Who's Who in the CBU 2008

Name: Regie Rigby

Regie is a strange, almost ethereal creature. Who can plumb the hidden mysteries of his dark and murky past - a past which contains a terrible secret. A secret that taught him that with great power comes great responsibility, that criminals are a cowardly superstitious lot and just who exactly knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.

By day, he assumes the appearance of a mild mannered teacher, bringing the joy of literature and the English Language to classes of enthralled and enthusiastic students. But by night?

By night he goes home and writes lesson plans. Sorry. That's as interesting as he gets. Really.

The rumours about rooftop struggles with underworld uberfiends, the gossip about the hidden cave filled with hi-tec equipment and the suggestion that his car might be fitted with turbo lasers are all nonsense.

When he's not teaching he reads comics. Sometimes he combines the two activities. When he's not doing that he's either playing computer games or asleep.

Retailers of the World - UNITE!

By Regie Rigby

I’m not, as things go, a big fan of mass action. At heart I’m an individualist – I like to plough my own furrow, do my own thing. I suspect a lot of you are the same. You’re all reading comics for a start, which suggests a certain tendency to not run with the crowd.

However, there are times when getting a bunch of like-minded people to work together is the best way to go. Over in my “real” life I’ve recently taken up the mantle of “Union Rep” for my union the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), and doing that work has made me realise that there really are a whole lot of things that we can do as a group much more effectively than we can as individuals.

Which is perhaps why a brief conversation I had with Darren, the head honcho of my LCS Destination Venus made such an impression on me. He was, to a degree having a bit of a rant about many of the things that can threaten the livelihood of your average comic retailer, but in the middle of all that he came up with a seriously good idea.

“What we need is a federation!” he proclaimed, a slightly fanatical glimmer appearing in his eye. “Small independent comics shops need to stick together!”

And he may have a point.

Comics retailing is a hard place to make a living. I’ve never done it myself, but I know an awful lot of people who’ve tried and failed. Some, I grant you failed because they were terrible business people – buying too much of the wrong sort of stock and either pricing it so highly that nobody was prepared to buy it, or so cheap that they were making a loss on ever sale. Some failed because although they were reasonably good at business their shops weren’t very good. The sorts of places that smell a bit strange and are full of intimidating fanboys with lax personal hygiene and negative social skills.

Most however failed for a much simpler reason. They were teeny tiny fish in a backwater of a big pond, where there were one or two really big fish in direct competition, and (just to stretch the analogy a little further) an absolutely massive fishkeeper who had a monopoly on the food and found it easier to give the best food to the big fish and couldn’t really be arsed with the little fish who didn’t eat enough to make them worth the effort.

I have no particular beef with any of the big fish in UK comics retailing. The fact that they are, for the most part at least, relatively successful businesses suggests that they must be doing something right, however much I might personally find theat some of them aren’t to my taste. The chains are what they are, and indeed some of them are really good.

While I fell out of love with Forbidden Planet some time ago, regular readers may remember the fondness I still harbour for my first Local Comics Store, the late lamented Nostalgia and Comics, on Matilda Street in Sheffield – part of a chain. (Last time I was in the city I dropped by to find that the store was still a comics shop, but now under the umbrella of a different chain. I was gutted.) I quite like the Travelling Man stores in Leeds and York too – having found them to be staffed by knowledgeable people with eclectic taste and helpful dispositions.

But long standing readers will also know that in my view the best stores by far are the small owner operated shops. Often very small indeed, often with very few or even no hired staff, just a guy behind the counter with a passion for comics and an awful lot to lose if the venture goes belly up.

Places like Destination Venus, or its forerunner in Harrogate, the short lived but much loved Judge’s Comics. Places like GOSH!, opposite the British Museum in London, Page 45 in Nottingham or ACE Comics in Colchester. All run by people with a genuine passion for comics – most run by people who could probably make more money doing something else, but who aren’t just in it for the money.

Such places are massively valuable to the medium of comics as a whole. It’s places like ‘Venus and Page 45 that draw in new readers, rather then just milking the existing fanboys for every penny they can get, which seems to be the business of some of the larger players (not all, but many). I can’t really blame the big players for chasing the money in whatever way they can – it’s not a business model I approve of, but it is a business model of sorts. Without the “good” shops though – mostly the little guys – the big bad guys would soon run out of fanboys to exploit. The little guys don’t need the big guys, but without the little guys, the big guys simply couldn’t exist.

That’s how important the small, enthusiast driven, independent comics shops are to the industry and the medium. They are the pulse, the beating heart, and as anyone who has ever had to watch a beloved LCS disappear, they are terribly vulnerable.

So, what do the big guys have that the little guys don’t?

Well, to be honest, I can’t think of much. If anything, in all the areas I personally consider important, the little guys have the edge. As a rule they have better product knowledge – not just about what’s hot but also about what’s good (and the two lists can often be radically different, although they usually overlap a little). Their staff tend to be more committed, friendlier and more helpful. There is usually more of a “buzz” in little independent shops. In fact, so long as there’s one close enough to get to, I can’t imagine why anyone would choose to shop with the multiples. So, what makes the big guys strong?

Ultimately, size and money – the two things the small independents tend not to have.

If you’re a small retailer, and Diamond short fill your order, you can end up with a real headache. It tends to be the “hot” titles that end up being over ordered and allocated by Diamond. If you don’t have enough to satisfy your standing order customers, not only do you piss some of them off, making yourself look unprofessional, but you also have nothing to put on the shelves so casual browsers can’t buy the hot titles either.

If you’re a branch of a larger multiple retailer you can pool the resources you do have and make sure that at least your regulars are satisfied. More than that, if you’re a small part of a larger whole, you can order centrally, which means your business matters a lot more to your suppliers, which means if they have to send short deliveries out, they’re far less likely to pick on you.

That in itself is a pretty big reason for getting together. But there are other incentives too. A federation of independent comic retailers would also open up the possibility of numerous economies of scale in the purchase of supplies. It might be possible to work together to cut things like legal and accountancy costs. More than anything, it would make it easier to get on the ‘phone and have a bit of a vent about things.

So, all you retailers out there – what do you reckon? I mean, outside of internet sales, it’s not like you’re competing with each other – Darren in Harrogate isn’t likely to lose any of the sales he makes to me by helping out a colleague on the other side of the county – I’m not going to a store on the other side of the county whatever happens.

I may be hopelessly naive, but I don’t see you have an awful lot to lose. Whadya reckon?




In other news, readers might like to know that The Queen of Diamonds #9 is now available online. Read it and realise how right I was about how good it is.

Next time, some more reviews!