Posted in: Comics, Comic Publishers, Latest News, DC Comics | Tagged with: Comic Shop, Magic: The Gathering, Tuesdays

In July, DC Comics began moving the sales date for new comics from Tuesday to Wednesday. A stupid idea…

In July, DC began moving its new comic book sales from Tuesdays to Wednesdays. To me, as a comic book retailer, that was a dumb decision, and DC’s sales dropped because of it. Sales dropped because people stopped coming on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. What is one of the many things a comic book store should do? Get people to come to its store. The more people come, the more likely they are to spend money. If I go to Target because I need soap and come back the next day because I need toothpaste, the people at Target don’t ask why I came back; they’re a big company. Target wants people to come in as often as possible. The second time I went, I saw something different and decided to buy it along with the item I went to Target for. Or I might even buy more than one item, like a couple of Magic the Gathering packs. That means more sales for Target; multiply that by thousands of people doing this at Target, it adds up.

I had people come to me upset that DC stopped selling on Tuesdays. I told people that for a month, even though many were still in the habit of coming in on Tuesdays to buy new comics. One of them, who I see once in a blue moon, took back-released comics and then asked where the new DC titles were, and I told him I couldn’t sell DC titles on Tuesdays anymore. He put the titles he could have bought back on the shelf; I told him I couldn’t sell him back-releases on Tuesdays anymore. He just left.

As a store owner, I try to get people to come to my store. We have sales and auctions, and having a second release day a week helped. Then, without me and many other comic shops doing anything about it, DC got rid of the Tuesday release date and moved it back to Wednesday. I don’t understand why DC did that. DC had new comics on Tuesdays just for them. There was no competition from other publishers, so of course they had an advantage. DC threw that away.

Comics used to sell on Fridays, then Wednesdays. Things change. Things have to change. My store, Rodman Comics, remained profitable during the year that COVID-19 shut down businesses. How was that possible? We sold curbside; I worked a lot and did things the other stores weren’t doing. When DC started selling comics on Tuesdays and Marvel returned to Wednesdays, I had two big sale days a week. I was told the other stores only sold new comics on Wednesdays. After no new comics for so long, people wanted to get comics as soon as possible. We had a lot of new customers coming in on Tuesdays that we’d never seen before. One of the things I’ve learned is that everyone thinks differently. That’s great; it makes the world go round and it’s a great place to live. It wouldn’t be very interesting if everyone thought the same. So people come in on Tuesdays and spend $50. Some people will think they’re paying the $50 they would have spent on Tuesday and the $50 they would have spent on Wednesday. No, some people will think, oh man, $100 for comics on Wednesday is too much and I need to put something aside.

Lunar, the company that supplies DC, is usually the first comic shipment for the new releases we get. We’ve usually received that week’s new DC releases on the Wednesday before, although since early July we’ve had two shipments that didn’t arrive until Tuesday of release week. I love it when shipments arrive early. For years, Diamond shipments didn’t arrive until Tuesday, the day before sales started. If Diamond has a truck accident, there’s a weather delay, or UPS makes a mistake, that can mean Diamond’s comics are a day or more late. How do you make sales crazy? One store gets its comic shipment in central Iowa and the rest don’t.

When DC left Diamond, the Diamond Secret Shopper program ended, which I was very happy about. It was a program that Diamond made comic book stores pay for to make sure the stores met the release date, and then they would send a person who knew nothing about comics and ask to pay for two titles that were coming out the next day. How did I find out who the mystery shopper was? It was always two titles. Whenever I asked the person something like, “Do you like the plot?” I would get a stunned look back. I told the other store owners here at the mall about it, and they all laughed because they didn’t have to go through that. Their salespeople don’t do that to them. One of the few ways to get me out of the comic book business would be if the mystery shopper program was reinstated. What other stores get treated like that?

I know my wish to be able to sell comics on Tuesdays again is unlikely, but who knows, maybe someone will read this and see the logic behind it. If not DC, then maybe another publisher? Basically, I want to make more money… does DC do that too?

Many stores want all new comics to come out on just one release day, Wednesday, but I like to do things differently and bet against other comic shops. The Magic set Ikora was the first set to be released after the shutdown. One of my suppliers for Magic called and asked if I wanted to reduce my orders and said all the other stores had done that. I said no, I’m betting on the collectors’ mentality. They haven’t been able to buy cards for so long that they want them even more now. That was my thinking: If COVID-19 caused lasting or long-term damage to sales, every store would be in trouble. Our bet paid off because other stores sold out of Ikoria while we still had stock. Ikoria ended up being one of the best-selling Magic sets in our nearly fourteen-year history.

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