I've posted about this before, but bear with me -- another angle on this just occured to me recently.
Lately I've become interested in local history and checking out various places in my neighborhood, particularly stores. A couple days ago I was walking around and walked by a Circle K convenience store which in the 1990s had been a Dairy Mart. Back in the 1980s, such stores in my area usually had a comics spinner of the current crop of comics. In the 1980s, most of my new comics purchases were made not at a comics shop, but at the local Dairy Mart and local 7-11 stores. I went to those convenience stores every week, mainly to buy the new comics. I even recall once when the new week's worth had arrived and the guy let me go through them before he had even put them in the spinner.
Now, however, these convenience stores (at least in my area) don't have comics spinners, and usually don't carry comics anymore even in the magazine shelf. So when I passed the local Circle K a few days ago, I didn't even bother going in. It was cold outside, so I wasn't going to buy a frozen drink or anything. However, if they carried comics, then I probably would have gone in, just to check out the comics. So, it seems to me that by dropping comics, this store has lost a potential customer. I don't know how many people there were like me, though. But when I think about how frequently I used to go to convenience stores in the 1980s compared to now, it seems to me that the lack of comics is the main reason that I don't go there much anymore.
However, local places that do carry comics, I do tend to make a point of visiting. There's a drugstore that is on the same road as my local comics shop, and when I walk to the comics shop, I often stop at the drugstore first to check out their magazine section. The drugstore has been there since the 1950s and reminds me of drugstores from my youth. They even still carry cold soda pop in glass bottles. They don't have a comics spinner, but they do have around a dozen different titles (mainly Marvel, DC, and Archie comics) on the magazine shelf. They also carry Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and one of the science-fiction mags, Analog I think. Not many places around here, outside of the bookstores, carry those either. So, as I said, whenever I walk to the LCS, I often stop in there to check out the comics & mags and sometimes get a pop or something to munch on for the long walk up to the LCS. So, by carrying comics, this drugstore has gotten me in their door as a potential customer, whereas otherwise I probably wouldn't have any desire to go in there. I think stores are only hurting themselves when they don't carry comics, and comics companies are only hurting themselves when they don't supply such stores with their product.
A second thing I've noticed lately is the recent popularity in my local area of Walgreens and CVS Pharmacy stores. As recently as the early 1990s, I hadn't seen a Walgreens in my area. Now there are TWO Walgreens store within a 10 to 20 minute walking distance. CVS has also become more popular, moving out of their smaller strip-mall spaces and building their own big new stand-alone stores on many major street corners around here. It seems like on every major street corner now there is either a Walgreens, CVS, or Rite-Aid. These places should have comics! While Mother is getting little Johnny's prescription filled, she (or sick Johnny) could be getting a new Spider-Man comic to make him feel better. If such stores can still sell candy bars (at higher prices than I paid when I was a kid), why not comics?
Although part of my reason for wanting to see comics in such places is for nostalgic reasons, for things to be like when I was a kid, I also think it makes good business sense, to get people like me into their stores more frequently. What do you think?
