So Smichal smasks
“How do kids factor in as a demographic at your shop? Is it bigger/smaller than in the past? What are they buying? Do they stay invested in the medium, or is it a passing interest?
For argument’s sake, lets define kids as 16 and under for this question.”
Well, sure, I actually get lots of kids coming through the store, largely due to my location. My store is located in a strip of stores that includes a couple of restaurants, a popular pizza place, a music store/school/venue, and one tiny storefront at the end that seems to be used as a storage area for some other business, but that’s perhaps a tale for another day.
Anyway, with all these schools and restaurants and pizzas, I get a lot of walk-in traffic, particularly from families with children. And thus, I have sort of a captive audience here, with parents unwittingly passing by on their way to eat, when their children spot my store and start shouting “LOOK, COMICS!” and the like.
In that way, I’m very fortunate. I know at the previous place of employment, we were down the road from a high school, and we’d get a lot of foot traffic when classes were out and kids were heading home. However, we weren’t surrounded by other locations that regularly brought in families with children — we had a dry cleaners, an optometrist, a tattoo parlor, a place that sold prosthetic limbs. I mean, yeah, sure, any of those places might cater to young folks (I mean, Junior’s gotta get himself inked sometime), but by and large it was the comics/games shop that was the sole attractor for families.
Now, back to my shop, what are those kids after at my store, anyway? I mean, yes, it’s a pretty good mix of just about everything. People have their ideas about what kids actually want from comic book stores, but I tell them “I had a little girl ask for and buy several Hulk comics” and those preconceived notions can just go right out the window.
But yes, some of it is What You Expect. My Little Pony, manga (especially One Piece right now), Dog Man (slowed down a bit since the movie), the Raina Telgemeier books, that sort of thing. And when it comes to the traditional comic book-type stuff, kids usually ask for Spider-Man or Batman. I get some very light interest from young folks in the Thundercats revival books, but just about every other ’60s-’80s cartoon-based comic book is For Grown-Ups Only. Simpsons comics would do incredibly well based on the demand I have for them from kids, but darned if Disney/Marvel/Whoever is leaving money on the table by not getting another comic for them out on the stands.
Along with comics, kids are also buying lots of the Little Golden Books, the thin illustrated storybook hardcovers for which I have a giant spinner rack by the door. That and the slowly dwindling supply of Funko Pops are what grabs children’s eyes and pulls them into the shop.
As for whether it’s more or less than in the past, all I can really say is that the percentage of kid clientele at my store is steadily increasing. How many are sticking with the hobby as they age…that’s hard to say. I know a handful of kids who have been coming into my shop since they were barely able to walk on their own, so at least some have maintained their interest.
Last week I read a graphic novel that was aimed at tweens and I thought it was just…boring. I really wondered if kids reading it would actually enjoy it.
A couple of days later I read some volumes of the manga series Orochi, that was originally published in 1969-1970 in Weekly Shōnen Sunday (so aimed at like 10-18 year olds?) and it was just story after story of horrible children and horrible parents and horrible things happening to them. (The creator of Orochi also did The Drifting Classroom, which is much the same!)
I was reminded of a chapter in the (long out of print) Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga that talked about kids comics and the differences between what kids want to read and what parents want to buy for their children and how the big hits are things that manage to fall into the overlap between those two areas (so Dog Man I guess!).
When I was a kid, I was captivated by superhero comics because they were just a *little bit* over my head.
Each issue was easy enough to understand, but I knew there were years of history that I wasn’t privy to. The morality was simple good v. bad, but the adult relationships were so complicated. I guess I was mostly reading Marvel comics with their flawed and angsty heroes.
In any case, that’s what I’ve always thought kids wanted to read: material meant for teens. And teens want to read material meant for adults. Or maybe that was just me.
“we had a dry cleaners, an optometrist, a tattoo parlor, a place that sold prosthetic limbs”
What an odd combo!
The block we were on had our place next to the bus stop. The street was an artery–diagonal–in grid-shaped Chicago–and next door was an ancient Singer Sewing Store That someone had told me had been there since the 60s. A hair salon. And a Polish butcher shop where parents would go and let the kids run rampant in our store. On Thanksgiving.On Christmas Eve.We had Mortal Kombat. That was enough. Jenny McCarthy, still at the butcher shop when she became Playmate, took ten dollar bills from me for rolls of quarters. I was the only one there on Sundays (noon-5pm) and Jenny would come in for Donal Duck comics for her younger brother and I practically filled empty boxes for her.
But I still remember being 30 and working Thanksgiving pricing LOBO comics and having an old Polish woman come in yelling in Polish at me because one of those LOBOs was in the front window display.
The absolute nadir of my life.