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Post by mrbrklyn on Jun 25, 2019 13:52:24 GMT -5
also pharmacies didn't carry back issues... a key part of being a comic shop.
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Post by mrbrklyn on Jun 25, 2019 13:55:24 GMT -5
I hate to say it again. Pretty much for everyone in the early 1980s the downtown drug pharmacy store and the newsstand magazine section at grocery stores were our "comic book shops" at the time. also the convenience stores which sold gasoline. There was one very near my house that got a good bit of my allowance. I seem to recall buying comics at places like Waldenbooks as well? rail stations... but none of these outlets provided the access of a cbs
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jun 25, 2019 13:59:14 GMT -5
also pharmacies didn't carry back issues... a key part of being a comic shop. Or he could have been using it as vernacular for a place to buy funny books. Instead of being pedantic.
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Post by tarkintino on Jun 25, 2019 15:09:08 GMT -5
I hate to say it again. Pretty much for everyone in the early 1980s the downtown drug pharmacy store and the newsstand magazine section at grocery stores were our "comic book shops" at the time. Well, not for everyone. I grew up in Los Angeles, and in the 70s, there were several kinds of stores where you could buy comics: 1. Traditional bookstore. 2. Comic book dealer. 3. Newsstand (yes, a real newsstand and downtown L.A. had quite a number of them). 4. Used bookstores that also chose to carry back issues, with one in particular selling Golden & Silver Age DC and Marvel's that would make your eyes fly from your head). 5. 7-Eleven, "mom and pop" small grocery and liquor stores. 6. Drug stores and retailers like Woolworths. That's how many options we had back in the 70s and 80s. Regarding back issues, some smaller or "lower end" the vendor occasionally has books at least a couple of months old. That's how I found (for one example) Legion of Super Heroes #294 (12/1982) and 295 (1/1983) at one of the local liquor stores still on the floor-level shelves well into Spring 1983. I had been out of town and missed the issues, and assumed I would look for them at a comic store, but they were still at the liquor sore, right next to the new LSH issue. That was not a common occurrence / practice, but it happened, just not enough to use toward building large collections.
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Post by urrutiap on Jun 25, 2019 15:17:54 GMT -5
Would you just drop it already and stop bringing up topics like this?
Some of us older folk, we were little kids in the early 1980s. Im saying we got our comics and sometimes an issue of Cracked or Mad off of the newstsand section at the drug pharmacy store along with grocery stores.
as for frikkin "back issues", there were ads of Mile High back in the day but not every kid's parents could afford stuff like that. Isnt Mile High techinically more of a warehouse of junk anyway?
what we got from pharmacy stores and the grocery stores we got what was there. Period.
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Post by rberman on Jun 25, 2019 15:24:03 GMT -5
as for frikkin "back issues", there were ads of Mile High back in the day but not every kid's parents could afford stuff like that. Isn't Mile High technically more of a warehouse of junk anyway? Once I started buying comics, it wasn't long before I had heard about X-Men #137. I saved my pennies and got it from Mile High Comics, which was a godsend for grade school me. I think I paid about $7 for it, which was a lot for me.
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Post by mrbrklyn on Jun 25, 2019 15:50:22 GMT -5
Once I started buying comics, it wasn't long before I had heard about X-Men #137. I saved my pennies and got it from Mile High Comics, which was a godsend for grade school me. I think I paid about $7 for it, which was a lot for me. I would have to feel bad for folks who didn't have regular access in Comic Book stores as late as the 1980's, and even more so today where ebay has taken over conventions and comic book shops. What you miss in these cases is the common culture that forms when one spends countless hours with other comic fans, eating, drinking and talking about comic books with fans and creators. With that culture, one can come to learn that Gaiman was influenced by literature and folklore, (after all he said so repeatedly) and not the slim pickings of Alan Moore's limited fictional inventions. One can learn the nuance of the spoken word, and understand what is said, and how folks deal with the fan press. You tend to drop your defenses and learn to laugh when your friend gets Neil Adams autograph for the 8th time and shouts that out in front of Neil, to Neil's astonishment. You get a bellyful laugh when Chakin denies any credit for Star Wars for the 30th time in a single sit down... In New York, we also had the advantage of connections with the talent. Stores and talent, not just writers and artists, but printers, and pin up artists and editorial assistants etc etc, flooded the store scene a that time. They flooded the market with material and fed the rumor mill pretty good. Who remembers the hype over Howard the Duck!
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Post by mrbrklyn on Jun 25, 2019 15:53:16 GMT -5
...Nice abandoned Bodega there ... Just read that Lin-Manuel Miranda recently had an open call for extras for his "In the Heights" film on that very block (the abandoned bodega's on the corner)! Lets hope they don't burn it down like they did 2 years ago filming a movie right near there.
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Post by brutalis on Jun 25, 2019 15:57:21 GMT -5
urrutiap is correct in that a "comic book shop" was NOT the main place for buying comics during the 70's and the early 80's. Maybe in "BIG" cities but here in Phoenix out in the west all of the LCS that opened were either in downtown Phoenix a few blocks from a high school or college sprinkled with a couple in Tempe near the college. NONE of these are or were convenient for any kid who wasn't old enough to drive. I did ALL my shopping through the local grocery stores which carried a spinner rack of new comics or at convenience stores like Circle-K, 7-11 and U-Totem's, sprinkled in with an occasional combo bag from K-Mart. There was no going to an LCS because it was such an inconvenience. Any LCS was a more than 40 minute drive away from where I was in south Phoenix to downtown and Tempe was a good 45 minute or more drive. AND I had never heard of or new of a LCS until the winter of 1980 when I went to college where there was one across the street from the local college downtown. So yes, MOST of us in rural areas and the suburbs did our comic book shopping this way. The only way of getting any "back" issues was through neighborhood yard sales, thrift stores like Salvation Army or again going into town where some used book stores might carry old stuff they bought cheaply from someone or trading with other kids in the neighborhood. I saw ads in Marvel and DC for mail order back issues from companies back east but that wasn't any type of affordable option when you are spending only a few dollars you earned or borrowed. That was the joy and affordability age of true impulse comic book buying with the few nickels and dimes you scrounged up each week. A lot of time during my childhood once I discovered comic books was spent in browsing through the comic spinner rack and magazine rack of the 2 Korean markets in my neighborhood (any other store was a 1/2 hour drive away) nearly every day after school on the walk home, flipping through EVERY comic in the rack trying to decide which 1 or 2 or 3 I might buy one day soon if/when spare change came my way. A lot of times I missed out from week to week as the old comics were returned and new ones delivered.
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Post by rberman on Jun 25, 2019 16:15:57 GMT -5
Once I started buying comics, it wasn't long before I had heard about X-Men #137. I saved my pennies and got it from Mile High Comics, which was a godsend for grade school me. I think I paid about $7 for it, which was a lot for me. I would have to feel bad for folks who didn't have regular access in Comic Book stores as late as the 1980's, and even more so today where ebay has taken over conventions and comic book shops. What you miss in these cases is the common culture that forms when one spends countless hours with other comic fans, eating, drinking and talking about comic books with fans and creators. With that culture, one can come to learn that Gaiman was influenced by literature and folklore, (after all he said so repeatedly) and not the slim pickings of Alan Moore's limited fictional inventions. One can learn the nuance of the spoken word, and understand what is said, and how folks deal with the fan press. You tend to drop your defenses and learn to laugh when your friend gets Neil Adams autograph for the 8th time and shouts that out in front of Neil, to Neil's astonishment. You get a bellyful laugh when Chakin denies any credit for Star Wars for the 30th time in a single sit down... In New York, we also had the advantage of connections with the talent. Stores and talent, not just writers and artists, but printers, and pin up artists and editorial assistants etc etc, flooded the store scene a that time. They flooded the market with material and fed the rumor mill pretty good. Who remembers the hype over Howard the Duck! My comic book habit was a solitary affair. I only had one friend who read them. By the time I was sixteen and could drive to someplace that other fans might be, I also had a CD player, and my discretionary income went to gas and music instead of comics. As for the rest: Writing off Moore's creativity as "slim pickings" may not be as effective a technique for touting Gaiman as you imagine. Both have made significant contributions to the field. Anyone who's read Gaiman's prose, especially his nonfiction (my own exposure is limited to his 2016 collection "A View from the Cheap Seats"), knows how well read he is. Moore clearly has immersed himself in non-comics literature as well.
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Post by mrbrklyn on Jun 25, 2019 16:59:58 GMT -5
My comic book habit was a solitary affair. I only had one friend who read them. By the time I was sixteen and could drive to someplace that other fans might be, I also had a CD player, and my discretionary income went to gas and music instead of comics. As for the rest: Writing off Moore's creativity as "slim pickings" may not be as effective a technique for touting Gaiman as you imagine. Gaiman hardly needs my help to explain him. His work stands on its own, and his legacy stands on its own. Marv Wolfman might have been better than Moore. or John Ostrander on the Specter, or Steve Englehart... Jim Shooter... Warren Ellis... Harvey Kurtzman
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jun 25, 2019 17:11:20 GMT -5
Marv Wolfman might have been better than Moore. Bwa-ha-ha-ha. Oh wait...you're serious. Bwa-ha-ha-ha.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,419
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Post by Confessor on Jun 25, 2019 17:17:58 GMT -5
Well, there is this part where he says this was true for most people. By the 1980's comic shops where far and wide. When was American Flagg!! published? First was already targeting Comic shops for there offerings That might've been your experience, but it might not have been the case everywhere. How do we know where urrutiap grew up? I'm not in the U.S., but I can tell you now that the medium-sized town just outside London where I grew up didn't have a comic shop within 30 miles of it until the mid-2000s. In the '80s I used to have to travel into London if I wanted to visit a dedicated comic shop...and even then, there were only 3 or 4 in the whole of London. I suspect that this kind of lack of comic shops near to rural or semi-rural places may well have been the case in America in the '80s too. But I'm prepared to be corrected on that score. Regardless, I think urrutiap has obviously had a slightly different experience from you, regarding the ubiquity of comic shops back in the '70s and '80s. That is the point that is not on not straight forward, but the other part of his statement, where he says he that he says this all the time, and I didn't see anyone particularly disagreeing with him. He implies, thereby, that this topic is not worth having.Well, that's your interpretation of it. However, even if you're right and that is the implication, it's obviously not going to stop our conversation. This is a discussion forum, after all. But I find it enlightening and think the discussion of the history of comic shops and the marketing of comics is worth having. I agree. So on that point, I am also unclear as to what urrutiap is saying. If he is saying that from his memory that comic shops where "pharmacies" well that is interesting and fine. But if his point that this was true for all of us, or even most of it.... that needs to be clarified because it flies in the face of the facts, which is that back issue shops were springing up all over the US even by 1975. Well, I don't want to speak for another poster, so I'll leave it to urrutiap to respond. But you seem to have understood his original post perfectly well. You've just explained it to me in detail, after all. So, I'm not sure why you said "I have no idea what your speaking of. Maybe you can explain it better." That seems to have not been the case.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jun 25, 2019 17:19:20 GMT -5
urrutiap is correct in that a "comic book shop" was NOT the main place for buying comics during the 70's and the early 80's. Maybe in "BIG" cities but here in Phoenix out in the west all of the LCS that opened were either in downtown Phoenix a few blocks from a high school or college sprinkled with a couple in Tempe near the college. NONE of these are or were convenient for any kid who wasn't old enough to drive. I did ALL my shopping through the local grocery stores which carried a spinner rack of new comics or at convenience stores like Circle-K, 7-11 and U-Totem's, sprinkled in with an occasional combo bag from K-Mart. There was no going to an LCS because it was such an inconvenience. Any LCS was a more than 40 minute drive away from where I was in south Phoenix to downtown and Tempe was a good 45 minute or more drive. AND I had never heard of or new of a LCS until the winter of 1980 when I went to college where there was one across the street from the local college downtown. So yes, MOST of us in rural areas and the suburbs did our comic book shopping this way. The only way of getting any "back" issues was through neighborhood yard sales, thrift stores like Salvation Army or again going into town where some used book stores might carry old stuff they bought cheaply from someone or trading with other kids in the neighborhood. I saw ads in Marvel and DC for mail order back issues from companies back east but that wasn't any type of affordable option when you are spending only a few dollars you earned or borrowed. That was the joy and affordability age of true impulse comic book buying with the few nickels and dimes you scrounged up each week. A lot of time during my childhood once I discovered comic books was spent in browsing through the comic spinner rack and magazine rack of the 2 Korean markets in my neighborhood (any other store was a 1/2 hour drive away) nearly every day after school on the walk home, flipping through EVERY comic in the rack trying to decide which 1 or 2 or 3 I might buy one day soon if/when spare change came my way. A lot of times I missed out from week to week as the old comics were returned and new ones delivered. When I graduated in '86 there were three comic book shops in the state of Idaho. All of them were in Boise. Going west the next place you'd find one was either Eugene or Portland Oregon. Going south, Salt Lake City. East...probably Denver or whichever Mile High store was closest. For vast swathes of the nation comics were purchased at supermarkets, drug stores and the like.
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Post by mrbrklyn on Jun 25, 2019 17:28:27 GMT -5
. So, I'm not sure why you said "I have no idea what your speaking of. Maybe you can explain it better." That seems to have not been the case. that was the case when I first posted it and it still is. I have no idea why he said what he said. Comic shops were opening everywhere at the time, and newspaper stands and pharmacies are not comic shops.. especially not pharmacies... I've been in the pharmacy business over multi-generations. Comic Book shops people say thank you and walk out happy, among other things.
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