The difficulties faced by specialty stores today in Sacramento

Comstock magazine wrote about today's specialty stores in and around the Sacramento region and the problems they face, which isn't just the 1949 law that prevented minors from buying, but was recently repealed:

Sacramento’s comic shop scene is a friendly one, but the city hasn’t always been a friend to comic book shops. Earlier this year, on Feb. 3, the Sacramento City Council repealed a 1949 ordinance that limited the selling and distribution of comic books to minors. The ordinance, Section 9.12.010, specifically referred to comics featuring crimes, which cut off most of that era’s most popular series, including Action Comics (home of Superman), Detective Comics (Batman), Wonder Woman and many others.

The ordinance hadn’t been actively enforced in decades and is now officially off the books, leaving Sacramento’s children and teens free to peruse the aisles of superhero comics at local stores like Empire’s Comics Vault, Comics & Collectibles and JLA Comics. But local shop owners and artists say that there are still plenty of challenges in the comic world.

One comic shop owner in Sacramento who is very familiar with these realities is Ben C. Schwartz, who opened his Arden Arcade store, Empire’s Comics Vault, in 2003. While he’s a lifelong comic fan and loves his work, he says that it’s not something to be taken on lightly.

“One of the things I think people don’t understand is that there’s a romanticized version of what it’s like to run a comic book store,” Schwartz says. “At the end of the day, it’s still a job, and it’s actually more than just a job because you own your own business.”

Schwartz says one of the biggest challenges to running the store was keeping people engaged, getting them in the store and getting them to come back. Arguably the most difficult aspect is managing his store’s inventory to meet customer demands.

“If people come in and they consistently can never find what they’re looking for, then they’re going to go somewhere else,” Schwartz says. “And if they go to the other shop and they find it, they might not come back here.”

One of the biggest changes shops worldwide have had to deal with came when major publishers like Marvel, DC and Image chose to stop working with Diamond Comic Distributors in 2020. JLA Comics owner Lecho Lopez, who opened his store in the Pocket-Greenhaven neighborhood in 2024, says that while it was more work to deal with multiple distributors, it was still an improvement compared to his experience with Diamond.

“They were the only game in town, so when we let them know, ‘The 1-in-50’s messed up, the 1-in-100’s messed up,’ they would say, ‘Here’s a refund for it,’ but we would still have a customer who requested them here,” Lopez says, referring to the variant copies that retailers can request for 1 or 2 percent of their order, usually featuring alternate covers done by different artists. “When I had the chance to work with someone other than Diamond, I took it because, yeah, they were a little more expensive, but all my books were getting here on time.”

Oh, I should've known, they'd even romanticize variant covers! Well that's not amusing today. All these years after variants made a joke of the industry, and you have only so many instances of buyers hoarding the stuff without reading it, if at all, and either slabbing them or putting them into a vault, this is not improving my perception of what the business is about. Perhaps most telling is that the retailers never say whether they wish the formats would change to paperbacks/hardcovers, and the reporters don't deliver such queries either. What good is coverage like this if they avoid challenging questions?

At least the above retailer did make the wise decision to turn to distributors other than Diamond, and as he hints, they had their problems with late deliveries. I just can't understand why anybody years before had to let them virtually monopolize the market, though what's also annoying is if some retailers got into the profession without a willingness to try other distributors, even if they were more costly. If there's independent bookstores who could do that, why can't comics specialty stores?

In terms of what comics are selling, all three owners noted that one of biggest changes in recent years has been what books are being bought and who is buying them.

Schwartz of Empire’s Comics Vault says that while the majority of readers he sees are in their 30s, he recently noticed an uptick in younger readers. He credits this to parents who read comics sharing them with their kids and notes that nearly 75 percent of these young readers are girls.

“The girls seem to be reading more,” he says. “Some of it is superhero stuff too, but a lot of it is just slice-of-life, which a lot of them gravitate to.”

And that's fine, so long as nobody asks that mainstream superhero comics literally adhere to the kind of PC mindset that's since brought them down over the past quarter century. On which note, the New Teen Titans appealed to plenty of girls/women back in the day, and now, all of a sudden, they're making it sound like nobody was used to adult perspectives and topics at the time such series were printed? And what exact superhero titles are the girls reading now anyway? If it's woke propaganda, that's the bad news.

Independent titles and those outside of the superhero genre have also seen an increased presence on store shelves. Farley of Comics & Collectibles says that while Marvel books still make up the biggest portion of her store’s book sales, independent titles are selling very well.

While it may be impressive independents are doing well, it's decidedly head-shaking if Marvel's are doing even better. What's anybody got to find in their modern output? Don't the local readers know how bad they became since the early 2000s? At the end:

The comics industry as a whole goes through its fair share of ups and downs, but for whatever difficulties they face, all three owners also flatly reject the idea that comic books or comic book shops are dead or dying.

“There’s always the doomsayers. ‘Print media is dead,’ I’ve heard it for the last decade,” Schwartz says. “But it’s not, because there’s nothing like holding a book in your hand. There’s so much more than just looking at the picture and reading the words.”

On this, relax, I highly value printed media. But if the story inside is horrifically bad, do they really think that won't have a long term impact? As expected, the retailers don't have the courage to address merit any more than the interviewers do. And what if more than just looking at pictures happens to be politics? If it's bad forms of politics, then do they expect all audiences, coast to coast, to buy and read it so easily? Again, no discussion comes up about political issues, and while it may have been brought up by a few retailers at the time Axel Alonso was EIC at Marvel, the mainstream press by and large doesn't address whether it was ill-advised. If retailers can't at least address challenging historical issues and whether it can affect comicdom even today, they certainly aren't improving the medium's image.

So-called columnist at ComicBook goes much too far with entry about DC superheroes who allegedly were portrayed killing

Here's a writer at ComicBook who, in his sad attempt to make defamatory smears about 7 superheroes at DC who supposedly killed enemies, he went way overboard in his descriptions without even providing any concrete evidence to prove some were portrayed doing so, and on the other hand, doesn't even criticize one example of writing where this did happen. It begins with the following:

DC Comics molded the concept of superheroes into the unbreakable symbols of morality and hope they are today. Many of the tropes associated with the genre can be attributed to DC Comics, including the no-killing rule. Even when faced with certain death, superheroes will oftentimes refuse to take a life because it sets a bad precedent for how criminals should be dealt with and violates fundamental human rights. However, even in the ideal world of DC Comics, some superheroes are willing to kill their enemies. The reasoning behind these killings can range from the hero having no other choice to their corruption and becoming supervillains. Many of these heroes have racked up high enough body counts to rival or even surpass the deadliest of villains.

Although the idea of superheroes committing genocide sounds unbelievable, it’s happened several times in DC Comics. Sometimes those killed didn’t even deserve it and were instead innocent victims of a hero who turned to the dark side and unleashed their full power. Deaths that were undone or retconned will be included. With heroes like these running around, it’s no wonder that Batman has contingency plans to take down every member of the superhero community.

It's no wonder the columnist wouldn't take an objective view of something so tasteless. Anybody who takes such a casual view of mass murder certainly can't be expected to deliver a perceptive view from a critical perspective. But why, decades after the Phoenix story in X-Men at Marvel, does the columnist think it's "unbelievable" anybody at DC would go miles out of their way to try and ape it? Because in a way, that's exactly what they've been doing all these years themselves, or, even if the body count an individual character's had forced upon their reputation isn't as big, they certainly go out of their way to write up shock value stories where a goodie is forcibly turned into a baddie. That's what they did with Jean Loring, girlfriend/wife of the Atom, in Identity Crisis from 2004, and even before that, they did it with Carol Ferris in the Green Lantern stories from Action Comics Weekly in 1988. Absolutely sick. Now, here's an example proving they're not fans of the characters in focus, starting with Hawkman:

With a hero as long-lived and brutal as Hawkman, it’s unsurprising that he’s racked up an impressive kill count. Whether as a Thanagarian soldier or throughout his numerous reincarnations, Hawkman has killed numerous opponents in battle. Almost every villain Hawkman has fought has had their skull bashed in with his mace. The Justice League still must constantly try to keep the winged hero from killing more enemies. Hawkman’s most egregious act of mass slaughter was when he triggered an avalanche to bury an entire army of sentient undersea monsters before they could attack the surface world. Over his many lifetimes and countless battles, thousands of people have been the victims of Hawkman’s savagery.

Wow, they sure love making clear they're not fans of the Winged Warrior, seeing how they make it sound like he was created from the very start as some kind of serial murderer, infinitely worse than the villains he took on. Carter Hall never smashed skulls with his mace or any other weapon in the Golden Age stories I read, and neither did Katal Hol in the Silver Age stories I read. I don't think they were depicted so horrifically in any stories published up to the turn of the century. And even if they were, whose fault is that? The writers/artists. But again, creator Gardner Fox never did what they claim in the stories he wrote, so the above paragraph is a blatant lie, giving specialty news sites a very bad name. Now, here's their hints they're not Green Lantern fans either:

Hal Jordan’s descent into madness is one of the most infamous instances of a superhero becoming a genocidal monster in comic book history. When Hal’s home, Coast City, was destroyed, the embodiment of fear known as Parallax took advantage of the hero’s grief and corrupted him, turning him into an intergalactic supervillain. Hal then proceeded to slaughter thousands of his fellow Green Lanterns to claim their power for himself. By the end of his rampage, Hal had killed almost every single Green Lantern in the universe. Although many of these Green Lanterns would eventually be resurrected and Hal would be redeemed, many people never forgot what Hal had done.

So Hal's guilty, but the writers/artists/editors (Ron Marz, Darryl Banks and Kevin Dooley) who forced this repellent story upon him have no responsibility to shoulder, and don't owe GL fans an apology? Gee, how considerate. No mention of how Katma Tui, though briefly resurrected in 1993, was put right back in the intergalactic grave soon after (assuming she'd ever actually been revived in the first place), and I can't recall Jim Owsley (Christopher Priest) ever clearly apologizing for being party to that atrocity either. So what's their point? (Saddest part about the ostensible brief revival is that it took place in the unbearable Gerard Jones' short-lived spinoff, GL: Mosaic. So maybe it doesn't count?) Next comes some drivel about the Spectre:

As the embodiment of God’s wrath, the Spectre has punished sinners in biblical proportions. With his infinite reality-warping abilities, the Spectre has inflicted numerous ironic and cruel punishments that killed many criminals or left them praying for death. The Spectre has been delivering this type of divine punishment throughout human history and is even responsible for the destruction of Sodom and the deaths of the firstborn sons of Egypt. The Spectre’s nation-level acts of genocide aren’t exclusive to biblical times either, as he once leveled the entire country of Vlatava, killing millions because he believed that they were already doomed to die soon of war and famine. Even for the personification of vengeance itself, that was egregiously cold-hearted.

On this, I think it can be said the columnist's not a fan of Jerry Siegel or even artist Bernard Baily, who co-created the Ghostly Guardian in the Golden Age. I hesitate to think what they'd say about Percival Popp, the bumbling would-be detective who was added in the middle of the 5 year run as a comedy relief character. Next, here's what's told about Dr. Fate:

Even as far back as the Golden Age, the Sorcerer Supreme, Doctor Fate, has wielded cosmic levels of power, resulting in numerous deaths. After destroying a series of nebulae that were threatening Earth, Doctor Fate traced them back to their source and discovered that they were created by an alien race called the Globe Men. To stop the Globe Men’s continual attempts to destroy the Earth, Doctor Fate used his magic to throw their planet into the sun. In just the blink of an eye, Doctor Fate exterminated an entire civilization and its billions of inhabitants without a shred of remorse. Thankfully, over time, DC writers eased up on Doctor Fate’s genocidal tendencies.

I've read a lot of the Golden Age tales, and I don't recall seeing those "genocidal tendencies" they speak of. Where do they get off fabricating such lies? Is this an allusion to post-2000 atrocities? Either way, this is disgusting how they even employ a bizarre double-standard: they seemingly acknowledge writers are accountable for what a fictional character's written doing, yet they still make it sound like said character's a real life person. The repulsion continues with this drivel. And then, there's Captain Atom:

Captain Atom is one of the strongest and most ruthless members of the Justice League, whose near-limitless power makes him a serious threat. After suffering from life-threatening injuries that warped his mind, Captain Atom went mad and became the supervillain Monarch. With his immense power, Monarch killed everyone in the city of Bludhaven before making plans for multiversal conquest. To build an army, the Monarch kidnapped numerous heroes from across the multiverse and forced them into gladiatorial death matches, where he recruited the winners. Monarch’s rampage was only halted during a battle with the Monitors and Superboy-Prime that ended with Earth-51 and its billions of inhabitants eradicated. While Captain Atom has since regained his sanity, his time as a villain cost countless innocent lives.

This may have happened years after the Armageddon crossover from 1991, possibly around the time Infinite Crisis was published, but once again, their continued remaining with the shoddy cliche of failing to take an objective view of what they describe is despicable. So too is their take on Doctor Manhattan from the Watchmen, whose cast was actually revived in the past decade, presumably to prevent Alan Moore from ever regaining the rights to the overrated 1987 story:

The power of godhood and a complete disconnection from humanity is a dangerous combination. In Doomsday Clock, after leaving the Watchmen universe, the omnipotent Doctor Manhattan traveled to the DC Universe and sought to make changes there to satisfy his curiosity. After killing Pandora, Doctor Manhattan arranged for Alan Scott’s death so that the Justice Society and its members would never exist. Doctor Manhattan also orchestrated the deaths of Superman’s adoptive parents in a car crash. Finally, he erased the entire Legion of Superheroes’ timeline, making it so that trillions of people were never born. Doctor Manhattan’s machinations threatened to cause the DC Universe to tear itself apart. Luckily, Superman managed to convince Doctor Manhattan to undo all the damage he caused and restore everyone he killed or erased.

Be that as it may, this is still just as insufferable as any of the other examples, and downright boring. Lastly, there's Superboy-Prime, presumably the one seen circa Infinite Crisis:

There was a time when Superboy-Prime was the greatest threat the DC Multiverse has ever encountered. However, in recent years, he’s undergone a significant redemption arc, bringing him back to his heroic roots. Still, even if he’s acting as the new Superman and guardian of Metropolis, the blood on his hands is incalculable. On top of having previously killed Superboy and Earth-2’s Superman, Superboy-Prime is infamous for his multiversal rampage that saw numerous universes destroyed and trillions of people dead. If all that wasn’t enough, Superboy-Prime also killed hundreds, if not thousands, of Green Lanterns. Even with his reformation, Superboy-Prime still struggles with his darker impulses while trying to be a real hero.

This, if so, was doing little more than turning another cast member into a sci-fi variation on the Joker. And again, no questions as to whether this story was ever in good taste to begin with. That's why it's sick, sick, sick.

If there's anything that can be learned from the above drivel, it's that the specialty press has quite a few phony fans running amok, who don't appreciate what prior generations of writers and artists did for entertainment, nor any consideration given that their livelihoods practically depended on the hard work they did. Why does anybody even advertise on these awful news sites, let alone read their "contributors"? What ComicBook posted to their site is some of the most loathsome forms of contempt for the works and creations of classic veterans, and it's stunning they're still in business after all the humiliating columns they've written in tabloid style.

British comics editor Barrie Tomlinson dies at 88

The BBC announced that Barrie Tomlinson, editor of the sports comic Roy of the Rovers has passed on at the age of 88:

Tributes have been paid to the editor of classic British football comic Roy of the Rovers.

Barrie Tomlinson, who was born and lived most of his life in St Albans, died on Tuesday, aged 88, his daughter Jennifer Tomlinson said.

He "absolutely loved doing the comics" and was known for portraying the character of Roy Race as a real person who was "his best friend", she added.

Race, a star striker for the fictional team of Melchester Rovers, initially appeared in the comic Tiger in 1954, and later in his own standalone title until its closure in February 1993.

The Roy of the Rovers strip then featured in the BBC's Match of the Day magazine until its closure in 2001.

Tomlinson, who was also editor of Tiger, wrote the Scorer football strip, which appeared in the Daily Mirror for 22 years, and authored two books, Real Roy of the Rovers Stuff and Comic Book Hero.

He had a great idea to produce sports comics, something I don't think the USA's mainstream has ever seriously capitalized on till this day. The news also tells, interestingly enough:

Book publisher Simon & Schuster UK said Tomlinson was a comics writer and former group editor at IPC Magazines, who wrote strips including Death Wish and Turbo Jones for Wildcat.

He was also involved with Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles and Scream! comics.

Curious they use the "hero" substitute for "ninja", recalling that's what the UK government under Margaret Thatcher imposed when the merchandise based on Ninja Turtles was first sold in Britain nearly 4 decades ago. If that restriction was eventually abandoned under later governments, isn't it rather silly to continue its use when most people today know the word "ninja" is part of the original title, even in the UK? But, I won't be surprised if Mr. Tomlinson had to make use of the PC retitling years before when he was a comics editor.

Anyway, it's a shame he's gone, but his contributions to sports comics are appreciated, and perhaps the mainstream of the USA should consider putting more emphasis on sports like soccer too in the future.

Comic cookbook about cocktails

The Des Moines Register wrote about author Sarah Becan, who's developed a GN about the origins of and recipes for cocktails, similar to one that was spoken about here earlier:

Becan has spent months researching not only the cocktail recipes themselves, but also their origins. In her illustrated graphic novel "Let's Make Cocktails!", she's collected dozens of standouts for everyone to enjoy. [...]

"Hands down, the best part of making these books is seeing when people make recipes from the book and show it to me, knowing that I was part of making that bowl of ramen possible or I was part of making that drink possible," Becan said.

Who is author Sarah Becan?

Becan began illustrating food because she was thinking about how food and self-worth tied together, she wrote on her website. She got her start creating an autobiographical webcomic titled "I Think You're Sauceome," and would draw meals she and her partner would have in restaurants around Chicago.

Becan said restaurants started noticing her drawings and approached her to make art for commercial work. That eventually led to Becan becoming the illustrator for "The Adventures of Fat Rice" in 2016.

From there, the publisher kept in touch with Becan, later asking her to create a full-length comic book for ramen recipes. That's how the "Let's Make" series was born, with spotlights on ramen, dumplings, bread and now cocktails.

Becan has been nominated twice for the Ignatz Award, a prestigious honor that recognizes outstanding comics and cartooning.

Again, I think the subject is a good one provided it's not alcoholic beverages they're promoting, and so long as it's fruit and vegetable-based, that's what'll make this latest comics cookbook a good one. The comics about ramen and bread are certainly bound to be good choices, and there's plenty of bread recipes I do like, such as onion, sourdough and French rolls.

Monaco's soccer youth federation celebrated 50 years with an interactive comic

AS Monaco announced an interactive comic to celebrate 50 years of its soccer academy training:

Have you ever dreamed of stepping into the shoes of a player joining AS Monaco's youth academy? Now you can, thanks to our interactive comic book created especially for the Academy's 50th anniversary. From a welcome by Sébastien Muet to the triumph on the pitch at the Stade Louis-II, including the moments of doubt, each page lets you discover all the stages experienced by a resident of La Diagonale.

Soccer's definitely a sports topic the USA comics medium could emphasize more often. Good for the academy they thought of this.

Why would this local collector consider Magneto a favorite?

Ynetnews interviewed an Israeli comics reader and merchandise collector, and while his reasons for buying memorabilia and merchandise are interesting, which character happens to be his favorite?

When speaking to Etan, one thing becomes clear: he does not collect for resale. Yes, some items in his collection range from a few shekels to several thousand. Yes, he owns rare pieces, including a massive handcrafted Wolverine head sculpture of which only two exist worldwide, but market speculation does not drive him.

“I don’t buy something because it might be worth more one day,” he says. “I buy it because I love the design.”

His favorite character is Magneto. The choice is personal. Magneto, a Holocaust survivor in Marvel canon, carries ideological complexity. Etan connects deeply to that narrative weight. Still, he does not buy every Magneto piece available. Only the ones that visually resonate.

Granted, he may only collect memorabilia out of respect for art in general, not for money's sake. But as for Magneto, while I know there was a time during the 1980s when Chris Claremont wrote Erik Lensherr reforming and joining Charles Xavier's academy to lead the New Mutants, should a guy who was written committing serious criminal offenses be considered a favorite? In UXM #150, he almost slew Kitty Pryde, who was characterized as being of even more ethnic Jewish background than Magneto was, and in the Fatal Attractions storyline of the early 90s, circa sans-adjective X-Men #25, Magneto ripped all the adamantium out of Wolverine's body. If you go by what's told in this CBR item, Magneto also unleashed a electromagnetic pulse blast that could've resulted in thousands of deaths. Years later though, when crossovers like House of M were published, that's when the real abuse-of-character really came to the fore, as under Brian Bendis's writing, Magneto led to the death of Quicksilver, and the article also notes there was a storyline where he caused the death of Charles Xavier. Viewed within the specific contexts, is somebody like the Master of Magnetism somebody to admire? No, although the writers who brought his characterization down to abysmal levels certainly aren't. Near the Ynet article's end, it's told that:

Collectors live in contradiction. “I’m never satisfied,” he says. “I’m not satisfied that I don’t have enough. And I’m not satisfied that I have too much.”

His home contains six or seven large boxes filled with comics alone. Shelves of Marvel, DC, Alien, Ghostbusters. Pops protected in cases.

And yet, he contemplates selling everything from time to time. The offers have come. Significant ones. He always says no. [...]

He emphasizes discipline over impulse, focus over frenzy, and above all, community. “If someone needs help finding something,” he says, “I’ll help. A collector understands another collector.”

Well I do give him credit for not taking the exact same path as other collectors who do it in hopes of producing millions of dollars worth in classics to be sold cyclically on the speculator market. Even so, if he hoards the comics without reading them, and keeps them wrapped in eternal plastic, then what good is it to collect them at all? Especially in an era where mainstream comics sunk to dismal levels? And I think it's a shame he'd choose Magneto over say, Kitty Pryde, or even Nuklon of Infinity Inc, Moon Knight, Doc Samson from the Hulk, and even Colossal Boy from Legion of Super-Heroes, whom I think was written with a Jewish background too. I suppose it could be worse though: what if the collector in focus considered Harley Quinn a number one favorite? Based on how she was written in the comics after she was shoehorned into the DCU proper at the turn of the century, to make her a major pick would be atrocious in the extreme. Making a fictional character your favorite choice based on the ethnic background alone is not the way to go, and that's a vital lesson some would do well to consider.

More examples of how claims Absolute Batman's an utter success are a silly farce

Popverse decided to follow up on a previous news report that DC's Absolute imprint's supposedly selling like hotcakes, and simultaneously admit the "New52" canon from 2011 wasn't exactly the success they surely want everyone to think it was:

According to public reports from its distributor at the time, the 'New 52' Batman #1 sold just over 225,000 copies in September 2011. Over its 52-issue run (not including annuals, specials, and spinoffs), Snyder's 'New 52' Batman run never once dipped under 100,000 copies sold in the first month of each issue's release - something subsequent Batman runs haven't been able to keep up with, based on the limited evidence publicly available. Either way, those numbers don't include any copies sold outside of that window, which would include reprints, digital copies, non-US editions, and collected editions.

Absolute Batman, however, sold just under 400,000 copies in its first six weeks of release back at the end of 2024, and demand has continued that DC recently reprinted it for an eleventh time. According to sources familiar with sales figures, DC's Absolute Batman has settled into the range of selling roughly 300,000 print copies per issue, going on two years later.

"We’re over a year into these titles, and the sales on multiple titles are going up issue to issue — sometimes by really startling amounts," Conroy tells Comics! The Magazine #1, without giving specifics.

Snyder, who made his career thanks to the success of the 'New 52' Batman run, honestly didn't think Absolute Batman would come close to matching that.

So they merely continue the comedy, right down to implying the whole New52 direction taken in the early 2010s was literally a success, when here, they mostly abandoned its "canon" at least a few years later, and reversed some of the directions taken with Identity Crisis. They admit there's hardly any proof of what they claim, but continue to make a joke of their news coverage anyway.

Even if Snyder's Batman run didn't fall below 100,000 in copy orders, what's told still doesn't prove it was a literal success. At best, it's just wishful thinking, and at worst, it's all an insulting joke, pretending it's all as successful as what movies make. And all this is their idea of a substitute for making an argument in favor of switching from pamphlet issues to paperback/hardcover books. In reality, it's just more sad jokes that don't do any favors for comicdom.