Praise for Comic Shop:
“Dan Gearino offers a more compelling and complex place for the comic shop in popular culture by demonstrating how entrepreneurs and distribution channels have reshaped that commercial space over the last 50 years. . . . Gender issues feature heavily in the text, and this offers scholars . . . a point of consideration lacking from many other outlets. . . . Above all, this work personalizes the comic shop as a collection of people who, through emotion and personal desire, embrace an evolving and unstable place in the commercial world of pop culture.”
—PopMatters
“[Gearino] has clearly done his homework. . . . Comic Shop is an essential read for anyone interested in the mechanics and money of the comic industry, but I was most amazed to learn that, beyond Carol Kalish, there was another woman behind the formation of the direct market. That’s not a story that’s often been told.”
—Johanna Draper Carlson, Comics Worth Reading
“Gearino pulls back the curtain on the seldom-seen end of the business encompassing sales, distribution and retail. . . . Drawing from original documents and firsthand interviews with key participants, [he] gives the retail and distribution side of the industry an account as dramatic and lively as Sean Howe did for the creative side in his 2012 book on Marvel Comics. . . . The result is a readable, well-researched account that fills a gap in existing comics literature and provides a great reference for future work.”
—ICv2
“Dan Gearino captures the genie in the bottle. He’s gathered together the players and the circumstances to reveal how a generation of entrepreneurs saved an entire industry and changed the very way people discover, buy, read, collect, and even think about comic books.”
—Bud Plant
“Gearino . . . effortlessly navigates the byzantine business lore of comic-distribution companies. . . . The author still takes delicate care with their stories, weaving tales of complex heroes and villains with stories directly from the people who lived through the uncertainty and chaos in the industry. . . . It is spectacular how often Gearino makes these small stories of heartbreak and triumph feel herculean in scope. . . . Comic Shop lives in the beautiful struggle to survive and exist.”
—Columbus Dispatch
“The fickle, frustrating and sometimes joyful travails of owning a comic book store are detailed in a new book by native Iowan Dan Gearino. [Comic Shop] traces the history of selling comic books from their inception on newsstands in grocery stores, pharmacies and gas stations to the rise of specialty stores.”
—Des Moines Register
COMIC SHOP
COMIC SHOP
The Retail Mavericks Who Gave Us a New Geek Culture
UPDATED AND EXPANDED EDITION
Dan Gearino
Foreword by Tom Spurgeon
SWALLOW PRESS / OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS /
ATHENS, OHIO
Swallow Press
An imprint of Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701
© 2017, 2019 by Dan Gearino
Foreword © 2017 by Tom Spurgeon
All rights reserved
To obtain permission to quote, reprint, or otherwise reproduce or distribute material from Swallow Press / Ohio University Press publications, please contact our rights and permissions department at (740) 593-1154 or (740) 593-4536 (fax).
Printed in the United States of America Swallow Press / Ohio University Press books are printed on acid-free paper
First paperback edition, expanded and updated, published 2019
ISBN 978-0-8040-1213-3
29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 5 4 3 2 1
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Names: Gearino, Dan, 1975- author.
Title: Comic shop : the retail mavericks who gave us a new geek culture / Dan Gearino ; foreword by Tom Spurgeon.
Description: Athens, Ohio : Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017032096| ISBN 9780804011907 (hardback : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780804040839 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Comic-book stores--United States. | Comic-book stores--Canada. | Selling--Comic books, strips, etc.--United States. | Selling--Comic books, strips, etc.--Canada. | Comic books, strips, etc.--United States--Marketing. | Comic books, strips, etc.--Canada--Marketing. | Booksellers and bookselling--United States--Biography. | Booksellers and bookselling--Canada--Biography. | BISAC: LITERARY CRITICISM / Comics & Graphic Novels. | BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Industries / Retailing.
Classification: LCC Z480.C64 G43 2017 | DDC 381 / .4574106573--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017032096
For Mom and Dad
Contents
Part 1: The Cockroaches of Pop Culture
8. Turtles, Mice, and Fish (1984–88)