, I usually get a, "hey, I just work here.  Personally I don't even like comic books."

The one thing a comic shop...or any bookstore...does offer is the magic of browsing.  Some of the most treasured books in my library are things I stumbled across in some out-of-the-way bookstore on one trip or other, usually books I didn't even know existed but now can't live without.  The internet is great for finding what you want and getting it cheap, but you're a lot less likely to make discoveries that way, and for me, no subject is so interesting as the one I'll discover tomorrow.

Sometimes second-hand bookshops have a small cardboard box in a corner with some old comics in it, and if you're lucky you can hit the jackpot, since the shop owners usually don't know what they are.

I attracted some strange looks that way, buying an Iris Murdoch novel, a few books of poetry, and -- gold! -- a whole stack of 1970s Kamandis.

Do bars ever worry that the world will start to run low on alcoholics?

Then why should comic book stores worry about getting kids in? Oh, they will get in, no doubt about that. As long as there is a kid that is attracted to the abnormal, who reads FANGORIA magazine, who just got into Heinlein because of Megadeth lyrics, who spends the evenings watching zombie movies while drinking Mountan Dew, all comic book stores have to do is sit and wait.



The most amazing ones are the personal collections of old collectors. It was this way that I started to discover genius WEIRD TALES writer Jack Williamson; his GOLDEN BLOOD, which to my knowledge was in paperback ONCE since the 1930s.

Everybody's got a discount bin story; that's how I discovered Bill Mantlo's MICRONAUTS.

Wow, that's an optimistic viewpoint!

Well, one detail I left out about all the stores in my area.  In all my visits, I have seen a "customer" under the age of 20 exactly ONCE that I can remember.  It was a little girl who was whining desperately to leave while her hippie parents browsed the back issues.

In 1998 I took my 10-year-old brother-in-law to Mid-Ohio Con and he was the only kid anyone saw all day.  The writers and artists were so excited to see a youngster, they gave him sketches and comics and autographs for free.  Even Adam West waived his signing fee and gave Tommy a picture.  Tommy, needless to say, had a blast.  But only then did it occur to me I hadn't seen a kid at a convention before, and to date I haven't again.

That's all anecdotal, of course, and hardly a scientific sampling of the ages of comic fans.  But from my own experience, the industry has a great deal to worry about once the current crop of aging fanboys starts to die off.

That is sad that Adam West charges people for his signature (even if the money goes to charity).

The Toronto cons I've been to lately (with the exception of TCAF which is an entirely different animal --it's a festival of comics --no dealers!) have had kids.  Come to think of it, even TCAF had lots of kids (families even), in part because of the giiant scholastic books tent with Jeff Smith and several superhero and manga types.

That said, most comic shops are horrible places.  I grew up with them and can navigate them but I also now see them with adult eyes.  As long as they just want to sell the latest DC or Marvel crap like Infinite Crisis to kids and lifelong superhero fans/collectors, they shouldn't change a thing.

Even the worst stores now stock manga and anime and new blood eventually trickles in but the net and mainstream bookstores will eventually bury them.

I saw the new A.S.S. (I love that acronym) today but did not buy it.  The cover was pretty.  I wonder if it will be included in the trade?

Nightwing: those reject garbage bronze age books make up most of my collection!  I don't think I own anything anywhere near "near mint" or even still in a comic book bag.  I have bunches of those comics boxes, though.

I got to thinking about it after my last post, and I was wrong; I have seen other kids in the comic shops.  But it took some thinking to remember them.

In one shop, two boys wandered around for a while as the shop owner tried to point them, and their mom, to something suitable.  Finally, feeling bad I guess, she dug up a stack of Bronze Age Marvels someone had brought in as trades and gave them to the kids for free, with their mom's permission.  I forget what she said exactly but it was something that acknowledged the last comic suitable for kids came out around the time of Ms. Pac-Man!

Another shop hosts weekend tournaments for Magic: The Gathering (or did, anyway...is that game still around?).  I never saw the kids get up from a game to go look at comics, but that doesn't mean they didn't (clearly its what the owner was hoping for!).

Still another shop is careful to stay on top of the latest kid fad and stocks lots of toys, so there must be kids in there at some point and I just miss them.  Whether they buy comics too I couldn't tell you.



Yes, but knowing they're dog-eared reading copies I'm sure you wouldn't poly-bag them and try to unload them at "Very Fine" prices, would you?

Funny, I always thought I was positively anal about my comics...I went to great pains to pick good-condition copies and read them very carefully before putting them away.  But now when I look at them I realize most collectors would probably rate them VG at best, more likely just Good.

But they were loved, and that's what counts.

Pardon me while I wipe the tear from my eye... :D

Good gawd, fanboys rule the comics world, and I have less confidence than ever in the medium...

I too am crying.  Long live Wimbledon Green!  I mean Nightwing.

I have ahard time polybagging anything --what if I want to read it?  No, on the few occasions when I've actually sold old comics, I stress that I don't know anything about the fine art of grading and let the actual conditon (or very good scans) do the talking.  The alternative is to slap a price on with no grade and start a conversation.  Serious "condition" collectors are too anal.  I love reading boards like the one at CGC where people talk about the differences between 9.8 and 9.7 (ie, perfect and perfect).

It's strange to me that comic shops do not advertise to kids. DC has a whole line of comics for kids, and if I were a shop owner I would want kids to be begging their moms to bring them to my store.

DC could even use a 5-second blip at the end of their cartoons and TV shows to advertise these comics...yet they don't. Wouldn't people who watch Teen Titans be more likely to want the Teen Titans comics?

Some random thoughts from a former "lurker" on this great website who has decided to take the plunge...

I've been reading comics since 1970 and am thrilled that my 7 year son enjoys them as much as I do.   His favorites are Justice League Unlimited and Teen Titans Go.   The books DC puts out for "kids" seem to capture the spirit and excitement of the Silver Age comics I fell in love with.  It is a very special experience for the two of us to visit a comic book store together and pick out new books.  I know my comic collection will be in good hands when I pass it on to him (my older son on the other hand would probably just sell them all on EBay if he ever got his hands on them!)

Permanus - speaking of Forbidden Planet.  Back in my late teens I took a break from buying comics that lasted a couple of years.  What brought me back was the day I wandered into the Forbidden Planet that had just opened in NYC (this was in the early '80s and I was attending NYU).  I thought I'd gone to Comic Book Heaven.  I started buying comics again, including back issues from the years I'd missed and I've never stopped (although I am much more selective in what I buy now and have drastically cut back on the number of new books I read).   I think Goths must congregate at Forbidden Planets on both sides of the Atlantic since I thought the same thing the last time I took a trip down to the City.

Regarding Comic Book Store Conversations- I generally do not get involved in the discussions that go on at comic shops (mostly because my tastes are now so selective that I have no idea what they are talking about).  However,  I did take offense when I over heard some arrogant fanboy in his late teens or early 20s dismiss a comic book writer who I like as a "hack".  This raised the hackles on the back of my neck and I was drawn into a debate with him about what makes a writer good or bad.  It ended pretty quickly when we discovered we had no common ground for debate - he kept bringing up comic book writers who I do not read and I introduced authors such as Fitzgerald and Hemingway (which he did not read).  A good writer is a good writer regardless of the medium- whether it be novels, comic books, screenplays etc.  Ultimately it's all subjective anyway. I think what lured me into the debate was his attitude - had he said "I don't like the way X writes because...." I probably wouldn't have commented. It was the arrogant way he just dismissed the writer as a "hack" which brought "my Irish Up" (which is pretty hard to do since I'm Italian American).

And what does all this have to do with All Star Superman?  Nothing I guess, but let me add that I am enjoying this wonderful homage to the Silver Age more than any Superman book I've read in years.