The Four Color Media Monitor

In this Fox26 News article, it's told that a specialty store owner in Fresno, California saw an increase in sales during the Corona pandemic:

Owner of Heroes Comics, Dave Allread, says the pandemic has led to a surge of new comic book fanatics.

He says it's the first time since the 90s he's seen such an interest in the industry and he's having a hard time keeping his inventory stocked.

[...] Every Wednesday is new comic book day and Allread says he has a line outside his store when he opens.

New and long-time comic book enthusiasts say the hobby gives them something to do.

I think it's great that the guy's found success during a year where business was seriously damaged by the pandemic. But I'm sure a lot of the newer comics he's selling are bound to be from smaller publishers, and not so much from the Big Two, something not clear from this report. Also, logic suggests the "interest" alluded to is actually the 90s speculator market, and some interest that was, since there were a lot of greedy guzzlers who were buying all sorts of comics only for what they hoped would be monetary value as the years went by. But this only damaged the market in the long run, as tons of items were polybagged by speculators, yet there was so much that today has since been rendered worthless, especially if it was a badly written and illustrated book. The industry would've done better to change by and large to trades, yet they spent years keeping pamphlets firmly in place despite the rising prices, and the universe wide crossovers were another factor that hurt the mainstream books.

I have no idea if this kind of stuff makes up any of the above store's sales, but I do know it's all stuff that could've been avoided in the 90s if somebody had shown the guts to make clear it wasn't helping in the long run. Today, crossovers, in example, still remain a serious problem, and nobody makes a whisper of complaint about it.

Labels: msm propaganda, sales