Blog

It was surreal getting to sit down and eat at the Cracker Barrel across the street from the Concord store this morning. Now if we could just get Marvel back to shipping new single issues weekly, we’d have ourselves a stew going!

The following titles are scheduled to ship on Wednesday, June 3rd (Tuesday 6.2 for DC books) excluding some re-orders and providing nothing changes by the time the final invoice arrives on Monday:

I never buy myself clothes, but when I saw this shirt while ordering all of those Ahsoka Pops on May the 4th, I had to get it! Babu Frik is my constant source of fulfillment and positivity, and now he can be yours, too, whenever I wear it!

Today’s my first solo shift down in Concord, and despite almost dying in the rain on the way here and looking up to see the opposite wall from the counter, it feels just like home, dog and all!

We’ve all been patient, we’ve made the best of the limited DC new releases that have been available from our alternate distributors, but it’s time to get back to New Comic Book Day, amirite?! Many publishers are throttling their publishing schedules to accommodate stores that are experiencing financial hardship or still unable to open due to stay-at-home orders in their states, but Diamond is back in business and shipping for all publishers except Marvel, who will be restarting on the 27th!

We’re ready to re-open tomorrow, Friday, May 8th at 5 PM!

From that point on, we’ll be observing normal business hours, except that we’ll be opening at 11 AM on Wednesday, May 13th instead of our usual 8 AM because there won’t be another full week of new releases until Wednesday, May 20th.

We’ve got a completely refreshed backwall, new Black Widow and Gamerverse Marvel Legends, the first wave of G.I. Joe Classified, a case of Empire Strikes Back 40th Anniversary retro carded 6” figures, the Black Series 6” scale The Child (Baby Yoda), the deluxe Probot, more than two dozen never-before-seen Funko Pops, a display case full of Star Wars LEGOs, and over 1,000 back issues that we just put out today!

Keeping everyone up to date with the latest, DC is continuing to ship new books to go on sale every Tuesday (and we’ll have all of them available on their release date) via their alternate distribution channels, and Diamond Comic Distributors, the direct market (comic shops)’s exclusive source of Marvel, Image, Dark Horse, IDW, Boom, Dynamite, and until very recently DC, is targeting Wednesday, May 20th for a return to regular, full weekly releases!

Since the current North Carolina Stay-at-Home order is in effect until Friday, May 8th at 5 PM, that’s when we’re planning on opening the store again with all necessary precautions in place, but anything can change at any time with shipping companies, printers, publishers, distributors, and governments, so for now we’ll cross our fingers and continue to use our Shipping Next Week section, ComicHub, eBay, and Amazon to get you what you need!

An update on the state of the store & new releases:

Thanks to so many of you for helping out in any way that you can over the last four weeks! With your support and our renewed focus on eBay and Amazon, we’ve been able to generate a normal month’s worth of revenue to help bridge the gap between the shutdown and incoming small business assistance. It means the world that you’re thinking of us, and we hope you’ve enjoyed the deals you’ve gotten from stock that we hadn’t otherwise gotten a chance to put out in the store.

I wanted to give you a heads up that thanks to DC’s alternative distribution channels, starting next TUESDAY, APRIL 28TH, we’ll have some new releases coming through again.

If you’re in the retail or food & beverage industry, suspended or active, we’d like to do our part in saying “thank you” by offering 20% OFF a graphic novel of your choice to help you while away the time while on the bench or decompress from what has to be a pressure cooker of a work day. Just bring proof of a most current pay stub and we’ll hook you up.

Comic shipments are still on, Concord passed its fire inspection yesterday so we’ll still be having our soft opening on Wednesday, March 25th, Twin City Comic Con is still planned for Sunday, April 19th, and Free Comic Book Day is the first Saturday in May (5.2 this year). If anything on the distribution or governmental level changes any of that, we’ll be sure to let you know, but otherwise it’s business as usual at all three locations.