Repaying a Debt

There are some people who will always have a home on the shelves at Dr. No's Comics & Games SuperStore. These are creators who play such an integral role in transformingcomics into an art form that I feel like our store is a better place just because they're on the shelves here. 

Jack Kirby—the man whose creative vision and artistry made the Marvel Age possible. Steve Ditko—without him, there's be no Spider-Man as we know him. Carmine Infantino—the artistic stylist who brought the Flash, Adam Strange, and the New Look Batman to life on the printed page. Joe Kubert—no one conveyed the gritty reality of war better than he. Carl Barks—the best of all the Duck artists, he's the man who gave us Uncle Scrooge. Gil Kane—a master cartoonist who could create drama on the page at Marvel, DC, Tower, and in his own projects like Blackmark and His Name Is... Savage. And the list goes on... Wally Wood... Curt Swan... Barry Windsor-Smith... Bob Bolling... Wayne Boring... Russ Heath... Frank Frazetta... Murphy Anderson... Neal Adams... Al Williamson...Bernie Wrightson... Alex Toth... Jim Steranko... Don Rosa... Michael Wm Kaluta... Jerry Ordway... John Buscema... Gene Colan...Gardmer Fox... Roy Thomas... Dennis O'Neil... John Broome... Charles Schulz... Vaugn Bode... 

Undoubtedly, a comic shop is a business that has to make a profit. For that reason, we spend a lot of time analyzing demand, sales velocity, trend projections, etc. In general, if a book takes more than six months turn a copy, my managers and I discuss it before we reorder another copy. If a book takes more than a year, our default position is "don't reorder."  With thousands of collected editions in stock, we have to consider space as well; we try to carry as much as possible, but you can't devote shelf space to a one-every-year sales item if you need to space for a one-every-month sales item. 

But these creators—well, without them, there wouldn't be a Dr. No's Comics & Games SuperStore. I got into comics through the work of Swan, Boring, and Bolling (who illustrated two of the first four comics that my parents bought for me). My imagination flourished through
the work of Kirby, Ditko, Barks, Kubert, Heath, Kane, and Anderson. I saw comics go in an all-new direction thanks to the artistic innovations of Windsor-Smith, Steranko, Wrightson, and Adams.  I discovered the fiction Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard thanks to the stunning work of Frazetta. And because of them, I fell in love with comics and SF and fantasy, and that love led me to the world of fanzines, then into the realm of comics retailing.

So these people are just some of the creators who get an All-Access Pass to Dr. No's. They're the ones who'll be on our shelves as long as there is a Dr. No's. I owe them a debt I can never repay—but I can take one small step in that direction by keeping their memory alive, by introducing new readers to their incredible body of work, and by allowing old readers to re-experience the creativity that got so many of us hooked to begin with. It makes us a better comic shop—and in fact, I'm not sure if we could call ourselves a full-line comic shop if we didn't include the works of these masterful creators.

It doesn't matter how tight those bookshelves are—when it come to these guys, if it's in print, we'll make it fit.