The clock that ticked off the minutes from Wednesday to Wednesday—the pulse of new comic day—was stopped by COVID-19. Now that it’s ready to tick again, the clock can be reset to…really, any day. So the question becomes: What’s the best day for new comic releases?
The clock is already off-kilter. “Traditional” Wednesday (it used to be Friday, kinda-sorta, then replaced by TWO ship days a week; more below!) is at least partially shifting into Tuesday as DC Comics revamps its on-sale date. Marvel Comics seems steadfastly committed to Wednesdays, and we’ll wait to see where other publishers fall. So in a perfect world…
“Tuesday will not be supplanting Wednesday,” said Joe Field, owner of Flying Colors Comics in Concord, CA. “Wednesday is still definitively new comic book day. Retailers will still be receiving the bulk of our new comic releases on Tuesday for Wednesday release, even those retailers that are buying from Midtown and DCBS.”
And that receive-it today to sell-it tomorrow is critically important.
“What matters to me most is that we still get the product at least a day early to be able to check it in and pull subscriber books,” said Patrick Brower, co-owner of the two Challengers Comics stores in Chicago. An important factor largely invisible to readers but crucial to stores: Many holidays fall on a Monday. If product typically arrives on Monday for a Tuesday release, and a Monday holiday pushes that delivery date back, stores lose 24 hours of prep time and are faced with chaos.
Brower’s preference? “I’d want to keep it on Wednesdays,” he said. “Getting new product on Wednesdays helps keep sales flowing on Thursday and Friday, and then they ramp up on Saturday and Sunday. I’m concerned that starting the sales week on a Tuesday would lessen the momentum to the weekend. You would think the same amount of money would still come in over the 7-day period, just on different days, but honestly, I’m not so sure.”
No one’s sure. “New comic book day” used to be Friday (or maybe Thursday; it’s confusing!) until the ’90s with the conventional wisdom being that Friday was payday and a little more of a party atmosphere. It’s easier to get people to spend a buck when they just got a buck, and are in the mood to kick back at the end of a long work week.
John Robinson is the co-owner of Graham Crackers Comics, a sprawling chain of 10 stores in Illinois, one in Wisconsin, and one in California. He’s been in the game since the ’80s, and even recalls the two release days a week.
“Right now, I’m for keeping it at Wednesday, since customers are used to it,” he said. “And I haven’t heard that Diamond would be switching, so who cares if I got a handful of books a day earlier?”
Still Robinson knows the choice is largely out of his hands.
“If Diamond switches to Tuesday, then I’ll officially switch as well,” he said. “I recall retailers being upset when it got pushed to Wednesday back in the day. Bottom line, we’ll adapt. Just keep it off of Monday. That would be crazy stressful.”
And the split Tuesday/Wednesday is already generating a fair amount of controversy.
“DC’s shift to Tuesday by themselves is destructive and divisive to the whole market,” said Carr D’Angelo, owner of Los Angeles’ two Earth-2 Comics stores. “If new comic day was to change, it should not be the decision of any single member of the supply chain, be they distributor, publisher or retailer. New comic Wednesdays have been a standard for a very long time.”
D’Angelo’s sentiments are largely echoed by Joe Field.
“This was done to make it the AT&T-WB-DC release day across various platforms and media,” Field said. “Related to comics, this was done to give bookstores and digital supposed parity with comic shop releases. All it will do is cause more confusion in all sales channels. Wednesday is established, and has been for more than 20 years.”
Change is hard, and it remains to be seen if customers will change.
“Wednesday is a special day, one that many of my customers look forward to each week,” said Jen King, owner of Space Cadets Collection in Oak Ridge North, TX. “I suspect that no matter what happens, they will stick to their Wednesday trip to the shop to pick up comics.”
But let’s keep in mind, Sacred Wednesday itself is an artificial construct. A unified release date only came about circa 1996, when distribution was largely consolidated by Diamond. Before that, in the days of multiple distributors such as Diamond, Capital City, Heroes World, Irjax, Sea Gate and more…it was a race to get comics to market from the main printing plant in Sparta, IL.
“The key was that Spartan Printing, later owned by World Color Press, released comics at 12:01 a.m. Thursday,” said Milton Griepp, a co-owner of Capital City Distribution from 1980-1996. “When we started in the early ’80s, we’d have third-party carriers truck the stuff to wherever it was going, and it would usually get there maybe after the weekend, Monday or Tuesday, depending on distance.”
But other distributors started putting warehouses in Sparta and the race was on. Cap City opened a warehouse in Sparta, and could get comics on the street in San Francisco and Los Angeles by Thursday afternoon—less than 24 hours to key cities, and Friday for most of the rest of the USA.
Ronalds Printing became a player in the comic printing world circa 1992-93, and would release on Tuesdays, leading to the twice-a-week in-store days.
“Some stores would wait to ship all at once, but some stores wanted two shipments,” Griepp said. “It was pretty much a race the whole time we were in the game.”
Griepp, who now runs the business website ICv2, sees both sides of the current Tuesday/Wednesday schism. And an important note: Comic stores, buying non-returnable, used to get six days’ jump on the (returnable) book market for paperback and hardcover sales. That jump will now be gone for DC product with a Tuesday release date for that publisher.
“I’m in favor of aligning those book store and comic store days,” Griepp said. “If publishers want to do marketing campaigns, having everything on the same day is helpful. I think comic stores can feel like they’re buying non-returnable, so they should get early release. I get that. Maybe both bookstores and comic stores should have returns.”
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