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Saw a kid at the comic shop ask if a trade paperback was a new show
I was at The Dragon's Hoard in Akron last weekend, picking up my pull list. A boy, maybe ten, pointed to a collected edition of the first six issues of a new Spider-Man run and asked his dad if this was 'like the show on Disney Plus'. It hit me how much the starting point has changed. When I was his age in the 90s, you just grabbed a floppy off the rack. The story was the thing, and you had to hunt for back issues to fill in gaps. Now, for a lot of young fans, the on-screen version is the main event, and the books are almost a side story or extra content. It's not bad, just different. The gateway is a screen, not a spinner rack. Makes me wonder how many current fans found comics because of a movie or show first. What was your first touchpoint with the hobby?
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hollyramirez2mo ago
Gatekeeping where new fans come from is a weird hill to die on. That kid asking about the show is a future customer, and he's in the shop right now. The movies and shows are the biggest marketing tool comics have ever had. My little cousin would never have touched a Ms. Marvel book without the Disney Plus series. Now she's got a stack of them. The medium doesn't survive on nostalgia alone, it needs fresh eyes. A screen as a gateway is just a modern spinner rack.
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