Dan Gearino

Dan Gearino’s Comic Shop: The Retail Mavericks Who Gave Us a New Geek Culture examines the rise of comic shops as the local of fan communities after the development of the direct market of comic sales through case studies of various comic book stores in the United States, including The Laughing Ogre in Columbus, Ohio and distributors like Capital City Distribution. Discussing Phil Sueling’s creation of the direct market, Gearino writes, “Here was the new business model: retailers could order comics from Seuling and get shipments from the printing plants, bypassing the old-line distributors. This meant the comics would arrive sooner than at other outlets, and in precise quantities…This was possible because the major publishers did their printing with the same company in Sparta, Illinois. The printer would collate the orders and ship them to Seuling’s customers, just as they did for hundreds of news distributors” (pg. 33). Seuling entered the comics business full-time after he gave up his teaching job, following his arrest for “selling indecent material to a minor” on 11 March 1973 (pg. 26). This stemmed from a campaign in which church groups tried to ban comics after a story in Robert Crumb’s Zap Comix #4.

Discussing figures, Gearino writes, “In 1977, there were about two hundred comics specialty shops in the United States” (pg. 38). Further, “From roughly 1979 to 1982, comics distribution was thrown wide open and the number of comic shops grew tremendously, although numbers are difficult to verify…the number of outlets rose from about two hundred in 1977 to five hundred in 1987. In addition, many small shops became big shops” (pg. 84-85). Gearino continues, “The number of retailers ballooned during this period, going from about one thousand stores in 1990s to an all-time high of about ten thousand in 1995” (pg. 133). By 1997, “the direct market that had begun with Phil Seuling and had grown to dozens of competing distributors was now down to one option for retailers. And many retailers were not happy about it. The Diamond exclusive era had begun, and continues to this day” (pg. 148).

In terms of demographics, “When comic shops began to proliferate in the late 1970s, women customers tended to gravitate toward independent titles, such as Elfquest and Cerebus, according to shop owners from that era. In the early 1980s, women were a key part of the audiences for alternative publishers, with titles such as Love and Rockets” (pg. 75). Gearino continues, “Since the underground days, black-and-white printing had been an inexpensive way for artists to get their ideas to the public. By the mid-1980s, this had grown into a lively alterative comics scene, with groundbreaking titles such as Love and Rockets from Fantagraphics. And now the greed of the black-and-white boom had been typified by products that seemed, to an untrained eye, similar to alternative comics” (pg. 106).

Gearino concludes, “The shops began to proliferate in the 1970s when comics were shifting from a mass medium to a niche. Now, with the popularity of comics aimed at young readers and the growth of graphic novels as a publishing category, comics are again moving toward being a mass medium…The comic shops that thrive will be the ones whose spaces and people are best able to attract customers, even on items that may cost less somewhere else. This is far from easy, but many store owners and staff are doing it already” (pg. 151).… (meer)