A kid walks into the store with his mother, and begins to look through the new books. He’s one of my regulars, really enjoys Batman, and collects two ongoings at a time. Anyway, he’s looking through the news comics, and he ends up grabbing copies of Red Hood and the Outlaws and Catwoman off the shelf. In his file, there’s a copy of Detective Comics and Batman. Of these four books, I don’t quite feel comfortable selling three of them to this kid. Not because I don’t think he’s going to enjoy them - I’m just worried that the audience is a little too young for the, uh… graphic content of the book. So I do what I always do in this situation: I consult the parent in regards to the content. This woman, she’s really nice. She listens patiently when I explain some of the content issues and looks at the pages as the kid stares nervously. In the end, she shrugs and says, “Nothing he hasn’t seen in the video games or whatever, it seems fine.”

And so I sell the books, and the pair of them walk off - which is when my brain softly whispers, “You shouldn’t have done that. You just made a terrible mistake.”

But I’m a retailer. Isn’t it my job to sell comics? Even if I don’t quite agree with the content?

Hold on, kids, shit’s about to get bumpy.

Me vs. The Angry Mob:

Women Be Shopping (or) We Should Be Better By Now

01. GODDAMMIT

This week’s adventure began on Tuesday night, after the shop closed for the day. To make sure all of my customers will have a chance to grab all of the books they might like, I’ve always made it a policy to read any first issues of creative team changes before the shop opens on Wednesday. During this month, we hired James as our double secret temporary comic shop helper in order to make sure all of the DC books are read and recapped before four a.m.

Anyway, on Tuesday, we split the titles down the middle, alternating picks, and then sat down to read the books. I had Catwoman in my stack and he had Red Hood and the Outlaws in his. Once we got to those books, both of us noted that we were not impressed with the, uh… story telling choices in the books. They were clearly books intended for a very specific audience, and that audience? Was not us. Or women. Or, in my opinion, kids.

I know that as I read the Catwoman, when I opened the first page, I yelled out an exasperated, “Goddammit!” Greeting me on page one were gratuitous TnA shots, the title character’s face well hidden until blammo - she leaps out of a building with one jug flying free in the breeze. I was not a fan. Then, as I continued to read (and James can confirm this) the exasperation turned into something else. Soon enough, I had gone from an exasperated “Goddammit” to a resigned, “Goddammit, this is gonna’ sell, isn’t it?”

Which is true. I don’t think anyone out there is arguing whether or not there’s an audience for this kind of comic. There absolutely is, and that’s not the problem. No, the problem comes when you realize that this is the only audience that is currently being targeted within the superhero genre. Books like this don’t just exist, but are omnipresent in the medium, clogging up shelves with very little alternative. And that? Is wrong.

But as a retailer, what do I do about this? What do I do when a ten year old boy or girl walks into the store and wants to purchase books like this, because they’re fans of superheroes? What do I do when a new female reader wanders through and pages through the comics? Do I have a responsibility to do something? To not order shelf copies to sate my guilt or to order more to sate the tastes of my existing customers? What exactly should I do?

02. WHAT EXACTLY TO DO

With all things in comic book retail, it comes down to one thing: if you are in the business of selling comics, you have to take an active role in the store. That seems like a no brainer, but there are many retailers out there who are content with ordering what they will and doing absolutely nothing to try and affect the ebb and flow of what sells and what doesn’t. Some would argue that a retailer shouldn’t try and affect what the customers are buying. Hell, in some aspects, I’m a big proponent of just letting people buy what they like. I have never, and will never actively discourage someone from buying a book that they are going to love, even if the book does not appeal to me specifically. But, to that same effect, I won’t sit by and let people try and guess what those books will be based on a brief page through by the shelves.

A retailer should absolutely know as much as they can about the product that they are selling. It would be folly to suggest that they read/see/do everything - down that path lies some form of madness, I would guess - but a person should at least be able to give potential customers the broad strokes of certain items, either filling them in on the genre, or story telling style, or what-have-you. With that knowledge, you can and should affect what books are sold, and to whom.

And so with books like Catwoman and Red Hood and the Outlaws, I do what I always do. I make sure I’m aware of its contents - or at least the style of it’s contents - and then I sell them as applicable. And yes, those books sell, and they sell to quite a few people. But under no circumstances should I let that be the end of things. At the same time I’m making sure the audience for Catwoman can find the book, I have to make sure that the audience that will vehimately hate Catwoman have books to purchase as an alternative. Or, at the very least, I should steer them away from a thing that could potentially hobble their enjoyment of comic books for quite some time, and send them towards something that they will enjoy. As I like to stress to everyone that I meet, comics are not a genre, they are a medium and absolutely every kind of story can be told in that medium - and whenever books are published that fall in line with that way of thinking, I do whatever I can to support the effort. A recent example of this would be my support for the book Mystic - a fantastic fantasy tale set featuring a pair of teenage sister as protagonists. It’s imaginative, it’s fun and it features a rare glimpse into what the medium can accomplish when it aims for broader audiences.

Now of course, that book is not selling as much as Catwoman or Red Hood are. Which is a shame, BUT - that does not mean that the effort should not be made. In fact, it’s the gradual encouragement of books like Mystic that will possibly see the medium change its focus in the years to come. That kind of creativity and that kind of mindset absolutely needs to be rewarded when it’s attempted, and it is the job of the retailer - it is my job specifically - to affect the ebb and flow of that book. It is my job to bring it in, and to sell it to the people who are going to love it dearly, and if they aren’t coming into the shop, it is my job to go out and find them. That’s the point right? I want as many people to be reading comics as possible. It’s good for my business, it’s good for the industry, and its good for the art form in general to actively push out of its comfort zone.

But. Apparently, I’m one of just a few retailers who actually do things like this. As stated above, many are content to let the numbers be what they will. For the record, the numbers consistently spiral downwards on pretty much any given series after the first issue hits. The only comics that don’t follow this trend? Are ones that are actively sold by either positive word of mouth or stunning quality. Now, could you imagine how books would sell if more retailers took a more active roll in the way their books sell? Not in a negative way, but in a positive way? The industry would sure as hell be a different looking place, filled with books that appeal to all types. And hell, we might even get a few more tasteful superhero books out of the mix.

…what. It could happen. Just stop being so god damn lazy and make it happen.

Until then, I’ll keep on doing what I’m doing, and hope for the best, while occasionally, selling the worst to the folks who are going to enjoy it. That’ll be how I get the money to keep trying to make the industry a better place.