I recently spoke to Greg Bennett about gift ideas for the coming holiday season. He’s one of the owners of big Planet Comics, with locations in Bethesda, MD, Washington,DC, College Park, MD and Vienna, VA. He’s been a retailer since 1986 and has been on the steering committee of SPX (Small Press Expo) since its early days in 1996. When I asked Greg about this holiday season and comics retailing in general, he said, “..better than last year, and last year was the best year since the advent of internet shopping. Local shopping seems to have become a thing down here. Not complaining!”
Greg offered some of his best sellers. For kids, there’s Luke Pearson’s Hilda hard cover from Now Brow Publishing. And Adventure Time: Sugary Shorts hard cover by Paul Pope published by Boom. Then he hipped me to this beauty — if Santa brought me the artist’s edition of Conan Red Nails by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor Smith, I’d be full of comfort and joy. Reproductions of each original page is a good argument to never print a comic book in color ever again. A surprise from Greg Bennett’s list was Super Graphics: A Visual Guide to the Comic Book Universe by Tim Leong. In paperback from Chronicle Books. Who knew info graphics could be so funny and well… graphic?
The latest collection of Fairest in hard cover is also a good seller.
We’ll have more from Greg Bennett in part 2.