I thought this was pretty cool. Earlier in June, the Joe Shuster Award Harry Kremer Award for Outstanding Comic Book Retailer was awarded during the Paradise Comics Comicon in Toronto. The store I regularly shop at, Happy Harbor Comics, was this year’s winner. I was able to talk to Happy Harbor comics owner, Jay Bardyla about his win, his community work, and the local comics scene in Edmonton, Alberta.

First of all, congratulations on winning the Joe Shuster Harry Kremer award for outstanding retailer.

Thank you very much. It was a huge honour to be nominated by our customers and, of course, an even bigger honour to be presented with the award, not an easy task considering the number of nominees and the quality of many of the stores out there.

Your store is new to the Edmonton area (opened within the past few years). What made you decide to move to Edmonton? And has the success and popularity of the store in such little time surprised you?

We moved the store from Jasper, Alberta, which had been open since 2000, because we wanted to do more with the business. To do many of those things we needed to be in a larger population base and since we had a large number of customers from Edmonton that we were dealing with remotely, it made sense to come to them and open a store with a “built-in” customer base.

As far as our popularity goes, I won’t say I’m terribly surprised as we tried very hard to create a non-typical store. From location to colour scheme and layout, we’ve put a lot of effort into making the store comfortable to everyone. Further, we never hesitate on trying anything that we think may entertain, educate or bring our customers together into a solid comics community.

Does Edmonton seem open to comics as a mainstream form of entertainment or is there still a lot of the negative stigmatism associated with the industry?

I wouldn’t say it’s negative but it’s certainly not as enthusiastic as it could be. The media hasn’t latched onto it as often as it could but there are a few journalists out there who have been very generous with giving our events some promotion. And the local television stations have been picking up on things more and more. I find it a little amusing, personally, because they approach it with this wide-eyed wonder when they discover that there are comics more than 50 years old with a rich history and that not all geeks are stereotypical “geeks”. Of course, we’ve known this for years.

When you first learned you were nominated, what emotions were you going through? And when you heard you won, how did it feel to be up there on the podium accepting your award?

When we were contacted about the nomination, I was thrilled. That meant our customers took the time to write to the Shuster Committee and say, “Happy Habror deserves this award.” In the end, that is all that really matters because it’s your customers you try to right by, not a committee.

When we found out we won, honestly, it was tough to hold it together and I let a few man tears flow. Probably more shocking were the people that came up to us afterwards to congratulate us and tell us what a wonderful job we were doing and how cool our store was. These were the people who reviewed our acceptance package and visited us on our website. That was very flattering and again, a vote of confidence that the things we are doing are right, affecting even those who don’t live right in the area.

In your acceptance speech, you talked about being involved with the community. What has Happy Harbor done to foster enthusiasm in comics? Is there anything to expect in the near future?

Well, there are two main areas we wanted to build on; one was giving back to the community through fundraising and the second was giving people the opportunity to tell their stories.

To accomplish the first, we used Nat Getler and Scott McCloud’s 24 Hr Comics Day as a chance to capture some publicity and raise money for the Alberta Literacy Foundation. We’ve hosted that annual event twice since 2005 and collected more than $3000 for the charitable organization. We then trimmed down the event and created a 12 Hr fundraiser for Big Brothers Big Sisters so we have events twice a year now.

We also collect food for the Edmonton Food Bank through movie nights and on Free Comic Book Day and we regularly donate items to charity auctions throughout the city; everything from Breast Cancer events to Meals on Wheels.

As for building the creator community, we have created a few venues for people to have the opportunity to make comics, learn to make comics and to have comics published. Twice a month we host a “Comic Jam” which is improv comics making, we have offered comic making classes for kids and adults taught by qualified people and we have a semi-annual anthology book called “Tales from the Harbor” which is a free of charge, open submission book. It allows people the chance to tell their stories and get the experience of working under deadlines with some editorial guidance.

Another beast we helped create to bring the community closer together is a forum called CanadianGeek.org where people can post art, prose, reviews, talk about music, wrestling, web videos, cosplay; just about anything. We helped get it going with Brian Guay and Kevin Sole who work in a self-publishing company called Out of Mind Studios. It’s been a lot of fun and an effective way for geeks to connect with each other.

Most importantly, we work closely with a lot of different schools to not only help them build their libraries by providing excellent reading material affordably but also by visiting them and speaking with kids about comics, how they’re made and the jobs within the industry. Usually I will go to a school with 2 or 3 local artists and speak to the class while the artists draw. We tailor each trip to the appropriate grade level and it’s free of charge (which schools seem to really like). We get the kids drawing and it’s a lot of fun.

As for what’s to come, there’s plenty of things we want to try but until we get a better grip on how to put them together, I don’t want to say anything. We are still working very hard to get the things were doing now right.

What events has your store run? How do industry-wide events like Free Comic Book Day or 24-hour Comic Day affect the store?

They affect it in a big way since I insist we take part in them. As I mentioned, we use the 24 Hr Comics Day as tool to give back to the community and Free Comic Book Day is always our biggest day of the year. We go all out to make sure it is the celebration it’s intended to be. Aside form the obvious free comics we give away, we raffle off signed books, posters and other items (like in 2006 we gave away a 12-day vacation package to the San Diego Comic Con), we have several artists doing sketches for donations to the Food Bank, we have a BBQ, we have people in costumes and we have bigger and better plans for next year. Every year has to be bigger than the last, in my eyes.

Other events I touched on (art classes, jams, etc.) go along with our various gaming nights (Heroclix, Horrorclix, Cheapass Games, D&D), movie nights and other events we create that stem from some of these. For example, when we publish a book, either “Tales” or when we publish the results from the 12 or 24 Hr comic fundraisers, we have a book launch party or when a customer has a product that comes through the store, we’ll arrange a signing, that sort of thing.

We’re the only store in Edmonton to bring in industry pros for a signing, like Gail Simone and Omar Dogan which is difficult to do considering our remote location and lack of access to creators. We also host a series of panel discussions called “Comic Talks” that focus on various aspects of the comics world. We bring in speakers for web comics, indie comics and more and host the event as part of the Pure Speculation Festival in October.

We also purchase sections of tables at local pop culture and comic shows and give table space free to local creators. We sponsor a local wrestling federation where we are working on having sketch artists on site during shows to do drawings for people. Essentially, we take any opportunity to promote comics and encourage the creative spirit.

You promote local talent. How do you help creators get known? What are some works by your customers?

Quite often when a customer or local creator is involved in a bigger project, we’ll offer a special incentive to our customers like buy 2 copies and get an extra discount or we might make the book returnable. We’ll also make sure to order lots of extra copies and give it special space in the store.

Our most successful promotions have helped Andrew Foley’s book “Parting Ways” in 2005 and his collaborative work with Fiona Staples called “Done to Death” last summer. Our customers are very responsive to these things so much that HH accounted for more than 10% of the total sales of Parting Ways! With “Done to Death” we created something called the Happy Harbor Pleasurtee, where if you weren’t pleased with the book you could return it for a full refund. (nothing came back).

Other books by some of our clientele are colourist Dean Welsh’s “Half Dead” which came out through Marvel’s Dable Bros. imprint and in the future there will be some work coming from writer Robert Richardson.

We even try our best to promote the small, savvy guys who set up great promos on the web and send us links through emails. It’s very easy for me to forward on the link or even incorporate it into a contest of sorts. Often we get movie passes so for people to get them, they may have to visit a link, check out a preview and answer a question to get the passes. Often it helps sell a few more copies and that’s the point. If they took the time to create a promotional tool (and so few do) then the least I could do is use it.

For the local, indie guys, we have a section in the store dedicated to local talent and it ain’t buried in the corner. We also give these people, like Bob Prodor, Chris Peterson and Vicious Ambitious, various opportunities for public exposure by inviting them as our guest artists on Free Comic Book Day and giving them table space at local shows.

And you are also an independent publisher. What made you decide to get into that? What books are available?

“Tales from the Harbor” was a slow building idea and I was afraid it wouldn’t work since I’ve had trouble in the past trying to coordinate people for events and projects. There were a few anthologies around Alberta that selected content and charged for submitting (which is perfectly fine) but I wanted to offer something to the true beginner, to give them a chance to create within a schedule, have their work edited by others and finally to have it seen in a finished volume of work. Currently there are 2 volumes of “TotH” and we plan to continue to publishing twice a year for as long as we can. The first book was about 280 pages and the second was 340 and we couldn’t publish all the material we had. Clearly there’s no lack of interest so we should be good for a while.

Our first books were based on the works from our charity events so there are 2 “12 Hr Comic Challenge” books and 2 “24 Hour Comics Day” books, a portion of the proceeds from each continue to go to their respective charities.

We also published a “Comic Talks” books after our 2005 sessions and are currently working a book based on the 2006 shows. And finally, one of our staff members has begun to produce an all-women’s charity anthology in support of La Salle, a long term women’s shelter based in Edmonton. We have gotten some strong support and feedback for the book so we are hoping to have it published by the end of the year.

All of our books are available on our website and we are currently looking at having them distributed locally to the usual places (book shops) and non-traditional venues (indie record stores) and hopefully we can get them into the broader market in the future. Sadly it’s next to impossible to get our books into other comic stores so we have think outside the box with distribution.

I have to say that none of these books would be possible without the exceptional talents of Stephen Dafoe. He designs all of our books and preps them for printing and I can never thank him enough for the time and effort he has put into them.

As a regular shopper, the biggest draws for me is the customer service. You credit your staff for much of your success. Care to say a few words about them?

Not really. I’d prefer to say more than few!

A comic shop requires personality to keep people engaged and returning and we’ve been very fortunate to have a wonderfully diverse group of people wanting to be part of our team.

Without Shawna, our independent and art book sections would not have flourished as they have. Without Andrew, we’d lack a professional’s perspective on all the titles. Without Rudi, we wouldn’t have someone who loves anime and who’s a skilled artist. Without Chelsea, we’d lack that youthful passion for the industry. Without Bryan, we’d be missing another uber-fan to compliment myself at our new store. And our newest addition, Aaron, brings some excellent skills and appreciation to the hobby that no store should be without.

Everyone has a purpose at Happy Harbor. Everyone has to read Previews cover to cover. Everyone has to do their best to make our customers as happy and enthusiastic about comics as we are. Thankfully, they all perform their jobs well and I’m very fortunate to be surrounded by them.

Thanks very much for your time and good luck with everything in the future. Have a great Canada Day!

Happy Harbor Comics
10112 - 124 Street
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T5N 1P6
Phone / fax: (780) 452-8211
Email: hhcomics@incentre.net

Happy Harbor Comics Volume Two
180 Manning Crossing
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T5A 1A5
Phone: (780) 478-8211
Email: hhv2@happyharborcomics.com

www.happyharborcomics.com

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 1st, 2007 at 4:58 pm and is filed under Comic Books, Creators, Independent, Interviews, Marvel, News & Views, Retailers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.