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Old 02-08-2018, 12:23 PM
  #95
The Crow
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Quote:
Originally Posted by The Apt (View Post)
Do you think it's cheaper overall to buy comics online versus a comic shop? I have comic shops around me, even a few within a 10-mile radius. I would love to go to one and browse but have feeling the approachable issue will bite me... salesperson talking like crazy and I end up purchasing comics at a bloated price when I could have gotten them cheaper elsewhere, lol.
Well, I haven't been in a comic shop yet that had a chatty/pushy salesperson. They always ask if I need any help, and then just let me browse at my leisure.

Going to a comic shop is a good way to get a look at what's out there, and it's a good way to get a feel for the comics themselves. Lots of people fall into the trap of expecting the cover to be indicative of the level of art inside, and that's not usually the case, especially with indie comics. It's not that big an issue for me overall, but truly terrible interiors can detract from the story for me, especially if the creators sprung for some big name cover artist to pull people in.

Cost wise, it depends on the shop if you end up paying more or less. Some shops have pull lists for individual customers, and those can vary from them just pulling issues of comics that you are interested in so you can purchase them whenever you make into the shop, or they can be stuff that is ordered specifically for you. My shop that I go to when I can offers a discount on the second kind of list, but charges cover price for the first. Lots of online retailers are the same. You can look through Previews and pre-order stuff at a discount, or you can just 'subscribe' to certain issues and they'll send them to you. Of course, in the end, the discount you can receive from online retailers usually gets at least partially absorbed by shipping charges. Some of the bigger ones offer free shipping once a certain dollar amount is reached, but not all do. Some of them charge extra for bags and boards as well, but then again most comics shops do too.

Personally, I like pre-ordering them, because then I am done. I don't have to do anything but sit back and wait for the comics to arrive. One downside of pre-ordering is that the items you are pre-ordering aren't going to hit the shelves for around three months. Also, if a book has multiple covers, you don't always know what all of them look like. Often, a book will ship with a bunch of different ones, but only one or two are available to look at.
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