By Ryan Riley
Correspondent
This will be the first in a series of interviews that spotlight comic book stores in Long Beach (sadly, a lot fewer than there have been in the past) and surrounding cities. After some deliberation, I felt it would be logical to begin this series with the store I frequent the most and am therefore most familiar with. That store is Pulp Fiction Books at 4501 E. Carson St., Suite 104 in Long Beach, located near the corner of Lakewood Blvd. & Carson St.
I've been buying my comics from Pulp Fiction since they first opened their doors in 2003. Before they had opened I had blown my hard-earned money at various comic book stores, starting with the long defunct American Comics at Atlantic Av. in Bixby Knolls. I even served some time behind the counter as a comic jockey at Amazing Comics in Los Altos Center. Suffice it to say I've experienced the gamut of comic book shops and, more importantly, their proprietors and their regular customers. Some of them were pretty cool, and some of them make Jeff Albertson (a.k.a. Comic Book Guy from "The Simpsons") look like Samuel L. Jackson.
I noticed an immediate difference when I first walked through the door. It should be noted that the main reason I found the place was the fact that my wife's favorite used bookstore and Chinese restaurant were right across the street. This was the first comic book shop I had ever seen that didn't devote at least half of its floor space to back issues.
Sure, there wasn't a heck of a lot of floor space to work with, but I could tell that there was a conscious decision to devote more display space to the rapid expansion of the graphic novel market. This was cool with me, since I gave up on collecting single-issue comics many moons ago.
The next thing that struck me was how knowledgeable yet unpretentious everyone in the store was. From the owner to the employees to the customers, it was a very relaxed comic book store experience. And the owner in particular was very open to helping out customers that weren't familiar with comics to find just the right comic, which aided my wife when she shopped there for my birthday and later for herself. The icing on this delicious cake is the fact that he consistently sells graphic novels at discounted prices, anywhere from 10% to 50% off the cover price. And so, without any further ado, here is my interview with the owner and operator of Pulp Fiction Bookstore, Mike Lerner.
Modern Mythology: So Mike, tell us a little about yourself.
Mike Lerner: Oh, I'm awful at those questions, let's go to the next question...
M.M.: When did you start reading comics?
Mike: When I was in elementary school, probably first or second grade. We're talking too far back for me to remember. I remember starting relatively early on Richie Rich, I don't know if that was the first. I remember early Flash, early Daredevil, whatever we could find at a 7-11 stand, Back then we shopped at 7-11, there weren't any comic book stores back then that I knew of. Pretty much whatever we could find is what we bought, until we found a comic book store, me and my friends.
M.M.: How did you get into the comic book business?
Mike: I guess you could say that it started when I was in high school. I was buying and selling in the days before the internet through a newspaper called Comic Buyers Guide. It was a national publication that had news and came out weekly. There were also ads in the back where people could exchange and sell back issues. There was also a convention in L.A. once a month at the Ambassador Hotel that at one point, believe it or not, had tens of thousands in attendance every month. It was gigantic, not like now where they have a much smaller version of that convention where you have maybe like 100 people show up, if that.
Now it's just a bunch of cheesy vendors. Back then, there were like 100 vendors. (The dealer presence there) was smaller than the San Diego ComicCon, but not that much smaller. Saw a lot of Hollywood stars there, they would bring their kids. I sold some stuff to Mike Farrell's (B.J. from the "M.A.S.H." TV series) daughter. At one point she was ordering stuff from me every month. It was a big convention, and between that and the Comic Buyers Guide I was doing a lot of business through mail order. I dropped out of comics in the 1990's, sold off everything around the time when the "Black & White" crash came, I saw the writing on the wall and dumped everything just at the beginning of that. I didn't pick up a comic for about 10 years.
Correspondent
This will be the first in a series of interviews that spotlight comic book stores in Long Beach (sadly, a lot fewer than there have been in the past) and surrounding cities. After some deliberation, I felt it would be logical to begin this series with the store I frequent the most and am therefore most familiar with. That store is Pulp Fiction Books at 4501 E. Carson St., Suite 104 in Long Beach, located near the corner of Lakewood Blvd. & Carson St.
I've been buying my comics from Pulp Fiction since they first opened their doors in 2003. Before they had opened I had blown my hard-earned money at various comic book stores, starting with the long defunct American Comics at Atlantic Av. in Bixby Knolls. I even served some time behind the counter as a comic jockey at Amazing Comics in Los Altos Center. Suffice it to say I've experienced the gamut of comic book shops and, more importantly, their proprietors and their regular customers. Some of them were pretty cool, and some of them make Jeff Albertson (a.k.a. Comic Book Guy from "The Simpsons") look like Samuel L. Jackson.
I noticed an immediate difference when I first walked through the door. It should be noted that the main reason I found the place was the fact that my wife's favorite used bookstore and Chinese restaurant were right across the street. This was the first comic book shop I had ever seen that didn't devote at least half of its floor space to back issues.
Sure, there wasn't a heck of a lot of floor space to work with, but I could tell that there was a conscious decision to devote more display space to the rapid expansion of the graphic novel market. This was cool with me, since I gave up on collecting single-issue comics many moons ago.
The next thing that struck me was how knowledgeable yet unpretentious everyone in the store was. From the owner to the employees to the customers, it was a very relaxed comic book store experience. And the owner in particular was very open to helping out customers that weren't familiar with comics to find just the right comic, which aided my wife when she shopped there for my birthday and later for herself. The icing on this delicious cake is the fact that he consistently sells graphic novels at discounted prices, anywhere from 10% to 50% off the cover price. And so, without any further ado, here is my interview with the owner and operator of Pulp Fiction Bookstore, Mike Lerner.
Modern Mythology: So Mike, tell us a little about yourself.
Mike Lerner: Oh, I'm awful at those questions, let's go to the next question...
M.M.: When did you start reading comics?
Mike: When I was in elementary school, probably first or second grade. We're talking too far back for me to remember. I remember starting relatively early on Richie Rich, I don't know if that was the first. I remember early Flash, early Daredevil, whatever we could find at a 7-11 stand, Back then we shopped at 7-11, there weren't any comic book stores back then that I knew of. Pretty much whatever we could find is what we bought, until we found a comic book store, me and my friends.
M.M.: How did you get into the comic book business?
Mike: I guess you could say that it started when I was in high school. I was buying and selling in the days before the internet through a newspaper called Comic Buyers Guide. It was a national publication that had news and came out weekly. There were also ads in the back where people could exchange and sell back issues. There was also a convention in L.A. once a month at the Ambassador Hotel that at one point, believe it or not, had tens of thousands in attendance every month. It was gigantic, not like now where they have a much smaller version of that convention where you have maybe like 100 people show up, if that.
Now it's just a bunch of cheesy vendors. Back then, there were like 100 vendors. (The dealer presence there) was smaller than the San Diego ComicCon, but not that much smaller. Saw a lot of Hollywood stars there, they would bring their kids. I sold some stuff to Mike Farrell's (B.J. from the "M.A.S.H." TV series) daughter. At one point she was ordering stuff from me every month. It was a big convention, and between that and the Comic Buyers Guide I was doing a lot of business through mail order. I dropped out of comics in the 1990's, sold off everything around the time when the "Black & White" crash came, I saw the writing on the wall and dumped everything just at the beginning of that. I didn't pick up a comic for about 10 years.
M.M.: What compelled you to get back into comics?
Mike: I don't even know what drew me back in. I must have picked one up here and there, wandered into another comic shop in Long Beach, I saw some things online. I shouldn't say I totally dropped out, there was one book I still picked up, I'd wander into Amazing Comics every four to six months to pick up a book called Cerebus. I wasn't even reading them at the time, but I had already gotten 160 issues, so I figured I should finish the run of 300. I didn't buy anything else, I would bag & board them, put them in my box. I don't even think I read them until I actually completed the entire run. Beyond that, it was around the year 2000 when I started reading comics again. I picked up some Vertigo stuff, I started collecting Fables and liked it a lot. I still went to the San Diego ComicCon almost every year, so I wasn't totally out of the loop. I also kept up with news online, so it was a good way to keep up without actually collecting.
M.M. So how did you end up opening Pulp Fiction?
Mike: Oh, that's a long, ugly story (laughs)! My friend Ananya and her roommate collected more comics than I did. At some point, we had gone to the SDCC together and they had heard talk about opening up a store and they thought it was a cool idea at the time. She was out of work at the time and I had a little extra money and was bored with what I was doing for a living. I figured I had talked about doing it for 20 years so I thought I should just do it, just to see.
M.M.: What kind of shopping experience can a customer expect when they come into Pulp Fiction?
Mike: Well, I haven't been on the customer end, so that's something I don't feel really qualified to answer that question. At this point, Chanmary, an employee of Pulp Fiction that has been preparing the store for the new shipment coming on Wednesday, joins in the interview. She had been a customer of Mike's before getting hired to work at the store, so she is uniquely qualified to answer this question.
Chanmary: Well, I think it's a really good place to find good deals. I think Pulp Fiction has really competitive pricing. From an employee standpoint, it's not always about making a profit, it's about rotating stuff. So from a customer standpoint you can really get a good deal. Before I found Pulp Fiction, I think the only place that had comparable prices was E-Bay, and that's not even accounting for shipping. So the deals we have here are outrageous, I just wish more people knew about it.
Mike: They will now...
Chanmary: Also, this is a comfortable place to shop. There isn't anyone pestering you to buy stuff, and our customers are relatively normal people. There aren't any obnoxious people passionately discussing just Marvel & DC stuff.
Mike: You left out the staff's knowledgeable expertise of both graphic novels & manga there.
M.M.: What is your business philosophy?
Mike: To try and survive and get more than three hours of sleep in a night (laughs)! I've never tried to run Pulp Fiction like a typical comic book store. I always looked at more like a bookstore that happened to sell graphic novels, comics & manga. Even in terms of putting the store together, I never patterned the look, design or way it ran after the way that other comic book store owners did. I did do a lot of research before opening, and for the most part they all looked the same and ran things the same. The few aspects I liked I used, and disregarded the rest.
M.M.: How good of a job do the major comic book publishers do in promoting the comic book industry?
Well, the major comic book companies do a very ass-backward job of promoting the industry. They actually don't do any promotion of the industry at all. I worked in a couple of retail bookstores like Crown Books before opening Pulp Fiction. All of the major book publishers would get together to promote reading, with the idea that if you get people into the bookstore they might end up buying your book, but the aim was to get them shopping in a bookstore. That cooperation isn't likely to happen with the major comic book publishers. But by far the hardest thing to overcome is the stigma that comic books are strictly for children.
M.M.: Well it seems like one of your areas of interest is bringing new readers into the graphic novel arena. What, if anything, are you doing at Pulp Fiction to increase readership of comic books, graphic novels and manga.
Mike: One way is to get people of all ages reading the material and accepting it. To that end we work with many schools and libraries to get books placed there and consult with them on what to stock and how to increase readership. We are actually in the process of creating a blog on our website, aimed at teachers and librarians, devoted to just this mission. We can also lead the way in creating that "next generation" of readers. When I was young, many of my friends learned to read or became better readers through comics and collecting. Many comic book publishers have realized that they were leaving a vital segment of the population behind in their efforts to "grow up" and have created comics and graphic novels with a wider rage of appeal that are all ages appropriate. One of our best and most popular promotions since we opened is our "Give the Treat of Literacy this Halloween", which makes use of all ages Halloween themed "mini comics" that are small enough to fit into most bags and can be given out to little ghosts and goblins (in addition to candy). We give out a free bag of ten of these comics, with more available at our cost, to anyone who asks. We have received more complimentary comments from this promotion than anything else we have ever done and its one of the things I am most proud of in terms of getting comics into youngsters' hands. Then we have our graphic novel rental program, where a customer can check out a graphic novel for a full week for anywhere from $1.99-$3.99 per book.
M.M.: Have the recent releases of several super hero movies over the past few years affected your business and the industry as a whole?
Mike: Not as much as you might think. We have done much better, in terms of attracting new readers to the industry, with movies like "Sin City" or "V for Vendetta" or "Wanted". The vast majority of the public did not know, at least till after the fact, that these stories were based on graphic novels, and they were curious enough about them to come into a store like our, often for the first time, to check out a graphic novel. In fact, one of the best graphic novel adaptations, for sales purposes, was V for Vendetta, as some local high schools used it in their social studies classes. The general public has not come flocking to comic book stores to pick up Spider-Man and Fantastic Four graphic novels. The recent Batman movie was the first "super hero" movie that brought in a few new customers. What was most interesting, sales-wise, this summer was the effect that just the "Watchmen" trailer (next year's big graphic novel-based movie) had on the general public. In just a few weeks we sold more Watchmen graphic novels than any other book the entire year and had more new customers than I had seen in a long time. Wait till the publicity machine hits later this year and early next year....
M.M.: Do you pay close attention to what your competitors are doing with their stores?
Mike: Not too close...I've been outlawed from walking in some of them, so I can't pay too close of attention. A lot of the knowledge I get is from checking out their store websites.
M.M.: Your store website, www.pulpfictiononline.com, currently features a group of columnists (myself included) writing reviews and giving opinions on their own aspects of the genre. Are there any plans to open up an online store on the site?
Mike: Soon to be coming is a webstore. The unique feature I want ours to have is we're going to try to start a nationwide online trading post, which I don't think anyone is really doing at this point. We currently offer that service in-store, where people can trade in their books for credit towards new books. I haven't seen anything like it online, where people can mail in their used graphic novels for credit toward new ones, so I want to give that a try. One of my main complaints about the comic book industry is that new comics and graphic novels cost too much. The average graphic novel is anywhere from $15 to $20, where the typical paperback novel goes for $7.99, so hopefully the trading post program mitigates that cost somewhat.
M.M.: What are your thoughts on the debate between Robert Kirkman and Brian Michael Bendis that took place earlier this year?
Mike: Well, I think this came about as a result of Robert Kirkman trying to get publicity in his new capacity as president of Image Comics, to be honest (laughs)! I think it was Bendis that said all the big name creators pretty much do their own independent stuff if they want to. It's not like Kirkman was preaching anything that other creators weren't already thinking or doing. I think that Bendis was closer to being right when he argued the point that not that many indie books ever become profitable or succeed, where Kirkman implied in his original statement that it was a lot easier for more of the indie books to succeed. Anywhere from 95% to 99% of new indie books fail, and it's not easy for a lot of these titles to be noticed because both Marvel and DC so dominate and flood the market. So unless you are already a big name in comics, there is very little chance that the majority of people will even check out your book unless you get very lucky and get a good word-of-mouth buzz from reviews. And the big names usually make a name for themselves working for one of the big two before making their own indie book. I think Bendis is a lot closer to being accurate when he says that it's not feasible for most creators to start out on their own. That being said, I love Kirkman's books!
M.M.: Would you mind giving us your "State of the Union" take on the future of the comic book industry?
Mike: I might be more negative than most retailers in my appraisal of the situation. I think graphic novels will still be around. Individual comic books, if they're still around a generation from now, will be vastly different in terms of size, shape & cost, just because the individual comic books are quickly pricing themselves out of the range of the average collector. The industry isn't drawing that many younger collectors, and the principal buyers are people that picked up the habit 10, 20 or 30 years ago. They still enjoy the books, but a major reason for their buying comics is through habit. If you don't have another generation coming in you'll eventually end up with nothing once this generation is gone. Having said that, if the industry changes its approach it could easily be bigger than it's ever been. It's more important than ever to market comics to a broader audience, and that means thinking outside of the mainstream, super-hero box. The recent "Presidential Material" biographies of Barack Obama & John McCain from IDW is a good example. We sold a lot of copies here, but IDW could have sold many more comics if they had advertised it through more mainstream vehicles such as television and radio advertising.
There is a comic book that gives a primer on biology that I have teachers coming in that want to reserve a copy of the book when it's released. Marketing that book to libraries across the country would be a no-brainer, as well as middle schools & high schools. With a little bit of change there is a lot of room for growth. And while there aren't a lot of people in the country that buy from comic book stores, there are a ton of people that go into mainstream book retailers like Borders and Barnes & Noble. If graphic novels and comics got more exposure in places like that the business could really pick up. So the conclusion to my "State of the Union" of the comic industry is this: It could go either way, but I will optimistically say that it will be bigger and better than ever in five to ten years.
Mike: I don't even know what drew me back in. I must have picked one up here and there, wandered into another comic shop in Long Beach, I saw some things online. I shouldn't say I totally dropped out, there was one book I still picked up, I'd wander into Amazing Comics every four to six months to pick up a book called Cerebus. I wasn't even reading them at the time, but I had already gotten 160 issues, so I figured I should finish the run of 300. I didn't buy anything else, I would bag & board them, put them in my box. I don't even think I read them until I actually completed the entire run. Beyond that, it was around the year 2000 when I started reading comics again. I picked up some Vertigo stuff, I started collecting Fables and liked it a lot. I still went to the San Diego ComicCon almost every year, so I wasn't totally out of the loop. I also kept up with news online, so it was a good way to keep up without actually collecting.
M.M. So how did you end up opening Pulp Fiction?
Mike: Oh, that's a long, ugly story (laughs)! My friend Ananya and her roommate collected more comics than I did. At some point, we had gone to the SDCC together and they had heard talk about opening up a store and they thought it was a cool idea at the time. She was out of work at the time and I had a little extra money and was bored with what I was doing for a living. I figured I had talked about doing it for 20 years so I thought I should just do it, just to see.
M.M.: What kind of shopping experience can a customer expect when they come into Pulp Fiction?
Mike: Well, I haven't been on the customer end, so that's something I don't feel really qualified to answer that question. At this point, Chanmary, an employee of Pulp Fiction that has been preparing the store for the new shipment coming on Wednesday, joins in the interview. She had been a customer of Mike's before getting hired to work at the store, so she is uniquely qualified to answer this question.
Chanmary: Well, I think it's a really good place to find good deals. I think Pulp Fiction has really competitive pricing. From an employee standpoint, it's not always about making a profit, it's about rotating stuff. So from a customer standpoint you can really get a good deal. Before I found Pulp Fiction, I think the only place that had comparable prices was E-Bay, and that's not even accounting for shipping. So the deals we have here are outrageous, I just wish more people knew about it.
Mike: They will now...
Chanmary: Also, this is a comfortable place to shop. There isn't anyone pestering you to buy stuff, and our customers are relatively normal people. There aren't any obnoxious people passionately discussing just Marvel & DC stuff.
Mike: You left out the staff's knowledgeable expertise of both graphic novels & manga there.
M.M.: What is your business philosophy?
Mike: To try and survive and get more than three hours of sleep in a night (laughs)! I've never tried to run Pulp Fiction like a typical comic book store. I always looked at more like a bookstore that happened to sell graphic novels, comics & manga. Even in terms of putting the store together, I never patterned the look, design or way it ran after the way that other comic book store owners did. I did do a lot of research before opening, and for the most part they all looked the same and ran things the same. The few aspects I liked I used, and disregarded the rest.
M.M.: How good of a job do the major comic book publishers do in promoting the comic book industry?
Well, the major comic book companies do a very ass-backward job of promoting the industry. They actually don't do any promotion of the industry at all. I worked in a couple of retail bookstores like Crown Books before opening Pulp Fiction. All of the major book publishers would get together to promote reading, with the idea that if you get people into the bookstore they might end up buying your book, but the aim was to get them shopping in a bookstore. That cooperation isn't likely to happen with the major comic book publishers. But by far the hardest thing to overcome is the stigma that comic books are strictly for children.
M.M.: Well it seems like one of your areas of interest is bringing new readers into the graphic novel arena. What, if anything, are you doing at Pulp Fiction to increase readership of comic books, graphic novels and manga.
Mike: One way is to get people of all ages reading the material and accepting it. To that end we work with many schools and libraries to get books placed there and consult with them on what to stock and how to increase readership. We are actually in the process of creating a blog on our website, aimed at teachers and librarians, devoted to just this mission. We can also lead the way in creating that "next generation" of readers. When I was young, many of my friends learned to read or became better readers through comics and collecting. Many comic book publishers have realized that they were leaving a vital segment of the population behind in their efforts to "grow up" and have created comics and graphic novels with a wider rage of appeal that are all ages appropriate. One of our best and most popular promotions since we opened is our "Give the Treat of Literacy this Halloween", which makes use of all ages Halloween themed "mini comics" that are small enough to fit into most bags and can be given out to little ghosts and goblins (in addition to candy). We give out a free bag of ten of these comics, with more available at our cost, to anyone who asks. We have received more complimentary comments from this promotion than anything else we have ever done and its one of the things I am most proud of in terms of getting comics into youngsters' hands. Then we have our graphic novel rental program, where a customer can check out a graphic novel for a full week for anywhere from $1.99-$3.99 per book.
M.M.: Have the recent releases of several super hero movies over the past few years affected your business and the industry as a whole?
Mike: Not as much as you might think. We have done much better, in terms of attracting new readers to the industry, with movies like "Sin City" or "V for Vendetta" or "Wanted". The vast majority of the public did not know, at least till after the fact, that these stories were based on graphic novels, and they were curious enough about them to come into a store like our, often for the first time, to check out a graphic novel. In fact, one of the best graphic novel adaptations, for sales purposes, was V for Vendetta, as some local high schools used it in their social studies classes. The general public has not come flocking to comic book stores to pick up Spider-Man and Fantastic Four graphic novels. The recent Batman movie was the first "super hero" movie that brought in a few new customers. What was most interesting, sales-wise, this summer was the effect that just the "Watchmen" trailer (next year's big graphic novel-based movie) had on the general public. In just a few weeks we sold more Watchmen graphic novels than any other book the entire year and had more new customers than I had seen in a long time. Wait till the publicity machine hits later this year and early next year....
M.M.: Do you pay close attention to what your competitors are doing with their stores?
Mike: Not too close...I've been outlawed from walking in some of them, so I can't pay too close of attention. A lot of the knowledge I get is from checking out their store websites.
M.M.: Your store website, www.pulpfictiononline.com, currently features a group of columnists (myself included) writing reviews and giving opinions on their own aspects of the genre. Are there any plans to open up an online store on the site?
Mike: Soon to be coming is a webstore. The unique feature I want ours to have is we're going to try to start a nationwide online trading post, which I don't think anyone is really doing at this point. We currently offer that service in-store, where people can trade in their books for credit towards new books. I haven't seen anything like it online, where people can mail in their used graphic novels for credit toward new ones, so I want to give that a try. One of my main complaints about the comic book industry is that new comics and graphic novels cost too much. The average graphic novel is anywhere from $15 to $20, where the typical paperback novel goes for $7.99, so hopefully the trading post program mitigates that cost somewhat.
M.M.: What are your thoughts on the debate between Robert Kirkman and Brian Michael Bendis that took place earlier this year?
Mike: Well, I think this came about as a result of Robert Kirkman trying to get publicity in his new capacity as president of Image Comics, to be honest (laughs)! I think it was Bendis that said all the big name creators pretty much do their own independent stuff if they want to. It's not like Kirkman was preaching anything that other creators weren't already thinking or doing. I think that Bendis was closer to being right when he argued the point that not that many indie books ever become profitable or succeed, where Kirkman implied in his original statement that it was a lot easier for more of the indie books to succeed. Anywhere from 95% to 99% of new indie books fail, and it's not easy for a lot of these titles to be noticed because both Marvel and DC so dominate and flood the market. So unless you are already a big name in comics, there is very little chance that the majority of people will even check out your book unless you get very lucky and get a good word-of-mouth buzz from reviews. And the big names usually make a name for themselves working for one of the big two before making their own indie book. I think Bendis is a lot closer to being accurate when he says that it's not feasible for most creators to start out on their own. That being said, I love Kirkman's books!
M.M.: Would you mind giving us your "State of the Union" take on the future of the comic book industry?
Mike: I might be more negative than most retailers in my appraisal of the situation. I think graphic novels will still be around. Individual comic books, if they're still around a generation from now, will be vastly different in terms of size, shape & cost, just because the individual comic books are quickly pricing themselves out of the range of the average collector. The industry isn't drawing that many younger collectors, and the principal buyers are people that picked up the habit 10, 20 or 30 years ago. They still enjoy the books, but a major reason for their buying comics is through habit. If you don't have another generation coming in you'll eventually end up with nothing once this generation is gone. Having said that, if the industry changes its approach it could easily be bigger than it's ever been. It's more important than ever to market comics to a broader audience, and that means thinking outside of the mainstream, super-hero box. The recent "Presidential Material" biographies of Barack Obama & John McCain from IDW is a good example. We sold a lot of copies here, but IDW could have sold many more comics if they had advertised it through more mainstream vehicles such as television and radio advertising.
There is a comic book that gives a primer on biology that I have teachers coming in that want to reserve a copy of the book when it's released. Marketing that book to libraries across the country would be a no-brainer, as well as middle schools & high schools. With a little bit of change there is a lot of room for growth. And while there aren't a lot of people in the country that buy from comic book stores, there are a ton of people that go into mainstream book retailers like Borders and Barnes & Noble. If graphic novels and comics got more exposure in places like that the business could really pick up. So the conclusion to my "State of the Union" of the comic industry is this: It could go either way, but I will optimistically say that it will be bigger and better than ever in five to ten years.
Thanks for the photo showing 1/2 of the alumni that showed up at the St. Anthiny game. Missing are 8 other players, including my father-in-law, Pete Eifert, who sat in the front row, last one on the right. I havea more complete picture if you want it.
Deke Thomas
dekeforces@hotmail.com