Though it's not new in the sense of "just opened", but new in the sense of "I'd never visited it before. As far as I can discern, Dirt Road Comics* is the closest store to my current location, and I'd never been there before, and you know what that means. That's right, the limitless possibilities of long boxes filled with back issues that will fill those gaps in {insert Series title} I've been searching for! Of course, there's the inevitable disappointment when you actually get there and X, Y, Z isn't there, the opening of the box rendering the cat dead, so to speak. Look at me, trying to sound intelligent, you'd think I'd have learned by know.
It took some time to get there (over an hour), but it takes some time to get anywhere I'd actually want to travel, storewise**, from where I'm at, so I'm growing accustomed to that. Given the size of the town, I was surprised by how large the store was.
I suppose I should address some of the negative stereotypes people associate with comic stores. One, it was not dirty or smelly, not to my eyes and nose anyway. The staff was not rude or anything of the sort, and seemed to quite enjoy interacting with the regular customers (I'll get back to that later). There were people playing Magic, but they were on the second floor, and they weren't being loud or distracting or anything of the sort. Though I tend to get a bit focused when it comes to searching through back issues, so I might not have noticed, but I didn't feel bothered. The store was darker on one side, though the upstairs and the side with all the back issues was very well lit. They might have simply been saving electricity. Also, they have large storefront windows, which probably help on sunnier days. They might need to work on labeling and arranging their back issues. For example, the end of the box might say "Batman and the Outsiders", but there aren't any issues in there, they're actually two or three boxes over. Maybe use labels that can be removed from the end if they need to be updated, or dry erase boards or something. I don't know. How much it would bother someone probably depends on how much they enjoy looking through long boxes.
OK, I mentioned I'd get back to the customer service. I didn't actually interact with any employees until I headed to the checkout counter. That probably sounds bad, the employye ignoring the potential customer, but let me offer two caveats. First, my philosophy when it comes to stores and customer service is 'If I need assistance, I will seek you out and ask.' I understand they're just trying to do their job, and I appreciate that, but I don't go to a store without some general purpose, even if it's just a trip to, say, Best Buy to investigate the cost of DVDs I'm interested in. I know what I'm after, so I don't feel I need help, and some part of me bristles a little when I get distracted from my goal by conscientious employees. Yes, I have problems, I know, but I'm polite about it. So in a lot of ways, this was ideal for me. I just went about my business, digging through the boxes, no pressure, just seeing what was there and calculating how much I would be spending. So that's caveat the first.
Secondly, looking back, I think the employee (and I think there was just the one, though there was an old fellow sitting in a back corner that might be the owner) was keeping an eye on me. Possibly because he didn't know me, and was worried about shoplifting, or because he wanted to be nearby in case I did ask for assistance. All I know is he ended up in the area where the back issues were a few minutes after I did, and stayed there, conversing with people he clearly knew (customers, employees, I have no idea) about their Magic decks, until shortly after I finished my hunting, at which point I meandered in the direction of the register, and so did he. I think he recognized I had something specific in mind, and just let me go to it. And when we did converse at the register, he was a pleasant fellow, so it's all good in my perspective. He wanted to check the price tags on all the comics, and one of them even ended up 50 cents cheaper than the tag***, and none of them wound up more expensive than they were listed. Plus, 25% off all back issues, sweet! They might want to put that on a sign somewhere, because I had no idea until he mentioned it. Unless they did have a sign, and I just didn't see it, which is possible, though I felt I was being pretty leisurely and observant in my search.
I'd rate it as a highly positive experience, especially combined with the nice lunch I had on the way home, decent weather (not spectacular, but at least it wasn't cold or precipitating), and not much traffic, allowing for a relaxed drive both ways.
So that was my Saturday.
* Though it should be noted it does not, in fact, sit on a dirt road, but on Main Street.
** Like I mentioned last fall, there's lots of parks and natural areas to visit nearby, but sometimes, I'm just not in the mood to commune with nature, you know?
*** That'd be Chuck Dixon's Marvel Knights #8, bringing me one issue closer to having all of that series. Slowly but surely, I'm getting there.
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2 comments:
I'm like you, and I tend to find that the comic shops I prefer are the ones where I can just sort of pretend I work there. Y'know? Where I can go to the back issues, dig around for a minute or seventy-two, admire some Kirby covers I have no intention of buying, stack up a pile of BATMAN and put half of them back when the stack gets too high...stuff like that. I hate the places where they keep the back issues in the secret room and you have to ask for the ACTION COMICS #489 - AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #133 box, or where the employees don't seem to be doing anything other than looking at the action figures that happen to be directly over your head, or where I get asked every few minutes if I need help just let them know, or the places where they seem to be doing inventory and act bothered that I'm coming into the store to give them money. And like you, I lived in a comics dead-zone (two hours to the nearest newsstand, another 30 minutes to the nearest shop), so these trips were important to me.
It concerns me how few comic stores still act like hobby shops. At a hobby shop, you get a probationary "can I help you find anything," and if you answer "yes," they'll hop to, but if "no," they pretty much give you the keys to the store; they understand that those "in the know" have specific tastes that a single shopkeeper can't possibly anticipate, so just stay out of the way until purchase. Comic stores I see nowadays, they operate like a gift shop, where they assume everyone who walks in is the same sort of shlub on a layover and just looking for a card and a souvenir magnet, so whatever. They act like one sale is just as good as another.
My first comic shop was run by a seventy-something lady who had taken over her husband's baseball card shop when he died ten years earlier and had only recently gotten comics because it was during the comic-card fad of the '90s. She got an account with Diamond (or maybe it was Heroes World, back then), got her shipment of comics every week, and set up her storeroom to house all the back issues kids would trade her for the new ones. I say all this to illustrate that she had NO IDEA what the big deal with comics were, but she knew hobbies. She had twenty, thirty longboxes back there within three months, and it was the best back issue market I've ever seen (and I've seen hundreds since then). Not just because of what she had (and she could get pretty much any comic we wanted), but because of how she let us have it. If we wanted to chat comics with her, she'd chat (even though, looking back on it now, it's obvious she didn't know the difference between Namor and Aquaman); if we just wanted to browse for four hours, she'd sit in the front room and listen to Padres games; if we wanted to trade issues of SILVER SURFER back and forth for the various covers of GEN13 #1, she'd clear off the baseball-card cabinets. She didn't just cater to her clientele, she accomodated it. Because, before she took over her husband's card store, she'd owned a used car dearlership, and she knew the difference between selling a product and making a customer.
Ah, the joy of discovering a new comic book shop. It's always fun to see what sort of back issues they have...perhaps that one book that you've been looking for and just can't find.
I've been in a few stores that were crappy, and I've been in some stores that were fabulous. As a woman, I do get a few more stares than the the guys do, but I've learned to not let it bother me.
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