Pharmacy Finds
This is the feature I wanted to do over the weekend, but didn’t have the time.
Then, I arrived to find my “sample” as it were ransacked beyond recognition.
The sample I speak of is actually the pharmacy. Before the days of comic book shops, believe it or not, this is where all the action was. But the rise of specialty shops made a big dent in the comic book industry’s MO - offering often secluded, den-like atmospheres, a wide variety of bubble-bursting “varients” and many other collector’s items.
So where does this leave comic books in the pharmacy nowadays? Actually in the very back shelf of the bottom rack. But despite their hard-to-reach position, I found one item of interest which caught my eye last Wednesday - an issue of Warren Ellis’ Thunderbolts.
Odd that this comic - one not especially aimed to the mainstream audience - landed in the pharmacy. I noticed others - including Moon Knight and even Blade - gracing the shelves of recent months.
I arrived at noon with a notebook in hand today to write a list of titles appearing regularly in the “pharmacy finds” - but to my dismay, my selections were limited by a single eight-year old, who ransacked the section in search of DC Animated’s latest Legion of Superheroes.
Not wanting to discourage the next generation of comic book readers - especially if they’re singing my paycheck - I left this project for another day.
Hopefully they’ll be restocked Tuesday or Wednesday. But while we wait, here’s an open question to anyone who likes to see their name on the comment roll:
Just what comics do you typically find at your gas station or grocery store?
June 12th, 2007 at 12:44 am
Ok, I’m not posting this to see my name on the roll…… just had to say that :).
MAN! In my true heyday of buying comics, I lived at the convenience store on the corner…. The little round spinner rack full of each weeks new titles….. Trying to find the ones that weren’t too bent up at the first staple from people flipping them forward to scan the stack…….
Then they went away. At first, the idea of a comics shop was cool! A whole store …. full of cool comics and toys and usually used records and crap…… But you’re right. It killed the other outlets and comics SUFFERED.
In a mid sized city such as mine, Memphis, we had one comic shop in the heart of the city. Very unreachable for a kid from the suburbs. Sure, later on I grew up and got a car, but the distraction of the female persuasion and the steady increase in cost of the comic title (not to mention the wavering quality)certainly cut into my interest into driving out on a weekly basis to follow my favorite titles.
I haven’t seen a single comic anywhere. Including your average pharmacy. A return to a common newsstand might just be a boon for the comics industry.
I mean - one of my biggest complaints about Hollywood ‘comic book based’ movies are that they feel they need to dumb them down, strip them of the ‘comic book elements’ in order to reach as mainstream an audience as possible. Why can’t the comic book companies realize that such common placement of their product is crucial to reaching ‘average Joe’? Instead of pulling the annual stunt after annual stunt in hopes of getting semi-bemused cable news coverage….. just put the friggin’ books out for people to flip through and pick up something that looks interesting.
It used to be the cover - the cover which sensationalized if not totally misrepresented the story within……… now….. you just don’t even see them.
June 12th, 2007 at 11:23 am
I hardly find any comics other than the comic shop. It’s a real shame.
June 12th, 2007 at 11:53 am
Comics suffered for other reasons than just the comic store, but often - and this fortunately NOT the case with either of my two local stores - the comic stores can have a den-like atmosphere than can be unwelcoming to outsiders (i.e. average joes). So while some comic book movies talk down to the public, some comic stores are worried about being infiltrated by people who aren’t “true comic fans”. Its a vicious cycle.
But all that said, I have to say, my local grocery store sustained my interest in comics. Granted, the comics there are, to this day, placed in the very back shelf on the lowest rack, but there are still COMICS, and I remember buying them all the time during my high school years. Now I’m just in the process of looking to see exactly which ones they’re getting.
Hopefully the shelf will be a better that what I found it last time.
June 14th, 2007 at 10:55 am
That’s true Richard. I’m more of a casual comic fan, so I don’t like the stores you mention. There’s a store where I’m at now that’s very open, clean, and inviting to people who just happen to wander in. The owner never balks when people ask him “dumb” questions about comics. It makes me feel better shopping there.