FSU News wrote about Fallout Comics, which seems to be the only specialty store left in Tallahassee, which once had a few more:
Once a vibrant hub for collectors and casual readers, the Tallahassee comic book scene now struggles to keep pages turning.
Staple comic book stores such as Geeks Closet and Cosmic Cat Comics have closed over the last year, leaving avid readers and fans devastated.
While many comic book stores in Tallahassee have closed, one still stands tall: Fallout Comics. Renowned for its expansive 10,000-square-foot space, it stands as one of the largest comic book stores in the state.
Fallout Comics has a constant 20% off sale on all merchandise. For patrons, this is an amazing deal — but for the comic book scene in Tallahassee, this highlights a deeper issue: the struggle to keep foot traffic flowing.
Discount prices are certainly a great way to encourage buying, but if they’re selling the worst of DC/Marvel from the past 20 years, that may not be worth paying even an 80 percent discount for. It’s the independents, to be sure, that’re likely to have something worthwhile (though not if it’s IDW we’re talking about). As for DC/Marvel, yes, they come up here, along with the film industry:
Big-box competitors like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, as well as the rapidly expanding superhero movie industry, are the biggest threats for businesses like Fallout Comics.
“Digital technology has changed the way we read,” Tommy Cowan, a Ph.D. student and English teaching assistant at FSU said. “Humanity has put down the book, the paper and the brochure and rediscovered the scroll through computer screens.”
Production companies like Marvel and DC make accessing superhero stories easy. They provide a convenient alternative to visiting a comic store, which leads to less commercial support for businesses like Fallout Comics.
“The movies now are where a lot of people are exposed to these sorts of characters,” Ross Moret, professor of the “Ethics and Superheroes” honors signature course at FSU said. “But they still get most of their source material from comics.”
In the past quarter century, yes, it could be said that people were going to comics movies, but now, if we take Marvel’s as the prime example, their fortunes are receding as a result of their shift to PC, and it’s taken a toll they may not recover from. DC’s have almost entirely collapsed too in the past 6 years. So why are we being told the superhero film industry’s “expanding”? No longer, I would think. If anybody gets their source material from comics now, let’s hope it’s the tasteful independents.
“People need to go back to having material items that they can sit and read and not have everything be so digital,” FSU student Diana Chirila said. “Comics let people sit and enjoy the media without so many distractions.”
In an era dominated by movie remakes, many blockbusters have introduced wider audiences to comic book inspired stories. However, these adaptations often fall short of the creativity needed to immerse audiences into the nuances of the original work.
“I think that comics that are well-written can definitely compete with movies and other mediums,” FSU student Justin Robert said. “Because people care more about the story than the mediums […] comics offer a good alternative. ‘Invincible’ proved that point, a lot of people watched the show and then started reading the book.”
But Invincible is a creator-owned comic, published by Image Comics. It can be assumed that creator-owned comics adapted to screen aren’t as affected as adaptations of Marvel/DC. A good point is made that physical copies of comics are far better than digital. But even that needs to see improvement in the sense the publishers have to stop being so utterly reliant on monthly pamphlets as the format, and change to paperback/hardcover.
Comic books offer endless possibilities for meaningful community that movies can’t compete with.
Certainly not live action, and if anybody today argues there’s live action movies and TV shows that haven’t aged well as a result, it’s a reasonable opinion. This is also why animation should be considered as a potential platform for science fantasy going forward, and filmmakers shouldn’t be held hostage by the notion it all has to remain kid-friendly. If anything, USA animators have to prove they can market and encourage a local audience in the same way Japan did across the Atlantic.
At the end:
“For many decades, comics were considered ‘low art’ and this meant that they were either ignored by critics and scholars, or they were analyzed as part of the ‘culture industry,’” Cowan said. “FSU should have an official degree program for making graphic novels.”
Well not if it’s a leftist establishment. What if they refused to welcome conservatives to contribute to their program? Some sage advice is not to politicize the medium, or to monopolize it. The only reason certain segments believe comicdom’s worth its weight in gold today is as a leftist political tool, not a merit-based storytelling platform. Comics in the past were employed for making statements, but it wasn’t for the reasons some leftists today see it as useful for. Mainstream corporate-owned comics certainly shouldn’t be exploited for the wokery that’s stifled comics today, one more reason why DC/Marvel would be better off closed down, or bought out by a business with more common sense.
Good luck to Fallout Comics. They’ll need it.
Originally published here.
English (US) · 