Comics Are Not Only About Superheroes By Zoe Nguyen
During the pandemic, people have been required to stay at home and begin to look for new hobbies or interests. During this time, reading had become popular in many households. Some people are not really interested in reading a novel full of words, so comics are a great choice for both adults and kids. To understand more about comics and have some information to start reading a comic book, let’s meet Brahm Wiseman – an owner of Heroes Comics based in London, ON. You can find his store on Facebook, Instagram, and the website to buy the comics book or series you want.
How long have you been in business?
“I have been in this store for 22 years this May, and I worked for a few years here before our store opened in 1991 which is 31 years, but I've only owned it for 22 years.”
What brought you to comics? Do you have any favorite comic characters or series?
“Comic is a medium that spoke to me more than any other so in my opinion, comic books are the best medium to deliver stories fiction or non-fiction. I like reading comic books more than I like reading books, watching movies, or watching television. It shows to me that's what I connected the most with and I always felt like they're kind of an underdog medium were not as popular or as big as those are. Because of that, I always really wanted to promote the fact that comics were a great medium. Most people stereotype comics as for kids or they're just superheroes and just sort of sci-fi, fantasy, geeky stuff because that's one element of it. Some of what's popular in it but it's also popular in movies and TV as well but you can have the full range of all runners in comic books and when done well, it can really be the most effective sort of storytelling medium out there.
My favorite comic series is MAD Magazine. Most people expect a superhero comic or that but I'm not really the biggest fan of superheroes and I want to pursue more about comics themselves. MAD is kind of encompasses all the greatest creators. It's funny, satirical, and smart. It has longevity so it's sort of one of my favorite comics of all time.”
Which company have you seen have the most sales in comics? Has there been an increased interest in comics since superhero movies started to become popular?
“There are kind of different ways that comics are sold. There are comic bookstores and bookstores then there's online and digital and all that sort of thing. Comic bookstores gain more toward of comics fans, superhero comics, and other genres of comics so that being said usually the top to sellers are Marvel then followed by DC Comics - the two big superhero publishers but in reality, the best-selling comics are children's comics like “Smile/Sisters” and “Dogman”. Those comics outsell any sort of Batman or Spiderman comics and tend to be one the biggest sellers out there. Young readers and kid comics are probably the biggest things and there are a lot of sorts of literary comics themselves in the bookstore market too so we do take advantage of all of that.
Superhero movies increase a very slight bit of the sales of superheroes comics. Comics are still in a very neat medium so even though millions and millions of people go see the new Marvel or DC movies, it really has not translated into readers where we do see it translated to readers a lot more than the original property. They've developed in Hollywood into a TV show or movies so some great successes over the years were like The Walking Dead or The Umbrella Academy. There's always new series of contenders because the only source material is comic books. We do see an increase in readership a large one if a show where a movie is successful but when it's just another Spiderman movie or even some spinoff on like Eternal's, it will bump few sales, get a few people curious about the characters if they've never read them before but for the most part, they already knew that they got those things came from comics. They can get that material through comics, television, cartoons, video games, or everything else so that it doesn't translate a lot into sales.”
What makes a comic book or series valuable?
“It will depend on supply and demand. Generally, what creates a demand on a rare comic book is when they introduce a new character when it has a specific event that happens which is very memorable or it just has beautiful art or a beautiful cover and it's one that everybody started talking about. So obviously the first appearance of Superman, Spiderman would all be huge but they go back quite anyway. New characters will become popular over the years like Harley Quinn or Deadpool, so their first appearances became quite valuable and that comes down to supply. It will base on how many of those were published. If only 10,000 copies of that book were published will be quite valuable, if 500,000 digits will still be valuable but we might have enough supply to keep up with the demand so we can't charge as much obviously and then on top of that condition. When it comes to older comics which most of them are slightly rough condition, wasn’t kept that well or it got pretty beat up so to find one in really great condition and the high grade is quite hard. It can be rare, and nobody cares but it's not gonna worth anything; however, it's rare and a bunch of people wants it then it'll be worth something.”
What comic series never goes out of style?
“The back issues that we can never keep enough up so, like bins full of comics that we keep, we never can have enough Spiderman, specifically Amazing Spiderman. Batman and Wonder Woman always sounds great in this hard to keep in stock again those are just superhero once Walking Dead series are always good too.”
Thank you Brahm again for spending time to share about comics. Make sure you have a chance to come to Heroes Comics Facebook page, Instagram, and website to get an update every week for new comics coming so you can have one on your reading list!
