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Nick Marino on Target Selling Comic Books After All
posted September 11, 2008
 

Tom, you wrote:

"people keep writing me to say that they're selling Watchmen at Target, and that this fine North American retailer and I would guess butt of various Larry the Cable Guy jokes doesn't otherwise sell comic books"

it's funny that you would mention Target and comic books because i recently had an incredible comics buying experience from Target. in their kids book section they have these awesome four issue collections of Marvel Adventures books that run for $5.99. Basically, that's a $11.96 value for half the price. and some of the books go so far as to include reprints not just from Marvel Adventures books, but from classic comics including recolored (or touched-up) versions of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee material. for example, they sell a Spider-Man / Silver Surfer book that has two Marvel Adventures Fantastic Four reprints, one Silver Surfer original series reprint written by Stan Lee, and a reprint of the Galactus origin story by Stan and Jack - for only six bucks!! the added bonus is that these four issues collections are printed at magazine size and on higher quality paper. so basically, for the price of two issues you get four issues on better paper (and coverstock) printed at a larger size. these are sold (as far as I know) exclusively at Target. i've never seen these books listed in the Marvel solicitations for the direct market, so I assume that these books are a specialty product. and if you can scoop the Iron Man and Hulk collections, you get incredible art (and stories) by guys that have moved onto much higher profile gigs at Marvel now. Fred Van Lente wrote the excellent Iron Man collection, which featured art by Incredible Hercules' Rafa Sandoval. over in the Hulk collection, you get AMAZING work by David Nakayama, who is now working on the Big Hero 6 mini with Claremont.

i say all that to say this: Target DOES sell comic books, and they sell them for an incredible value -- you just have to know where to look for them.