Description
Book SynopsisAward-winning business journalist Dan Gearino leads a tour through the world of comic shops, telling the story of the direct market from its 1970s origins to today. Includes profiles of forty notable shops in the U.S. and Canada, and a close look at The Laughing Ogre in Columbus.
Trade Review“Gives a fascinating glimpse at the challenges and pressures that store owners have to face in this hybrid retail business.… [Gearino] makes the case that the modern pop culture era we’re living in wouldn’t exist without the rise of comic book stores.”
“Dan Gearino offers a more compelling and complex place for the comic shop in popular culture by demonstrating how entrepreneurs and distribution channels have reshaped that commercial space over the last 50 years.…Gender issues feature heavily in the text, and this offers scholars…a point of consideration lacking from many other outlets.…Above all, this work personalizes the comic shop as a collection of people who, through emotion and personal desire, embrace an evolving and unstable place in the commercial world of pop culture.” * PopMatters *
“[Gearino] has clearly done his homework.…
Comic Shop is an essential read for anyone interested in the mechanics and money of the comic industry, but I was most amazed to learn that, beyond Carol Kalish, there was another woman behind the formation of the direct market. That’s not a story that’s often been told.” * Comics Worth Reading *
“There are precious few prose books that have elucidated the quirkiness of the comics industry more than
Comic Shop.…In clear and compelling language, Gearino lays out how comics specialty shops were born in the 1970s and ’80s, how they flew too close to the sun in the ’90s, and how they’ve managed to endure decades into the Information Age.”
“This is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand comics in the U.S. Dan Gearino has put together a riveting account of the history of the comics market, and even reveals the forgotten key women who were essential to its creation.
Comic Shop is a fascinating page turner.”
“If the foundation of America’s castle on a hill consists of how we buy and sell things, Dan Gearino shows us what’s in the basement.”
“Gearino pulls back the curtain on the seldom-seen end of the business encompassing sales, distribution and retail.… Drawing from original documents and firsthand interviews with key participants, [he] gives the retail and distribution side of the industry an account as dramatic and lively as Sean Howe did for the creative side in his 2012 book on Marvel Comics.… The result is a readable, well-researched account that fills a gap in existing comics literature and provides a great reference for future work.” * ICv2 *
“Gearino…effortlessly navigates the byzantine business lore of comic-distribution companies.…The author still takes delicate care with their stories, weaving tales of complex heroes and villains with stories directly from the people who lived through the uncertainty and chaos in the industry.…It is spectacular how often Gearino makes these small stories of heartbreak and triumph feel herculean in scope.…
Comic Shop lives in the beautiful struggle to survive and exist.” * Columbus Dispatch *
“The fickle, frustrating and sometimes joyful travails of owning a comic book store are detailed in a new book by native Iowan Dan Gearino. [
Comic Shop] traces the history of selling comic books from their inception on newsstands in grocery stores, pharmacies and gas stations to the rise of specialty stores.” * Des Moines Register *
“Dan Gearino captures the genie in the bottle. He’s gathered together the players and the circumstances to reveal how a generation of entrepreneurs saved an entire industry and changed the very way people discover, buy, read, collect, and even think about comic books.”
