Award-winning business journalist Dan Gearino leads a tour through the world of comic shops, telling the story of the direct market from its 1970s origins to today. Includes profiles of forty notable shops in the U.S. and Canada, and a close look at The Laughing Ogre in Columbus.

The modern comic book shop was born in the early 1970s. Its rise was due in large part to Phil Seuling, the entrepreneur whose direct market model allowed shops to get comics straight from the publishers. Stores could then better customize their offerings and independent publishers could access national distribution. Shops opened up a space for quirky ideas to gain an audience and helped transform small-press series, from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Bone, into media giants.
Comic Shop is the first book to trace the history of these cultural icons. Dan Gearino brings us from their origins to the present-day, when the rise of digital platforms and a changing retail landscape have the industry at a crossroads. When the book was first published in 2017, Gearino had spent a year with stores around the country, following how they navigated the business. For this updated and expanded paperback edition, he covers the wild retail landscape of 2017 and 2018, a time that was brutal for stores and rich for comics as an art form.
Along the way he interviews pioneers of comics retailing and other important players, including many women; top creators; and those who continue to push the business in new directions. A revised guide to dozens of the most interesting shops around the United States and Canada is a bonus for fans.

"“Dan Gearino offers a more compelling and complex place for the comic shop in popular culture by demonstrating how entrepreneurs and distribution channels have reshaped that commercial space over the last 50 years.…Gender issues feature heavily in the text, and this offers scholars…a point of consideration lacking from many other outlets.…Above all, this work personalizes the comic shop as a collection of people who, through emotion and personal desire, embrace an evolving and unstable place in the commercial world of pop culture.”" - PopMatters

"“[Gearino] has clearly done his homework.…Comic Shop is an essential read for anyone interested in the mechanics and money of the comic industry, but I was most amazed to learn that, beyond Carol Kalish, there was another woman behind the formation of the direct market. That’s not a story that’s often been told.”" - Comics Worth Reading

"“Gearino pulls back the curtain on the seldom-seen end of the business encompassing sales, distribution and retail.… Drawing from original documents and firsthand interviews with key participants, [he] gives the retail and distribution side of the industry an account as dramatic and lively as Sean Howe did for the creative side in his 2012 book on Marvel Comics.… The result is a readable, well-researched account that fills a gap in existing comics literature and provides a great reference for future work.”" - ICv2

"“Gearino…effortlessly navigates the byzantine business lore of comic-distribution companies.…The author still takes delicate care with their stories, weaving tales of complex heroes and villains with stories directly from the people who lived through the uncertainty and chaos in the industry.…It is spectacular how often Gearino makes these small stories of heartbreak and triumph feel herculean in scope.…Comic Shop lives in the beautiful struggle to survive and exist.”" - Columbus Dispatch

"“The fickle, frustrating and sometimes joyful travails of owning a comic book store are detailed in a new book by native Iowan Dan Gearino. [Comic Shop] traces the history of selling comic books from their inception on newsstands in grocery stores, pharmacies and gas stations to the rise of specialty stores.”" - Des Moines Register