Considering all the reports we’ve seen in recent months about an uptick in comic book orders compared with previous years, it’s worth wondering how retailers feel about the industry these days. After all, they are the ones who get to see whether things are actually selling or not… Thankfully, ICv2 has asked them:
Comic retailers were cautiously ecstatic about sales at the end of Summer 2012, after 12 consecutive months of growth for periodical comics, according to a recently released report in ICv2’s Internal Correspondence #80. The caution comes from having seen both high and low points across recent decades, but the “return to floppies,” as Things from Another World’s Andrew McIntire described it, has reassured comic retailers that their core business has a future despite the growth of graphic novels and the more recent surge in sales of digital comics.
The caution apparently comes from those with long memories who recall the busts that traditionally follow the booms, thankfully. Even though publishers seem to be pushing us back towards the 1990s with the amount of variant covers we’re seeing, it’s nice to see that retailers aren’t exactly chomping at the bit to follow suit.
