My recent reports on the end of the traditional Archie Digest got a lot of attention, and also made me wonder…what are we seeing on the newsstands of America? I happen to have been on vacation in Maine for the last 10 days, and I had a chance to check out the local supermarket (Hannafords), Target and, briefly, Walmart for a first hand look at what they are selling in the mass market checkout aisles of, well, Mid-Coast Maine, anyway. 

I was interested in checking out the checkouts because of my own speculation about whether digest sized magazines are even being sold any more, and where. It seemed that a tour was in order – and ironically enough, in the olden days when newsstands were where we got our information, it was actually someone’s job to go out and check newsstands to see if things were being out out for sale. I was following in a long tradition. 

But first, another interesting discovery I made. I am pretty much completely ignorant about current newsstand magazine distribution, and I asked around to find if there is anyone who knows anything about it. I was put in touch with Joe Berger, a magazine marketing consultant who has a newsletter all about magazine distribution! And it has some comics content. I reached out to Mr. Berger about the Archie situation, and he wasn’t aware of it, but he did give me some insight into a few other aspects of mass market racking. His newsletter is called “If we have magazines, they’re in aisle 5B” and if that title grabbed you the way it grabbed me, you already subscribed.

And now on to my journey. I apologize for the below quality of some of the photos, but people buying pork chops and Keurig cups thought it was a little odd that someone was taking pictures of the checkout aisles, so I didn’t have a lot of time to frame things.

Hannafords, Damariscotta 

I love Hannafords! Got some local corn and so fresh and amazing! Magazine-wise, though, it clearly showed the shrinking of printed matter in general. As a kid vacationing in Maine, I would peruse the huge magazine racks at Shaws or the late, lamented Mr. Paperback and maybe get some comics or wrestling magazines. Neither were to be found in the 2025 version at Hannafords.

Maine Newsstands 2025 – 2 of 35

The magazine racks at the checkouts were strictly magazine sized, and mostly bookazines and People. No digest-sized racks to be found anywhere.

I did spot this beauty in the wild though!

There was actually a magazine rack/book rack in aisle 11, and it contained some specialized reading matter.

 

I also noted this smaller section with the perennial classic Farmer’s Almanac and a small selection of the soon-to-be-no-more mass market paperbacks. Ah, vanished media of the world.

Given the interest in firearms, I should note that during my stay in Maine I saw several messages warning folks that they should not bring their guns to town:

I did spot a Mad Magazine in the Hannaford checkout pockets – sorry for the blurry photo but there was a dude standing nearby and it was weird enough that I was going around taking photos of checkout aisles.

SUPPLEMENTAL: TJ MAXX, ROCKLAND

We made an outing to the TJ Maxx in Rockland, as the weather was so nice and the main activity for many folks in Maine is just driving around looking at people’s lawns. I love this TJ Maxx because it isn’t picked over, and I got a good haul of jewelry and some other Halloweeny accessories. Near the checkout I spotted this display of kids books: almost all graphic novels.

TARGET, AUGUSTA

I was told that Target is phasing out a lot of its magazines and this was indeed the case here. Just magazine sized pockets, and most of them were at checkouts that looked like they were hardly ever used – I have been to this Target dozens of times and I can honestly say I’ve never seen these checkout aisles in action.

This aisle was particularly abandoned.

The books section contained many many graphic novels for kids – not even racked as graphic novels, just as “middle grade.” TMNT: The Last Ronin was racked in the fantasy section. But ominously, no manga aside from a One Piece puzzle book. As noted by one of our commenters, it seems that with all the attention paid to obscene material, and the general shift away from reading and challenging material, manga might be in the process of being phased out of mass market. In Augusta, Maine this is definitely the case, as in the past I saw giant racks of manga. Just another reason to boycott Target. .

As an out of touch urbanite, I was shocked to see the current content of little Golden Books, including one that appears to be about Funko versions of the Friends cast.

But also some eternal truths were addressed:

WALMART, AUGUSTA

We made a brief stop at Walmart and I wasn’t able to check out the book/magazine section in the back, but at the checkout stands, at long last, I spotted digest sized racks!!! Only a few of them, carrying the ubiquitous Farmer’s Almanac, Prevention, a puzzle book and…BINGO! The Archie Comic Digest!

On a whim I purchased this! More on that below.

While I did not see Walmart’s book section, I did see the area near the checkout that sells sportscards, the area where DC’s experiment in Walmart comics was once prophesied to destroy the direct market. It remains a disheveled mess. 

If this lightning tour of one region’s mass market newsstand offerings proved anything to me, it’s that there is really no such thing as a mass market newsstand any more. Trying to sell anything beyond puzzle books and bookazines – those one shot special about Pokemon or Ozzy Ossbourne or whatever – would be tough. That said, I think a Dog-Man or Big Nate-type comics magazine might have an audience, but there wasn’t a lot of material aimed at kids to begin with. I think the idea of a checkout aisle reward for kids has gone the way of the rotary phone.

My survey also proved that there is no subtlety in the checkout aisle:

Are Cute Cats deserving of their own special issue? Absolutely.

As for the Archie Halloween Special digest, as mentioned I purchased it, only to have some sticker shock at the $9.99 price tag. No, I don’t normally buy my comics so I forget how expensive they can be.

I think the fretting about the size has been overstated. The Archie DIgests of yore were actually smaller than Disney Adventures, or, if I recall correctly, the comics digests of my youth. The new format is a little less than Prevention-sized, just a fraction of an inch larger than the old ones but more convenient for the current digest pockets.

Also, the insides of this digest are almost all comics. All that talk about puzzles was just a few Archie themed puzzle pages. I can’t speak to the quality of the Archie content, although it was a pleasure to flip through the pages and see some old familiar names, and even past collaborators, among the credits, but hopefully Riverdale Reviewed will get around to it.

If there is anything dire about Arhcie’ ongoing digest strategy, it’s that there are many fewer of them: a few seasonal collections instead of the regular stream of reprints.But given the kind of material I saw on the racks of Augusta, I can see why this decision was made. 

As a New Yorker, I’m normally insulated from the Walmarts, Costcos and Krogers that are the everyday life of suburban and rural Americans. So take all the above with a grain of salt. Maine is its own quirky market for sure. Perhaps I will reach out to the very knowledgeable Joe Berger for more on the state of the newsstand, but from my brief tour, it doesn’t seem to be a particularly hostile place for comics…but it doesn’t seem very robust in general.

Finally you may be asking, how was the rest of my vacation?

Absolutely spectacular, thanks for asking.

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10 COMMENTS

  1. While you showed one of the current stream of Mad book-a-zines, one thing you didn’t happen to stumble upon but which has been showing up in places like CVS are the movie tie-in book-a-zines that are really comics. Both Superman and Fantastic Four had them, Supes with three issues of All-Star Superman, FF with tales from three different 21st century runs. It leaves me wondering whether 2-to-4 similar volumes of Batman or Spider-Man reprints per year, even without some immediate tie-in, might be viable.

  2. The Superman Magazine was a huge success. The FF not so much. It is still early, because how returns work. But the sold numbers are looking to be 40 Superman sold to 1 FF sold. Now obviously Superman is Superman, and the film has been better received by the general public. But if you are told that the Superman Magazine sold very close to 1-Million, do not be surprised, it did that well.

  4. I bought the $15 Superman magazine sold at these types of stores, but skipped the Fantastic Four one. All these years seeing Archie digests at the checkouts, I’ve thought superheroes would sell better if Marvel and DC would produce the right content and package it correctly. Mark Waid, Jerry Ordway and Dan Jurgens producing kid-friendly Superman manga-size done-in-one books would outsell Archie by 10x. They might even approach Dogman sales figures. Parents would totally grab these at checkout for their boys.

  5. Heidi: as a Maine native who recently moved back after 30+ years away, I appreciated your overview. Hard to believe we stayed current with comics back in the days before comics shops. But our spinner racks were plentiful. Mr Paperback (where I used to work), as you said. Bookland, Laverdiere’s Super Drugs and pretty much every grocery store and mom & pop outlet. Even the hospital gift shops. We had to be resourceful and thorough as young collectors, but it worked. These days? I drive to a shop in Waterville or Portland.

  6. Heidi, my friend &*#@s works for Hudson News (formerly Harrisburg News Agency). Obviously I do not want get him fired, but I will email him and ask him if he is allowed to share this information. I knew (as we talked that week) from Day One the “Superman Mag” sales, were so much higher then ever expected, and they were scrambling to find re-stock from the word go. Shifting became a huge part of the success, as you can expect there are stores that would sell out in a couple of days. And other stores were sales were zero or a trickle. This ended up being the magazine surprise of the summer. As the stores that were selling the mag well, are still selling the mag well. I know MAD does sell for some stores, and at other stores sell zero, and it is an impossible calculation to figure out. Why does one Grocery store sell all 10 of their copies of MAD and the Grocery store across the street sell zero, it is an enigma? He told me that his boss saw the Superman Cover on Day One and stated this is going to be big, and he could not remember his Boss ever stating something like this, and he was exactly right. Cover art or photo is the most important thing in selling at checkouts.

  7. I noted that the local Circle K had a display of bagged DC comics for $3.99 each. The subject were Superman, Supergirl, Krypton and Justice League related. I expect no replenishment.

  8. Tom: Laverdiere’s! OMG I forgot about that! Shame on me. When I was a kid and we vacationed in Maine, I loved stopping at them and perusing the spinner racks for comics I’d missed elsewhere. Those were the real deal.

    I saw that the old K-Mart plaza that held one of Augusta’s two Mr. paperbacks has now been entirely razed. Sic transit I guess.

  9. Heidi: the K_Mart plaza didn’t house either of the Mr. paperbacks. They were at the other two Augusta shopping centers. And I worked at them both! K-Mart was neighbors with one of the two Laverdiere’s we had in town where I was a kid. That’s where I bought all my earliest comics off the spinner rack. My dad even introduced me to Maine’s governor once while I was choosing comics! The great thing about Laverdiere’s is they often had two spinner racks, so you could go to town buying older comics you’d missed. The downtown Augusta store was one of those two-rack wonders.

  10. Two more Maine comics distribution stories to share:

    1) Lewiston’s old Mammoth Mart (where Marden’s is now) had two spinner racks in the late 1960s and early 1970s … but the store for whatever reason refused to carry even a single Marvel Comic! Can you imagine buying comics in the 60s/70s and not being able to find a Marvel? When I was in town visiting my grandparents and desperate for a comics fix, I’d have to “settle” for a Turok or a Space Family Robinson because I didn’t read DC, and the Harvey/Archie/Gold Key selections just weren’t calling to me.

    2) Also from Lewiston, the old Victor News downtown was a decent place to find current comics in the 1970s and 80s, and at some point a local comics shop started supplying the store with direct-only editions. Well, since the local newsstand distributor wouldn’t touch the direct-only stuff, some of those shop-supplied comics stayed on the rack for more than 30 years! The store is gone now, but as recently as six years ago I could walk into that Victor News and find comics still on display from the mid-1980s, including the old Daredevil comics index that had the cool Frank Miller cover. Needless to say, I never dared sample the snack food or drinks on display at this store. :)

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