HouseofComics.Com

Congrats on getting close to opening a store. I always figured sorting and bagging and boarding was the kind of things the help can do while they have nothing else to do. No one in the store, while they are chatting with a customer and manning the register they can bag and board books, etc. I know one store that was large enough that they felt they needed four employees at once to avoid crazy theft, etc. and the aggregate work that the four were involved with at any one time was kind of minimal. But my general vote is if the book is nice, get it in a bag and board unless it's really a junk book. Hate to see something, especially something from what I consider the low print run, high cover price years of say 1997 on, get trashed. As for sorting, probably not, though it is really fast for experienced people to at least sort by publisher or even better the roughly A-D boxes, the E-J boxes, etc. Whatever.

Just curious if you happened to run into Harley Yee at those stores, when he was an MSU student?

Dave told me that he sold like a semi trailer full of stuff before he moved to Tucson.

Not pictured in the ads, but when I had the big Katy Keene inventory I would get inquiries: My relative had her name published in an old Katy Keene as a contributor. Do you know what issue xxx was in? Uh, no.

I'm disappointed by the cover options this time too. This is the first time in about 18 years I haven't purchased it in the first hour it went onsale--often the first five minutes. Just forgot today--too busy these days. Remembered at five pm, which is when my local shop closes these days. Will get it tomorrow. Agree, the first guide I ever got totally changed my life. It had an ad for wholesale lists from I believe S&L sales and I was hooked. I had to buy three copies of an issue, but it was a non-brainer.

Very interesting. What was the limit on attendance at any one time?

Looking forward to your review of the Grand Rapids shops at some point. Fanfare was the first pure comics store in Kalamazoo. Tiny place originally, in a former house, split with a radio station. Basically a living room with one impressive rack of new comics and the rest crammed with back issues, on tables and under the tables. Just a gem. I remember they financed opening the store by speculating in 1,000 copies of New Teen Titans 1. That book hit it big and voila, enough capital to shoestring a store back in the day.

They had a great convention in Ypsilanti (on campus, I assume) back in the mid-80s. King Kon, I believe. Maybe only 2-3 years. Somehow it seemed like it was replaced on the "schedule" by Mid-Ohio Con, but I could be mistaken.

I agree--two weeks ago is when it got really slow/bad and extra random.

These are all great posts. For me, the one that comes to mind as most distinctly summer would be 1983 and we finally have a local comic book store, 20 miles away and I have enough money that I'm able to spend $20 to $40 and come home with a giant stack of comics. Like the kind of thing where you are loading up (after a lifetime of never having access to a single back issue) and they have to scrounge a cardboard box to put all your stuff in and where the owner tosses in a Conan treasury because you are buying so much. And this particular day, I'm just come home with the box but I'm signed up for my town's annual junior tennis tournament. And it's super hot and muggy. And I all I want to do is go to our one air conditioned room in the house (a fairly new feature at that for us) and read the comics. Not go out and compete in this heat. I think I broached the idea of just forfeiting but my dad wouldn't have it. And I probably had the thought of just losing quickly but wouldn't you know it, I just had the guy outclassed and there's no way I could lose to him. So I won the match, either had to come back to play the next round in two hours or the next day, but at least I got to finally go home and look at the new stash--it was that exciting to me and that fresh. I didn't get to fully appreciate annuals. DC was basically still on its hiatus from publishing annuals when I was a kid in the late 70s and I somehow also missed out on the X-Men so never saw the classic X-Men annuals 3-6 though I would've loved them. And just missed MTIO 2 and Avengers 7 by a year--I certainly would've bought them if they were 1978 and not 1977. But there were a couple I loved, including ASM 14 and 15 and Avengers 9 and 10.

Yes, I remember selling my first print still in mailing envelope from Eastman and Laird for $37.50... Those are the ones you remember, for sure. Was talking with someone today who had deep roots in the Bay Area comic store community, stretching back to the late 70s, and I told him that for the first time since 1972 or so there is no longer a comic book store within four blocks of the Cal campus. No longer a store downtown or on Telegraph. That's quite a run. But if you're a new Cal student this fall, you may never run across one of the two current Berkeley comic book stores during your undergrad years.

Take Detective 242 and Star Spangled War 99 by PM.

Anything else coming in this thread besides the coverless?

That's awesome!