Hey Kids! Comics!

 A revolution may be occurring!

Comics may be returning to a convenience store near you!

After an interminably long absence, comics may be coming back to where they once were - convenience stores, and maybe soon, drugstores, and other outlets!

A decision was made in the 80s and 90s to concentrate comic sales in specialty comic shops.  They were able to charge the comic store owner the full wholesale rate for the comic book, and it wasn't returnable.  If the comic store owner couldn't sell it, he had to keep it and hope to sell it eventually as a back issue. Sometimes, as comics were dominated by speculators for a while, they could occasionally sell for substantially more than what they paid.  Most of the time, though, they were lucky to sell it for a dollar or less.*

Before this, the retail stores that displayed the comics only had them for a limited sale period, then returned them to the distributor.  In giving them back, they had to tear off half the front cover so it could not be sold again.

What this meant was that comics were available everywhere.  As a kid, I could even walk down to the small lakefront Mom-and-Pop's store near my grandparents' cottage and find a slew of recent comics to choose from, along with science fiction magazines and lots of candy and soda.  My Grandmother gave me some loose change, and I could go there and get several comics, candy, a copy of Worlds of If SF magazine, and still have change left over.

Those were the days!

But, are they back?

Lo, and behold!

Look what I found at the Circle K!

A whole rack of DC comic books!

I've found them at two Circle Ks, and I believe there are many more!

They take a little more now than a few coins.  They're $3.29 a piece now.  That sounds like a lot, but the full retail price is often more.  I bought a Krypto (Spureman's dog**) comic whose original price was $4.99.  What can I say?  Everything costs more money now.

This is probably a promotion in connection with the Superman movie.

Will it work?

I'm in love with it, but I'm sadly sceptical it will work.

I don't know of any special promotions to draw attention to it.  I'm not sure whether customers who are no longer used to seeing magazines or books at convenience stores will even be visually drawn to it.  People have an infinite capacity to not see what's right in front of them, blocking out what they don't expect.

The display of comics are not new.  They are comics that came out in the last few years, but almost exclusively focused on #1 issues.  I have no idea if a kid finds #1 Krrypto, if they're ever going to be able to find #2.  And since they're just DC comics, I can't imagine the reaction of some poor kid pawing through all of them, desperately trying to find a Spider-Man.

I don't know what level of commitment DC's owner. Warner Bros. has to this.  Warner Bros. is up for sale, and I don't know what they'll think of this. When Warner Bros was bought over by the Discovery people, the first thing they did was shelve a $90 billion Batgirl movie that was fully complete and ready for distribution. 

As fragile as this may be, I am thrilled to see the attempt.  If comics are to survive, they must become more widely available.

So. I'm going to enjoy this brief moment in the sunshine while it lasts.

So, please, check it out yourself!

Hey, Kids of all ages!  IT'S COMICS!

* sidenote - the major distributor of comics to comic shops, Diamond Distributors, went out of business.  They had a monopoly-level of control over this market.  How their collapse affects things, I'm not sure.

**Based on the new Superman movie, Krypto is Supergirl's dog.  There are so many retro changes that occur in the comics world, even I can't keep up with them all.