The Comics Rack

Comic Memories Pt. 5

   I don't quite recall how I returned to Wonderworld Books as an employee. I know that I maintained contact with Richard after my departure in 1980 and I continued to buy my comics there through the trauma of my graduation from college and even during the time I worked retail elsewhere, but it is all rather a blur. My best guess is that I returned as a part-timer in the summer of 1982, since Richard would give me the flexibility I needed to return to school to do some graduate work. In any event, 1982 seems like a good time to start and, in retrospect, it was to a radically changed comic environment.
   Many of the changes to the comic industry have been documented elsewhere and I will cover those changes by simply saying that the comic industry exploded in the early 80s. There were more titles than ever before, more companies than there are today, more people buying comics and, so it seemed, anyone who could come up with a couple of hundred bucks was publishing a comic book that was being carried by the major distributors. Most major cities had multiple comic stores and even smaller towns sported at least one shop. In Long Beach, for example, there were three other comic stores besides Wonderworld Books and, there were another 3 or 4 within 5 or 10 minutes of our downtown location. While the early comic shops had been established by people who knew and loved comics, many of the newer stores were opened by business/entrepeneurial types who understood dollars, but not Batman. Business began to become much more competitive and the biggest change to come out of this competitiveness was the introduction of air freight.
   To understand air freight (or as we called it, "lose money to stay in business"), you need to understand the direct distribution system. Originally, nearly all the comics for the direct market were printed in Sparta, Illinois. The comics were then tied with string into bundles of 50 and packed in boxes that held 6 bundles, or 300 comics (which, I might add, weighed 40 pounds apiece, something my back remembers to this day). These boxes were loaded on trucks either Thursday night or Friday morning and the trucks then made their merry way from Sparta to the various comic distributors. In the LA area (and Pacific Comics), the trucks usually arrived either Monday or Tuesday, the shipment was broken down into the orders for the individual stores and the comics were available for pickup either Tuesday or Wednesday (the reason I'm vague on the day of the week, is that I really don't remember!). The key word here is "usually." The major drawback to shipping the books by truck was weather. Roads would close, trucks would get stuck in the snow, bridges wash out, etc. And, of course, trucks sometime just break down, for no discernable reason. We really couldn't tell from week to week exactly when the comics would be available, but, because of the possible delays, everyone from the distributor to the customer took a bit more relaxed attitude to the comics.
   Now I'm not sure when things began to change, but this competition thing started to get out of hand. First, some of the LA dealers discovered that the comics were arriving by truck in the morning and that the shipment was broken up during the day and that the process was completed by late afternoon. These hard nosed types began to push for the release of the comics as soon as they were ready and not the following morning, which had been the norm. As a result, our pick up time was moved to the afternoon. Next, some of these "faster is better" types found a way that the comics could be shipped on a plane, rather than by truck. This meant that the comics left Sparta on Thursday and arrived (at least in LA) on Thursday night, where the shipment was broken down in the wee hours of the morning and the orders were ready by Friday morning: meaning that the comics were available 5 days earlier than before. This time saving did not come without a cost, however, and in order to get the comics air freighted, each comic dealer had to pay a premium of 1 or 2 cents per comic.
   At first, the air freight idea did give some of the comic dealers an edge. Since the comics were still trucked in, retailers had the choice of using air freight or not, or even of splitting their order between air and truck, so not everyone go their comics at the same time. Eventually, everyone shifted over to air freight in order to keep up with the competition. The toll this took on everyone involved was not pretty. Customers began to expect the comics to be available at the start of business on Friday and were not particularly nice about it (weather and mechanical problems were still a factor in the deliveries). Retailers began to run their stores with a bit more stress, since they had to make their way to the warehouse in the morning hours (the warehouse usually opened around 8 AM) and then get back to the store in time to get all the comics set up for business. The greatest toll, however, was on the warehouse employees themselves. They often arrived at work between 10 and midnight after already putting in a full day. They broke down the comic shipment during the night and then had the dubious pleasure of facing a steady stream of retailers, all of whom were also sleep deprived because they had gotten up early to get their comics. I really don't know how everyone survived this, but it was the standard way of doing business week in and week out for a number of years.