Go, Read: Cartoonist Chris Schweizer On Comic Shops

I found this post-shop write-up by the cartoonist Chris Schweizer kind of fascinating, and I can't imagine there being anyone out there interested in comics retail if only as a consumer that doesn't find a) something in there with which to agree, b) something in there with which to disagree. I suspect that one thing to remember with most people under 45 or so is that their retail experience not only encompasses an easy familiarity with Amazon.com but also how a lot of big-box bookstore retail of the 1990s encouraged people to read right in the store. We're further being conditioned by a growing lack of consumer retail experiences -- it's becoming rarer and rarer to shop in a store, which I think has an effect on how we shop in those retail spaces that remain interesting to us. It's not like people have to be conditioned by anything other than their specific desires when it comes to present-day consumption.

When I stop and think about it, I was reading entire comic books in shops in 1984. While this surely irritated my then-retailer, my memory is that I was a pretty good customer overall and being able to sort things out like that was something I found enjoyable about that experience. It's tough. I'd imagine in a lot of cases -- cases not Schweizer's specific one, but more generally -- the consistent application of a "do unto others" philosophy would take care of most concerns going both directions. Yet I also think there's an ethos in buying and shopping that calls for anything but those kinds of considerations. There's also a fine line between that kind of thinking and presumption from the shop owner end of things. Like I said: tough.
 
posted 6:00 am PST | Permalink
 

---

 
Daily Blog Archives
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
 
Full Archives