It’s Free Comic Book Day, and readers around the world are lining up at comic shops for various marketing and promotional material coming from Marvel, DC Comics, and others. For the most part, it marks a great day for comic book stores and the comic industry, but this year there’s a sour note, as Flying Colors, the flagship store that started #FCBD is going to be gone by this time next year.
Joe Field, the purveyor of Flying Colors, announced that the shop lost its lease in late 2023. The shopping center that’s hosted the comic book store for decades decided to lease the space to some other company, in a move no doubt precipitated by a fear of what the future holds for the comic industry.
Over the last couple of years, warning signs have hit. Sales have declined after COVID-19 shut down stores, people got out of the habit of going to shops, and when Marvel and DC Comics had their customers back, they increasingly pushed woke replacement characters on their fans rather than producing quality content.
If you look around comic shelves these days, it’s hard to recognize the great art form of years past unless you’re already an aficionado of independent comic books. Marvel and DC Comics have gutted their brands with endless variations of characters.
At Marvel, the company has a Nightcrawler Spider-Man book and a black Spider-Man in Miles Morales, among others. And they don’t just stop there. Every character seems to be pushing extra unselling books with these knockoffs. Even in Daredevil, there’s a second confusing Daredevil book being launched that really stars Elektra in the costume.
It doesn’t get better in DC Comics, which YouTube commentator Richard C. Meyer calls the comic equivalent of a gay bar. It seems like DC Comics has turned every character into some sort of #pridemonth display, but it happens year-round. Fans were very upset last year when they depicted Alan Scott Green Lantern trolling docks for gay hookers, followed by The Spectre lecturing readers on how no one could judge him.
Sales have been in decline. A recent comic shop, Cosmic Comics, posted that its 2023 sales were terrible. Instead of bouncing back in 2024, it has faced even worse sales thus far, forcing the long-time comic shop to close.
RELATED: Another Comic Shop Cosmic Comics Closes As the Comic Industry Spirals
Now, Flying Colors, the store that started Free Comic Book Day, might not last another year, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
“This year’s FCBD at Flying Colors will be the final one in the shop where the international pop culture event was founded,” Joe Field, the purveyor of the store says. “When our last lease expired, our landlord would only give us three years and gave no option to renew. That lease expires in January 2025, and I tried to get an extension but was told the owners of this center really wanted to put in a bagel shop. I can’t tell you how many sleepless nights this has given me and my wife, Libby, the co-owner of Flying Colors.”
This sad news puts a sour taste on this #FCBD. One wonders how many more might be left for the comic industry at all.
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Pretty soon all those comics will be free anyway, because nobody wants to buy them and they’ll all be in a rubbish bin. Help yourself! lol
This is a blatant lie, they’re moving, not closing
Wow, what a bigoted take on why comics aren’t selling like they used to. You may have drawn a correlation between what you’re calling “woke” comic book characters and the falling sales of comic books, but that does not prove it’s the causation. There are plenty of reasons for that – digital sales, competing entertainment mediums, etc. All of these may be hurting the sale of printed comic books.
You’re obviously a right-wing Trumper who hates all things LGBTQIA+ and you even seem to have a problem with a black Spider-man existing. The point of these comics is to represent the various walks of life that exist in the world. Representation for under-served, disenfranchised groups, is extremely important for society and the comic industry, along with thousands of other industries, have figured that out. It’s not about being “woke”, it’s about doing what’s right.
You’re the problem with the comic book industry – you’re toxic. Maybe rethink your life.