Better exposure would be a very good thing.
What we need is a comic book chain like Blockbuster, one that legitimizes the medium and puts a store in every town.
http://newsarama.com/forums/showthre...threadid=29874
Click the link for the full column.by Brian Hibbs
#131 – March 2005 – “The Two Problems ”
I think I've said, oh a couple of dozen times now, that I think the largest structural problem with comics today is the lack of venues for them. Specifically, there simply aren't enough comic book shops to even begin to meet all of the demand that exists.
I'm in San Francisco. SF has a population of something around 750,000 people, smaller than you might think for a major city. SF is also only 49 square miles large, 7 miles by 7 miles. SF has, if I'm counting correctly, twelve stores that deal primarily or exclusively in comic books. At one comics store per 62,500 residents, SF almost certainly has the highest number of comic shops, per capita, of any major city in the United States.
And we could add 50% again to the number of stores here and I still don't think we'd even be close to saturating the marketplace. There was a point in the 1990s where there were 20+ comic shops in SF, and there was still plenty of business to go around.
Comic book stores create new comic book readers.
Better exposure would be a very good thing.
What we need is a comic book chain like Blockbuster, one that legitimizes the medium and puts a store in every town.
Lexington, KY has between 240-260K people and we have 5 comic shops.
That's 48-52K residents per comic shop. We beat SF!
I'd love to see something like that. A chain store would probably be able to keep small press titles in stock and with everything broken down by categories (I assume it would work much the same way a video store works, you would have a superhero aisle and a western aisle and so on), it would possibly encourage Marvel and DC to stop flooding the market with too many new books that really would almost be all competing only against each other for aisle space.Originally Posted by Thudpucker
uh oh... when goddard sobers up.... there's going to be trouble!
Would a chain really be small press friendly? Don't the video store chains like Blockbuster or Hollywood Video pretty much only stock mainstream stuff, and not carry many small/indy films? Not only do chains usually want to cater to the mainstream, but they really want to avoid controversy, and I can't imagine any chain carrying any sort of "adult" stuff, and I'd imagine their definition of "adult" might be a lot more strict than what many of us would put into that category.
I'm not against the idea at all. I wish there were more comic stores around. I'd just like them to be more like Big Planet in Bethesda with a wide variety of choices...
dt
The problem is that it can be difficult for a comic shop to stay afloat financially. It's a tough business to be in.
And, I'm not so sure a comic book "chain" is a good idea either.
While I do think comics need better exposure, its a difficult thing. Graphic Novels in bookstores and the whole comics in 7-11s are great things for the Industry I think. But, more shops may or may not be the solution.
RC
I don't know, whenever I've gone to Blockbuster, I've always seen a good variety of small titles out on the aisles. I'm sure they don't keep up with every little movie out there but I think they try to do a good job of keeping any movie that might be of interest to a fair number of folks in stock. I don't know though, that is something to consider.
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