How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Discount the Ways.

By Don M. Ventura

I have specific criteria when selecting a comic book store that expects to garner my beeswax. My current comic book LTR has been with Pulp Fiction in Long Beach, CA.

Deals
I realize times are tough, especially for comic book retailers, but there is no better way to stimulate some foot traffic than by offering sweet deals. My shop grants a twenty percent discount off the cover price of their books as long as I maintain a pull lists with twenty-plus titles. Additionally, I get the same discount on recent back issues. The back issues, I might add, are not increased in price as soon as they age a month. A major pet peeve of mine is when comic shop owners jack up the prices for books that have not gone up at all in value.
My store also knocks up to forty percent off their trades, Omnibuses, and Absolute editions. This is the only place where I can get deals that are consistently better than Amazon.com. Amazon.com!

Selection
I like a good selection of back issues—especially recent back issues if I’m trying to catch up on the beginning of a recent arc. Also, and this may be a bit spoiled, I can’t stand hearing that a shop only ordered two copies of something because they didn’t think it would sell.

Something Unexpected
My comic book store owner does something no other shop I’ve been to does. He rents trades and hard covers out by the week. This has allowed to begin following up on The Walking Dead from the beginning as well as figure out that Blackest Night was not my cup of tea.

The Owner
This may be one of the biggest selling points for me. I really have to like the person running the store and he or she must be knowledgeable. I want an expert behind the counter who can make recommendations or is willing to say “Meh—that’s not the greatest story.” An alternative to this is to hire people who also know what they are talking about.

I used to get my comics from a guy who stopped reading comic books years ago and didn’t have a clue what was going on in either the Marvel or DC U’s. For as long as I shopped there (well over a year), he would sneak behind me and say “Are you going to buy that?” if he thought I was paging through an issue for too long.

Pulp Fiction and I been together for three months and things are still going strong! Here’s to another three!