TILTING @ WINDMILLS #50: COMICSPRO IN SIN CITY

[MattBrady]

by Brian Hibbs
(#167/#50 – March 2008)

Hey, look, it’s the fiftieth Tilting at Windmills at Newsarama! (#167 overall!) Pretty cool!

It is also a week late, as last week’s original deadline coincided with the second annual ComicsPRO meeting in Las Vegas, and I wanted to hold off until the meeting was done in order to write about it.

Vegas is such a crazy town to me – so much of it designed around excess and vice; and there’s a slightly desperate quality to it all; but it is a good location for a meeting with an amazing amount of cheap convention space, easy travel access for most of the country, and a place that people like to go (probably because of the excess and vice!)

Our meeting was held at a hotel called Texas Station, which was way way off The Strip. On one level that was good, because there were fewer distractions, but on the other hand, it was nearly a forty dollar cab ride out there (at least $10 of that was just getting out of the airport – when I arrived after 11 PM on a Wednesday night, there was a Disneyland-sized queue just to get to the cab stand, utterly insane!) and I had the joy of getting a cabbie whose first question was “do you know where that is?” Always love that.

Anyway, let’s talk about ComicsPRO for a bit…

ComicsPRO is the Comics Professional Retailers Organization – a trade organization for comics retailers, set up to promote and support the Direct Market retailer through education, opportunity and advocacy. There have been many attempts to set up such an organization over the years, and ComicsPRO is the first truly successful iteration – previous attempts have topped out at something on the order of fifty to sixty members, and ComicsPRO is currently sitting at about the 115 range – nearly twice the size of previous attempts! And we’re still growing at a rapid clip.

Click here for the full column.

[CParadise]

Great column, Brian. It was a pleasure meeting you at the show and the meeting DID accomplish a ton of stuff. Just the fact that 60 retailers got together and put faces to names, made contacts and were able to agree and bring the points to Diamond, DC, Marvel and many others is already SO important. But there were also many deals made, many of which have not been announced yet.

Any retailer who does not join ComicsPRO this year is missing out on a big opportunity.

[mhawkins]

I was there for the Publishers round table Friday night and that dinner. Comics Pro rocks! Great group of retailers.

Matt

[johnchrist]

I'm no retailer but I've gotta say this sounds like a great opportunity for the direct market (I've already discussed this with my former LCBS, No Boundaries, in Sacramento and my current, Illusive Comics, in Santa Clara). Personally, I think this is the only way that the Direst Market guys are going to compete with the Borders and Amazons of the world. This is also something I would like to see spread out to other 'local' type shops; bookstores, coffee shops, clothing retail, etc. It seems to me to be the only way the 'small guy' can retain hin individuality without having to stand alone against the all consuming corporations.

[Not From Around]

Sounds like you have some exciting things going on. Good luck on continuing the momentum. A good professional organization can accomplish a lot.

[graaspurv]

Great read Mr. Hibbs (as always).

Didn't know about the Alias vol. 4 going back to print if there are enough orders. I just placed our reorder, crossed fingers.

I work in a Danish comic shop, and we are not a member of ComicsPRO. Do you have news letter that we can subscribe to?

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