Retailing & Marketing

Now THIS is interesting. The other day we were talking about how the lack of strong demographic readership info is definitely felt in the comics space. It's not a scientific survey, but Kelly Thompson at She Has No Head has started something called the Ladies Comics Project where she asks her female friends -- some comics readers some not -- to pick and read a comic previously unknown to them and give their thoughts.

Or at least so says Flavorwire. Above, the great Quimby's in Chicago. Who would you nominate for best comic store?

We've often commented that a scientifically conducted reader survey of comics readership -- age, sex, race, income -- would be a very useful thing, especially now that there are more comics than ever, all with smaller readerships. Maybe it would show how that whole forty-year-old-virgin thing is going. Well according to this press release, maybe they are now 65 year old virgins. Simba Information has released the second edition of its ”Overview of the U.S. Comic Book and Graphic Novel Market” report and used the finding that 1 in 4 comics reader is over the age of 65 as their attention-grabbing headline.

Wow, New York is getting even crappier. News had been floating around for a bit, but a trip to their website confirmed that Giant Robot NY is closing next week. An offshoot of Giant Robot stores in LA and San Francisco, the East Village shop served as a gallery space for artists and cartoonists, as well as a place to snag books, toys, and wondrous gizmos. It was also the herald of the wave of Asian cultural influence that swept over the US in the last decade.

The business news website ICv2 isn't known for being hyperbolic. So when Milton Griepp said that this month's comics sales had "plummeted" everyone leaped up, screaming, knocking over chairs and spilling drinks everywhere.

Sales of comics and graphic novels through Diamond Comic Distributors dropped substantially in August with periodical comics falling 17% and graphic novels down 21%.  There wasn’t a single comic title even close to the 100,000 in August. 

If it weren't for the continued strength of SCOTT PILGRIM trades, the GN drop would have been even more grisly. On the periodical side, there was no big book, but, said ICv2, Certainly "the lack of one big title can’t account for everything." The grim details immediately set the punditocracy to arms, perhaps sniffing the hint of burning smoke in Tom Spurgeon's Doomapocalyptigeddon which he descried from his aerie high in the Misty Mountains, the same distant smell of charring paper and brimstone that we've been picking up for the last few weeks.

For everyone wondering if mainstream comics are so tired that "the general zeitgeist seems to be that mainstream comics are spent right now" maybe this is part of the reason why.

We declared a moratorium on Bluewater Comics news a while ago due to their awful back-end work for hire contract (and were taken off their PR list as a result) but whatever we think of their business model, we do have to give credit where it is due: they are absolute monsters at PR, and the recently announced Betty White Female Force comic is no exception. It's popped up on our news feed from EW, the LA TImes, the New York Times and everywhere else; a Google search for "Betty White Bluewater" yields 74,000 results. Even the Today Show blog picked up the Reuters story about the comic.

Khepri Comics is a web-based comics seller that's been around for over a decade, offering a lot of indie books but specializing in work by Brian Wood, Cliff Chiang, Becky Cloonan, and other "new mainstream" creators. Over the years, owner Brian Scot Johnson has built a strong relationship with these creators by promoting their work via special sales and so on. By partnering with Khepri these creators -- who, in addition to their distinctive work, have well-defined fanbases which they maintain via web interaction -- would be able to, say, offer a blog preview of their small press work with a link to Khepri and know that consumers would be able to purchase a copy.

The comic shop profile is a staple of newspaper coverage of the comics industry and two recent store stories point to the past and the present of comics retailing pretty sharply. From Miami, we have A&M Comics, voted the Best Comics Shop locally, and one of the oldest comics stores in the country -- in the top three, says the piece. (We're a little dubious about that -- what say you, group mind?)

Following lengthy discussion and behind-the-scenes debate, Diamond has announced that street dates are available for all retailers now: comics will be shipped Tuesday for a Wednesday on-sale. A $5-a-week charge for retailers who opt in will go towards a "mystery shopper" program to make sure street dates aren't broken. Stores who don't want to participate can stick with Wednesday delivery. We'll have more on this story with industry reactions in today's PW Comics Week. PR below.

The New York Times has a story on how Comic-Con has become a venue to market to -- gasp! -- girls with lots of info on various toy and clothing lines, including gymnast Nastia Liukin's Supergirl line of clothing.

Has all the Comic-Con hype actually TURNED OFF some moviegoers? That's what what a chart over at THR seems to show, Jay Fernandez reports: