{"id":1483,"date":"2014-08-19T16:45:00","date_gmt":"2014-08-19T23:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comic-con.org\/toucan\/?p=1483"},"modified":"2023-12-18T16:49:25","modified_gmt":"2023-12-19T00:49:25","slug":"devourer-of-words-019-judge-and-jury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comic-con.org\/toucan\/devourer-of-words-019-judge-and-jury\/","title":{"rendered":"Devourer of Words 019: Judge and Jury"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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MARC BERNARDIN’S DEVOURER OF WORDS<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Devourer of Words 019: Judge and Jury<\/h1>\n\n\n
Marc Bernardin<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"Toucan<\/figure><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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I have been going to comic book stores for about as long as I can remember. Good ones, bad ones, ones that smelled of Cheetos and sweat and others that were wall-to-wall with long boxes and pewter figurines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had never really given much thought as to what made a great comic book store since I usually just shopped at the store nearest me and sucked it up. A good comic book store had good comics. Everything else was gravy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this year, I was asked to be a member of the judging panel for the Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award, which is given out during the Eisner Awards ceremony at the San Diego Comic-Con. (Joining me on said panel were [pictured below, left to right] Ross Richie, founder and CEO, BOOM! Studios; Jeromy Cox, color artist; Jason Blanchard, PR manager at Diamond Comics; Patrick Brower, co-owner of last year\u2019s Retailer Award recipient, Challengers Comics & Conversations; and [kneeling] Alex Sinclair, color artist, and myself)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I had to think, hard, on what I thought made a great comic book store something,  as I said, I\u2019d never thought of before.
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The conclusion we all came to was that, ultimately, we wanted to reward the kind of store we could send a comics virgin to and they\u2019d want to go back. It needed to be welcoming and well stocked. It needed to be bright and thoughtfully designed. It needed to have shelf-space as well as depth and variety of material.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it needed to be run by people who loved comics as art and treated their customers as partners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, the only way for the six of us to gauge these things was via five-minute videos, stacks of pictures, and an assembly of facts and figures. And you haven\u2019t lived until you\u2019ve watched 37 different people walk you through their comic book shops; until you\u2019ve seen 37 different cash-wrap areas, shelving solutions, event\/gaming rooms and storefronts that attempted to conjure the feeling of \u201cgeek\u201d while not being alienating to \u201cmuggles.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t say the experience was fun, but it was incredibly informative. I can\u2019t speak to the other judges and what they took away from the day spent in a lost meeting room in the Convention Center, but for me, it was about making the two halves of my nerd whole reconcile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am enough of a nostalgia fan that I was looking for a store that was the Platonic Ideal of the stores I loved as a kid. A little dark, a little mysterious, a little cramped\u2014like you\u2019d be as likely to find a back issue of Mage<\/em> as you would a genie\u2019s lamp. And yet I was also looking for what Ross Richie termed a \u201cfuture facing\u201d store. One that left behind the clich\u00e9 of the \u201cno girls allowed\u201d fortress of broitude that so many stores were\u2014the kind of retailer that actively resisted new customers (and, more importantly, female customers) in favor of keeping it old school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I knew in my heart of hearts that it was possible to synthesize those two seemingly polar opposites into one store. But I was wrong. We found two stores that did it: All Star Comics <\/strong><\/a>in Melbourne, Australia and Legend Comics & Coffee<\/strong><\/a> in Omaha, Nebraska.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve never been to either, but from what we could glean, they\u2019d be great places to spend an afternoon, being a nerd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of the stores that missed the cut, some did because they just weren\u2019t there yet\u2014with a couple of small tweaks (good signage became the watchphrase of the panel) they could take it in a year or two. Others because they tried too hard to be all things to all people (we were looking to reward a comics retailer, not a \u201cbunch of other stuff and, oh yeah, comics\u201d shop). And others still because a good effort is just not enough.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, the passion on display was humbling. Few of us invest quite as much in our love for comics as people who invest everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Marc Bernardin\u2019s Devourer of Words appears the third Tuesday of every month here on<\/em> Toucan!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Written by<\/p>\n\n\n

Marc Bernardin<\/div>\n\n\n

Published<\/p>\n\n\n