Confessor
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Not Bucky O'Hare!
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Post by Confessor on Jun 25, 2019 17:28:33 GMT -5
also pharmacies didn't carry back issues... a key part of being a comic shop. pharmacies are not comic shop.. especially not pharmacies... I'm been in the pharmacy business over multi-generations. A pharmacy is called a drug store in America, right? They may not have sold back issues, but a quick Google produced this photo of a Texas drug store in 1955 selling comics... And another U.S. drug store from the '70s selling them too...
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Post by mrbrklyn on Jun 25, 2019 17:34:01 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. He didn't say that, BTW, but even still, those are not comic shops and comic shops were around. I was in the Army in San Antonio exactly during the years in question, 1981 - 1989 and they had 3 very good comic shops at the time.
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Post by mrbrklyn on Jun 25, 2019 17:41:04 GMT -5
also pharmacies didn't carry back issues... a key part of being a comic shop. pharmacies are not comic shop.. especially not pharmacies... I'm been in the pharmacy business over multi-generations. A pharmacy is called a drug store in America, right? And they sell motor oil as well, but that doesn't make a pharmacy a gas station, nor does one got a pharmacy to usually by motor oil... but you can get it there. There is no point to this. It was good that comics got distributed through multiple channels and the collapse of those channel has hurt the industry. In fact, Marvel had real trouble when FF#1 was released because the distributer died on them. And see, I can say that without telling everyone else how there childhoods was or complaining about the topic, or the pictures of comic book shops. I can also be clear what I mean, because I know the difference between a comic book shop and a gas station?
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jun 25, 2019 17:42:53 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. It can't be helped that you don't understand what he was saying. Because he was being perfectly clear. You may not agree. That doesn't make you right or him wrong. There were huge areas of the U.S. that didn't have a comic book shop within a hundred miles throughout the 80s. There still are. That doesn't change the fact that throughout the 80s there were still spinner racks and comics on newsstands in grocery stores, convenience stores and drug stores throughout those areas where comic book shops were a fever dream. I have zero idea where you're coming from vis-a-vis pharmacies. Because there was a Rexall Drug in one town I shopped for comics and another drug store/pharmacy in the other town that had spinner racks. that was from around 1975-1986. But sure. Be pedantic about what a comic store is. I'm sorry to hear that people did not walk out happy across your multi-generations.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,414
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Post by Confessor on Jun 25, 2019 17:45:29 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. He didn't say that, BTW, but even still, those are not comic shops and comic shops were around. I was in the Army in San Antonio exactly during the years in question, 1981 - 1989 and they had 3 very good comic shops at the time. And they sell motor oil as well, but that doesn't make a pharmacy a gas station, nor does one got a pharmacy to usually by motor oil... but you can get it there. Having earlier said that I didn't want to speak for another poster, of course I'm now gonna go right ahead and do it. There seems to be some confusion here: urrutiap was not (I think) saying that comic shops didn't exist in the '80s, he said that "the downtown drug pharmacy store and the newsstand magazine section at grocery stores were our 'comic book shops' at the time." As I said earlier, your experience may've been different, but that in no way invalidates what urrutiap, brutalis or Slam Bradley have posted elsewhere in this thread about not having dedicated comic shops as their main source for buying comics back in the '80s.
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Post by tarkintino on Jun 25, 2019 17:53:52 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. I think others are saying there were more than one way to get comics in the 70s and 80s, or that's what I posted, because that was my collecting experience. Even in smaller towns, kids would bike, take the bus and often walk a few miles to the next town or city (yes, we did that) where the bigger bookstores (new and used) or comic stores were. In town, there were plenty of liquor and drug stores selling comics. The point being that where one person might have had limited options, others did not. Both realities existed. *Shrugs shoulders*
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Post by rberman on Jun 25, 2019 18:35:19 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. Indeed. Our discussions are not a matter of any need that the creator has. I simply find it interesting to hear other people's perspectives on media that I enjoy. For instance: I can't speak to Ostrander or Kurtzman, but I generally enjoy Moore more than Wolfman, Englehart, Shooter, and Ellis. Though I have enjoyed work from all of those gentlemen.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Jun 25, 2019 18:55:50 GMT -5
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. By that time (mid-1980s) in Oregon, besides Portland and Eugene at either end of the Willamette Valley, there were at least two comic book shops in Salem (one of which had been around since about the mid-1970s) and at least one - but possibly two - in Corvallis as well.
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Post by urrutiap on Jun 25, 2019 19:30:50 GMT -5
actual comic book shops were not around for me back in the early 1980s when I was a little kid. New comics were in the spinner rack or in the newsstand section along with the ocassional Cracked and Mad Magazines at the damn drug pharmacy store and at the grocery store.
If your parents couldve afforded it back then, yes there were those tiny back issue ads from Mile High but you expect a little kid to just order a back issue at the time back then? No.
what the drug stores and grocery stores had for new comics you had to deal with it and if you or at least your parents were lucky, there were once in awhile a flea market going on but only if you were lucky to even see old issues of something like Amazing Spider Man or whatever at a flea market or garage sale in the frikkin early 1980s.
Like I said and i get tired of these topic threads.
Drug stores and grocery stores were our only source to even buy a comic book along with Mad and Cracked Magazine
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,414
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Post by Confessor on Jun 25, 2019 19:58:08 GMT -5
Like I said and i get tired of these topic threads. Well, just ignore them then. Other posters enjoy them. It isn't all about you.
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Post by Farrar on Jun 25, 2019 21:51:51 GMT -5
Yes it is as a matter of fact, but it has no comics rack. My first true Comics Shop was 2 blocks away on Rockaway Parkway near Foster Avenue. I found it, and it opened about 3 months after than, and I ended up spending a good part of my miseriable childhood reading comics from the bins of that store. Jery and Harriet who owned the store were forster parents for half the rug rats in Canarsie in the 1970's. It still has a short order grill. What it doesn't have is athe Jerkie stand that used to serve me up Ice Cream Sodas every week as I was reading my comics. In my neighborhood our drinks of choice were egg creams. We'd buy comics and candy and then treat ourselves to egg creams at the counter.
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Post by Icctrombone on Jun 26, 2019 6:25:27 GMT -5
Much to do about nothing, comics were sold anywhere back in the day. If urrutiap says he bought them there, he did. Nowadays , the only place you can find a comic outside of a comic shop is Walmart.
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Post by Farrar on May 22, 2020 12:12:58 GMT -5
I've often mentioned the collectibles store that was located on my block when I was a kid. My mother would take me and my sibling there to buy old stamps and coins (she encouraged us to start these collecting hobbies (to keep us out of trouble, I guess) and I drew the stamp straw, so...). I still remember that huge stamp album I had; I barely got one page filled with stamps before I grew tired of the hobby Anyway, later on for pocket money my friends and I would sometimes sell our Harveys and Archies at this same store. The store was dark, small and narrow, dominated by a dusty counter. The store's cranky old owner would buy our comics for a nickel apiece. Then when I started reading Marvel and DC, I brilliantly deduced that if the guy bought comics, then he must sell them too. And sure enough he had a lot of old Marvels and DCs, which he sold for 35 cents apiece, $1.05 for Annuals/Giants. So over the next few years I went to this store every several days and regularly bought back issues. As I have mentioned in other threads, I spent a lot more time buying back issues than I did new comics. It was always a thrill to find an old Justice League or Avengers or Lois Lane or Adventure Comics (John Forte and early Curt Swan Legion!) or Wonder Woman or Marvel Collectors' Item Classics or Metal Men or X-Men or Teen Titans or... you get the picture. I managed to build up complete (at the time) collections of many of my favorite superhero series. The collectibles shop was where where the "Future Communications" store is now, I've circled it. We lived in the building on the corner, the trees are obscuring our windows.
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Post by Farrar on Dec 3, 2020 20:30:13 GMT -5
An old friend from grade school got in touch with me recently and we got to talking about comics, since back then he and I (and several others in our class) spent a lot of time during lunch and recess reading the latest superhero comics. As I have mentioned in other threads, in my own neighborhood (a few miles away) the selection of comics in the stores was pretty sparse, but I could keep up with Marvel and DC thanks to my classmates, who would often just give me their comics after they had read them (I however was not so generous; I never let anyone borrow or read my comics! Even back then I was a collector, and I kept and organized my comics; whereas my friends looked at comics as disposable. I got a lot free copies that way). Anyway our conversation reminded me that the only place that sold comics near that school was a bodega down the street; I've circled its location in this Google image. Our school was up a hill, near where the trees are pictured. As grade schoolers we weren't allowed off the campus at lunch but of course we often left the schoolyard anyway, and ventured down the hill to get pizza, soda, candy--and comics. One comic I remember buying from that bodega was an old copy of Avengers #40, without a cover (back then the storeowners, vendors, etc., would send back the covers of unsold copies and get refunds). That was the first time I'd ever seen a coverless comic for sale in a store alongside current comics!
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Post by brianf on Dec 4, 2020 1:37:19 GMT -5
reading through this subject made me look up some of my old haunts. So I grew up in Miami Florida and started collecting comics in 1979. I'd usually buy off spinner racks at drug stores, 7-11s and a place called Als News. Al was a crotchety old weirdo - I loved rooting around Al's News - it stunk of cigar smoke and musky old paper. It was within bike riding range of my house, so I'd go there all the time. I can't count the number of times I was told that that wasn't a library. My parents got divorced and my dad wanted to spend time with me so he'd drive me to Bird Road - a decent distance from my house - and take me to A&M Comics & Sunshine Comics. Google tells me Sunshine comics is now a gaming place, but A&M is still open - wild!
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