* I used to think Brian Hibbs was blinkered and a bit crazy; he called me on the phone once in a fit of pique about something or other I had said online, probably about how art comics hold more mainstream appeal than the insular, exclusionary superhero comics that retailers and "fans" ridiculously refer to as "mainstream." His response was, quoting from memory here, "Every reader who buys Love and Rockets also buys Superman." One of the many bad habits Hibbs has developed over the years has been to assume that what goes on in his store is what goes on pretty much everywhere else in the direct market, when in fact, from what I am told, his store is far superior to most (as I like to call them) superhero convenience shops, even if his perception of the direct market is far, far from superior, or even sane.
* In a post about the Kickstarter campaign undertaken by art comics giant Fantagraphics, writer-about-comics Johanna Draper Carlson mentions how Hibbs's hatred for "OGNs" (original graphic novels that have not previously been "serialized," that is to say, published in chapters as the floppy comic books the world has almost uniformly rejected in the modern era) is in stark contradiction to her own experience:
"[Hibbs] rail[s] against original graphic novels, the format that has kept me reading comics long into adulthood."
* Hibbs longs for a time when he could count on every customer of his comic book store to come in weekly and pick up their big, unwieldy pile of floppies. Hibbs, like most of the direct market, doesn't understand the near-universal preference for comics with a complete story and a spine (the dreaded "OGN"), probably would prefer that the people that love them shop somewhere else, and justifies his ass-backwards resolution with a bunch of baloney about how publishers should attempt to double, triple and quadruple-dip sales wherever possible. Get the rubes to buy the floppies, the hardcover, the softcover, and the Absolute Edition, or in Hibbs's world, you are #MadeOfFail.
* Johanna's response to this idea is exactly my own:
"I know old-fashioned comic retailers really rely on the habitual buyer coming in and dropping too much money weekly, but I don’t want to be that kind of customer any more..."
* The key phrase there is "dropping too much money," as in, if Hibbs can force you to come in every week, you're more likely to impulse buy that cool new action figure, or t-shirt, or statue, along with picking up your absurdly overpriced stack o' floppies. This is the same business model that supermarkets use, of course; the hope that you'll over-visit and over-spend. It's not illegal, but smart shoppers know the tricks and avoid them whenever possible. "I don't want to be that kind of customer any more." Damn right, Johanna.
* Then there's, as I titled the post, "What Hibbs isn't saying." Johanna absolutely nails it at the end of her post, figuring out the ultimate motive underlying Hibbs's, and by extension the direct market's, insistence that publishers and readers take all the risk while comic shops lay back and count the cash at the end of every Wednesday. To learn what Hibbs isn't saying, click over to Comics Worth Reading and read Johanna's entire post. It's all you need to know about the refusal of comic shops to evolve into the 21st century and embrace graphic novels as the comics the world wants now.
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