Showerthought: The comic shop in my town has a different crowd now

I was at The Panel Shop on Main Street yesterday and it was packed with people just buying Funko Pops and t-shirts. I saw maybe two people actually looking at back issue bins in an hour. It felt more like a merch store than a place to find comics. Has your local shop changed like this too?

3 comments

3 Comments

miles5812mo ago

My local shop, The Dragon's Hoard, started a weekly indie comic night and it brought back the real readers.

elizabeth_ramirez2mo ago

That's so cool to hear, @miles581. There's something special about a shop making space for the smaller stuff, you know? It gets people talking about the art, not just the next big movie. You see folks picking up a weird black and white book because the artist is right there. That's how you build a real community, not just customers.

richard_sanchez431mo ago

Yeah the Dragon's Hoard sounds like they get it. My shop had a free comic book day thing last year and it was all Funko Pops and t-shirts again. I saw a stack of old Amazing Spider-Man issues in a dollar bin nobody touched for an hour. It's wild how much the crowd shifted. The indie night idea is smart though. Maybe if my shop did something like that on a slow Tuesday they'd get the real collectors back in.