Let's Talk Shop with Sterling Silver Comics

[00:00:01] Hey Al, how's it hanging? Hi, I'm looking for something that my 13 year old daughter would be interested in. They're really into like lumberjanes and some of the female Marvel superheroes. Do you have anything that you could recommend? Hey, what's up man? It's new comic book day. You know the drill. I'm looking for some new books to read. What's hot on the shelf this week? Hey, I was wondering if you happen to have any Bloomberg pre-cons in stock? Hi, I really like science fiction.

[00:00:30] I'm a big fan of Doctor Who and the television show Lost. Are there any comics you'd recommend? Let's Talk Shop. Hey everyone, this is... Hi Byron. Who is this? I'm your fairy godmother. I have a fairy godmother? Of course you do. I'm 50 years old. Why haven't you shown up before? I appear when I'm needed. And I didn't need you in all these years? Do you want my help or not? Um... sure.

[00:01:00] Exactly. I was just about to pitch our Patreon. Why would I need help with that? Because you're an idiot sometimes. That's hurtful. What were you going to put on there? We do comic stuff? So something along those lines? And this is why I'm here. You do know what people put on Patreon most of the time, right? Honestly, no. People need something a little bit spicy to entice them to support you.

[00:01:29] Nobody wants to see me shirtless. I doubt that's true. You are in pretty good shape considering your age. Thank you. Let's see. A little spicy. I've been bugging Jimmy to figure out what he's going to do. I know lately he's been playing around with his **** all the time. He loves to take it out and show it off. There's even a specific TikTok channel now. How's that sound? Not a bad start. People like Jimmy. What else you got?

[00:01:54] I told a story recently about being in a strip club with some of the four horsemen when I was working for WCW back in the day. I picked up an infection on my- From the experience, I hate strip clubs. Is that better? Getting there? But maybe spicy shouldn't include infections you get in strip clubs. That's not sexy. We'll workshop it. Like I need more meetings. At least tell them where to find it while we figure this out. Mother goddess, help this poor man.

[00:02:22] You can find us on Patreon at cryptidcreatorcornerpod. I'll put it in the show notes. Anything else you'd like to remind me that I'm bad at? How much time do you have? Why do you look like Rosario Dawson anyway? I appear the way you want me to look. Okay, that's disturbing. Wait, have you been showing up in my dreams? I'll never tell. And we're done here. Y'all, Jimmy, the Chaos Goblin strikes again.

[00:02:50] I should have known better than to mention I was working on my DC Universe meets Ravenloft hybrid D&D campaign on social media. My bad. He goes and tags a bunch of comics creators we know, and now I have to get it in gear and whip this campaign into shape so we can start playing. Another friend chimes in, are you going to make maps? It's fair to say it's been a while since I put something together so I guess, question mark? It was then that I discovered Arkenforge.

[00:03:15] If you don't know who Arkenforge is, they have everything you need to make your TTRPG more fun and immersive. Allowing you to build, play, and export animated maps, including in-person, fog-of-war capability that lets your players interact with maps as the adventure unfolds while you, the DM, get the full picture. Now I'm set to easily build high-res animated maps, saving myself precious time and significantly adding nuance to our campaign. That's a win every day in my book.

[00:03:44] Check them out at arkenforge.com and use the discount code YETI5 to get $5 off. I'll drop a link in the show notes for you. And big thanks to Arkenforge for partnering with our show. I think I'm going to make Jimmy play a goblin warlock just to get even. Hello, everybody, and welcome to Let's Talk Shop, where we chat with the folks in the trenches selling you the books that you love.

[00:04:06] I'm Byron Neal, your host for today's show, and I've received word that the Doji Goon Squad is en route to stop us from talking about comic books as they have been deemed beyond repair and destined for the wood chipper. So let's get on with it before that happens. As the format goes, I ask comics creators who come on the Cryptid Creator Corner who their favorite shop is. After all, what better recommendation can you get than the people who make the books themselves?

[00:04:31] So comics writer Amy Chase, or some of you might know her as Amy Thunderjam, was one of our guest hosts for the end-of-the-year show, the ICER Indie Comics Excellence Awards in 2024. She said, I should look no further than Sterling Silver Comics, so it is my pleasure to introduce the owner, Mike Sterling, on the show with me today. Mike, how's it going? It's going quite fine so far. You've asked to interview me during a very interesting time for comics, I'm afraid. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we'll get into all that.

[00:05:01] I know you're based in Kim Rio, a little bit northwest of LA and Ventura County, so how have you all been faring with all the fires and stuff recently? No problems, really. There was some heavy smoke and ash one or two days, but aside from that, we've been okay. We've been thankfully very safe from all that. Well, that's good. That's good. I know Amy herself was in waiting to hear if they were going to have to evacuate.

[00:05:30] When I checked in on her, she said she had a Go backpack ready and everything like that, so it sounded pretty dire for a bit there. Yeah, I was lucky where I was located. I wasn't near any of the fires, so I was very thankful for that. Good. Well, let's take it back to the beginning for you. We both started in comics retail. It looks about the same time.

[00:05:51] For me, that was right around 1989, right before everything went bananas, and shortly thereafter, Todd McFarlane kicked off Spider-Man, and Jim Lee was relaunching the X-Men, laying the foundations for the rise of image comics that all that entails in what was, in sales terms, the peak of the medium. I was finishing up high school and working mowing grass and slinging floppies at World Class Comics in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Walk me through your comics retail journey.

[00:06:19] Well, I was always a reader. I'm from a family of readers, so we read everything. We read magazines, books. My parents read comics as children, but I read comics when I was a kid, and so I've always been interested in reading in general, but I especially love comics.

[00:06:40] Well, I was working in a library when I was in high school, and in my early years, or my early year of college, when I started going to UC Santa Barbara. Okay. And I would regularly stop at my comic shop, which was Ralph's Comic Corner in Ventura, California, and I started shopping with him like in 83, 84.

[00:07:05] And so I got to know them fairly well, and then one day, I stopped by the shop, and one of the regular employees there, a fellow named Ray, told me that, Oh, I'm going to be leaving. So, you know, nice to know you. Thanks for shopping here. And I was like, well, can I have your job? Sort of half jokingly. And they didn't take it as a joke. And they said, sure, you want to work here?

[00:07:30] So that's how I sort of got my foot in the door in comics retail back in 88. Okay. And I was still working both the library job and the comic book job while still going to college. And then I finally realized, oh, I'm making more money at the comic shop than I am at the library, which is kind of a sad state of affairs, I suppose. But... A little counterintuitive, yeah, but I'm looking at it.

[00:07:57] Yeah, so I just decided to quit the library job, and I worked part-time at the comic shop while I was going to college. And that's where it all started.

[00:08:10] I started just in time for the Death in the Family storyline, which was one of the first real big, for me anyway, one of the first real big real world intrusions into the comic book world where people were hearing about this on the news and calling up the shop and asking, hey, is this true? What's going on here? What's going on here? And... I mean, at the time, comics were already featuring sort of a renaissance between Watchmen and Dark Knight. That was still bringing people in the store. Right.

[00:08:39] But this was like a really hot, bad-ish thing. You know, a character is dying, and we got to get in and see what's going on, which was, of course, a precursor to Death of Superman, which had come a few years later. Yeah, I remember being in the shop when that came out, and that Death of Superman was really wild. We had maybe, I don't know, somewhere around 20 copies left, and that was around Christmas time. And the line was out the door the following morning.

[00:09:09] I guess it just hit the, you know, the regular news. And that was the present that every parent had to get for their kid for Christmas. And I had gone home and actually opened my bag. I know that's a sin for people, but like, I wanted to actually read it. So I was like, let's see what's in here. So I opened mine up. I read it overnight and then brought it back in. And I don't know why I had it with me the following day. But there was a mom who's just like, I can't find these anywhere.

[00:09:38] I'll do anything. And I was like, I've got an open copy. I'll sell it to you. And she said, well, how much do you want for it? I was like, just cover price is fine. You know, no problem. So hopefully anyway, that made some kids' introduction to the comics world, and they're still a reader. We can fingers crossed that that's still the case. That's the story I'm going to tell anyway. Yeah, when that hit us, yeah, it was basically the same thing. We had a line all the way down the block.

[00:10:08] We had news crews showing up. We, well, I'm saying we, my boss at the time, Ralph, he had ordered like 10 times the number of Superman comics he normally ordered. And that was nowhere close to what we needed. So we had to limit it to one per customer, which made some people extremely angry. Because they were coming in, they were buying it for their six kids, who were all sick at home or whatever.

[00:10:34] Yeah, that was, compared to the whole Death of Robin storyline, this Death of Superman storyline was just another step beyond all that. It was just astounding how slammed we got for business on that day. Well, you're not in a bad spot either. I mean, if you're going to school at UC Santa Barbara, that's, I actually learned to surf the breaks there.

[00:11:00] My dad was out there for a summer program when he was finishing up his master's. He was a career public school math teacher. And we were out there as a family for a summer. And that's where I learned to surf. So that's a, it's beautiful, absolutely stunning area. I love that area. No, it's, it's a very nice area to live and to work in. Absolutely.

[00:11:24] Well, it was probably my turning point in comics retail is probably around 1994. You know, I was working in a different shop at the time that was Comics Inc. And the owner was looking for partners. I gave serious consideration, but ultimately my heart was on the road. And that's when I dropped out of school and worked in the music and entertainment business for a decade and a half. So different paths, different lives. But this journey, at some point, you made a decision to ultimately go solo and open up your own shop.

[00:11:54] So what was the catalyst for that? Well, that, that took a while because I, I worked for Ralph and then another, another owner came in and bought out most of the shop. Ralph was still there. He was still doing his back issues, but someone else was handling the new comics business and all the games business we were doing. And I was, I was fine working, you know, doing the old comics, doing the, doing mail order. I get a lot of mail orders through that shop, through eBay and otherwise.

[00:12:22] And I did sort of get complacent. I, I was there for a long time, probably far longer than I should have been. Just doing that job, running the shop, making sure everybody got their, their books. But I think it was, it was finally seeing other people like opening up their shops. And I'd been looking for a while to open up my own store. I've been kind of looking around sort of half-heartedly.

[00:12:49] And I finally just had the gumption to, to realize, you know, I got to do something different because this is, this is just making me depressed being here every day and just doing the same thing and not doing it for myself. Not that I had anything against any of the people I worked with. Sure, all fine. But I just, I needed to do something new. You know, so around 2013, I really started digging in and looking for someplace new.

[00:13:17] And it was in 2014 that I found a place, finally, that I liked and was, you know, something I could afford in a location I liked out in Camarillo. It was right there next to a post office, which is perfect for me since I was going to do lots of mail order. And that's pretty much what it took. It's my girlfriend and I, you know, we formed a partnership and we opened up the shop. So 36, if I've got it right, years in the business now?

[00:13:45] I've been doing this over 36 years since September is my anniversary. So yeah, last September. That's amazing. Well, with all that time in the industry and with the recent Chapter 11 news from Diamond, what's your hunch on how all of this will impact you as a retailer? I mean, any indication really yet how this is going to shake things out?

[00:14:11] Well, I kind of missed the last time we had a retailer outright collapse in the industry. That was in the 80s where we had a bunch of, not retailer collapse, excuse me, distributor collapse in the 80s where we had several distributors that just vanished, you know, went under, leaving a bunch of publishers holding the bag, you know, being owed a lot of money. Right. And that took a lot of publishers out at the time.

[00:14:41] So it was basically this diamond and it was Capital was the other big distributor. And so after Capital went under, it was just diamond this whole time. And the problem with diamond was that, I mean, they tried, but their shipping costs were too high. I got too many damages and shortages every week. It was distressing.

[00:15:05] So when DC moved to Lunar during the pandemic and other distributors or other publishers like Marvel followed Sue going to, you know, Penguin Random House, as soon as these publishers went to other distributors, I would move my business to those distributors. Because diamond had disappointed me too much and it was costing too much to get the stuff from them. I still have a diamond account.

[00:15:33] I'm still getting stuff from them because there's stuff that you can't get from anywhere else right now. But so if diamond were to suddenly dried up overnight, that would definitely impact me as far as smaller distributors go. But I'm already set with Marvel and DC and image and dark horse and IDW and upcoming, you know, boom. And other smaller publishers like vault and mad cave and such that I'll still have stuff coming in. I will be scrambling that.

[00:16:02] Oh, I got to suddenly open a Penguin Random House account to get those comics. I'm already there. I'm good on that. But it is going to lose me a lot of the smaller accounts, the smaller publishers that I still sell plenty of in my shop. I'm hoping it doesn't come to that.

[00:16:22] I'm hoping whatever reorganization Diamond's going through, even if they end up just being like a small place with just one warehouse, just handling the small independent books, that would be fine. That would be helpful. Because I don't think we all want to go scattering around to every individual publisher with each individual mail order, you know, service from them to get their comics.

[00:16:48] No, that sounds way too much like the subscription TV service we're all dealing with right now. Yeah, yeah. And it's going to be rough, whatever happens. I'm in a good position so far just because I have, you know, a pretty loyal clientele. I sell a lot of products. If Diamond Sunny vanishes overnight, I'm still going to have stuff to sell.

[00:17:15] But I am going to be missing, you know, that other stuff. The other stuff that people want aside from Marvel and DC. I know a lot of smaller publishers are shifting over to Lunar pretty fast. I just got a press release from Kevin over at Massive, I think, yesterday that they're switched over to Lunar. So I think it will happen fairly quickly. Yeah, yeah.

[00:17:40] I mean, I think both Lunar and Pinko Granite House have said we just don't have the capacity or we're not really looking for a whole lot of other accounts right now. So if people are getting into Lunar now that, you know, unless you're, you know, first in the door, you may not get in there. You may not have that option to go to Lunar.

[00:18:02] Like, I'm really curious about what Dynamite's going to do because Dynamite is kind of all in over there at Diamond. So if Diamond goes under, Dynamite's going to be scrambling for someone new to carry their books, I'd imagine, unless they're big enough to do it themselves. Because I think they were like, weren't they a mail order company or something? Didn't they do mail order at one point?

[00:18:32] I believe so. I think it is. Yeah. So they probably have the, you know, they have the option to do that, I suppose. But I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know if they have all those, the mechanisms still working in that locker because I know they've been buying up and working with different IPs a lot lately, picking up all the Hanna-Barbera stuff and that sort of thing, which seems to be where a lot of their focus has been lately.

[00:19:01] I mean, is there an argument for Diamond going under being a good thing for the industry, ultimately? I mean, they've struggled for a while now, really. It can be an argument if it is replaced by something that's better and stronger. But I feel like Diamond, even with all the troubles they've been having, they were kind of well on their way to doing that anyway.

[00:19:28] It was a little too late because, you know, they're only doing it because they have competition suddenly. But they got their shipping prices down. Their shortage and damage issues, at least with me, have been minimized. You know, the customer service has usually been pretty good when I've called them and asked for, you know, assistance. I don't think Diamond is necessarily a bad company or that they should go under.

[00:19:57] I think they learned a lot from what happened over the last few years. And a smaller, reorganized Diamond would be preferable to Diamond going away entirely. Diamond going away entirely would wreak at least a little havoc in the direct market. And with people are scrambling for new distributors and publishers, you know, well, losing money is straight up, just losing money.

[00:20:22] I mean, especially as sort of a critical timeframe where publishers are going to try to scramble to look where they can reduce printing costs. If these tariffs do continue, I know there's a lot of fear in the industry just about printing costs alone. So that if you couple those two things together with printing and with Diamond potentially going under, that's a lot for publishers, especially the small ones.

[00:20:50] And retailers to shoulder in 2025. That's a lot. Yeah. I had a fairly cynical take I posted on Blue Sky about how every comic is going to be $5.99 minimum now, unless they try to shift to American printers, in which case they'll all be jockeying for space because there's not enough, you know, I don't think there are enough printers to really handle the market. Right.

[00:21:16] So we end up with like fewer comics or at least much delayed comics. So, yeah, I don't know what the tariffs are going to do. As far as I know, the tariffs are still on hold. But I haven't checked the news today, so I don't know if that's back on or not. It's an hour-to-hour basis on whether those are up or not. Yeah. So, yeah, I don't know.

[00:21:40] It's going to be an interesting time for the coming year, and it'll be interesting in a necessarily good way. Well, we hear all the time that the industry is broken. That is just a refrain lately. I'm sure you have a list of things in your head on how you'd like to fix it. Where would you start? Oh, boy. At the publishing end, I would like to see – this is a very basic thing. I'd like to see fewer variants.

[00:22:10] Okay. There's too many different covers. That's when you sort of feel obligated to order each cover because you never know what customer is going to want which cover. Right. And that's like eating up too much of your comics budget trying to order everything, or you end up ordering just a minimal number of each of them and not having enough of the one cover everybody wants. And I know why they do it. They do it to subsidize their comic publishing.

[00:22:37] One cover may not bring in enough money, but multiple covers will bring in just that little extra amount of money to keep things going, to pay the bills. But it's very frustrating. It's this – I don't want to say it's a collectible mindset where they're hoping that there will be someone who will buy one of each cover. There are people to do that, and that's fine.

[00:23:00] But it feels like depending on that is not necessarily healthy overall for the industry. I mean, it's fine. Like I said, it's fine if people do that. People collect how they collect, and that's fine. But publishers putting out 30 different variants for the one issue, that's hard to deal with. Yeah, and I'm not a variant. I mean, I much prefer to get the meat of a trade paperback.

[00:23:28] So most of the time, I might pick up a first issue, and then I'll just wait on the trade to come out. So I'm not their target audience, so I can't really speak to the variant things that much. But it seems like from a retailer perspective, it would take up a tremendous amount of shelf space as well, just as a footprint. Yeah, I do my best because I have a very large new comic shelf.

[00:23:53] But even with all the variants of stuff, that space gets filled up really quickly. And sometimes I just have to stack them. I just have three different covers just on top of each other because I just don't have any choice. I have to make space for other stuff. And when I can, I spread them out a little bit and let people see that there are multiple covers. But I think customers by this point realize, oh, most everything has a variant cover. So if I don't see the cover I want, I'll just dig into the stack a little on the shelf, and I'll find the cover.

[00:24:25] So, I mean, it's just one of those things that we've all had to adapt to. As far as other changes, you know, overall, I don't have a problem with how distribution works now. I mean, it was convenient where everything was just one distributor. But, again, that brought its own problems with them, you know, not feeling the urge to do anything about improving their service because they had no competition. But having two or three distributors is fine. That increases competition.

[00:24:53] It gives me multiple options to get books from different distributors, or at least it did. Like if I ran out, if one distributor didn't have something for reorder, another distributor might. But that's kind of lessened in the recent couple of months because Image pulled all their stuff out of Diamond, and, you know, other publishers are going to be doing the same too. So, I don't know. I think overall, just improved packing.

[00:25:20] I mean, the publishers have done, I mean, distributors have done a really good job improving their packing over the last few months too. Even Diamond has. Diamond's been double boxing some of their stuff, usually. Not always. I had a shipment this week that was just everything shoved into a single-walled box, and by some miracle, nothing got damaged. Even though, wow, the sides had split. But that's unusual. Usually, they're pretty securely packed. That's good.

[00:25:47] But, yeah, I can imagine damages are a nightmare, especially when you start talking about variants in a 1 in 50 or a 1 in 125. And, like, that's – you can't replace that very easily. Not easily. I mean, Diamond, sometimes you could. I think Penguin Random House, if you're shorted, you're just out of luck. I don't think they have extras to replace if you're shorted on that. Lunar, I think you can get replacements on the limited variants. So, it varies from publisher to publisher.

[00:26:17] Well, getting into the sort of nitty-gritty of Sterling Silver itself. You know, there are so many business models that people employ to try and diversify the offerings in a comic shop, gaming shop, what have you, these days. There are many hybrids. So, what does the core of Sterling Silver look like? Comics, basically. At the shop I used to work at, Rouse Comic Corner, he was just a comic shop until a local game store went under,

[00:26:44] and people started coming to him and asking, hey, do you have this game? Magic cards. And he started, okay, well, I'll start carrying the D&D stuff and the miniatures and things. That sort of expanded into a whole big side business that kind of carried us through the crash in the 90s. Unfortunately, I'm just, I'm basically just comics. Okay. I do some toys. That's, you know, comic book-related toys.

[00:27:12] I do the Funko Pops because those seem to be everywhere. And those bring people in the door, actually. When people say I have a big Funko Pop rack, they walk in and go, oh, look, all these Funko Pops. So, that gets people inside. But by and large, it's just comics. It's new issues. It's graphic novels. It's a whole bunch of back issues, which is my personal preference is messing around with back issues. That's my favorite stuff. But, yeah, it's basically just comics.

[00:27:38] Well, something I've been talking a lot about recently is capturing younger readers. You know, clearly, they still enjoy reading if manga sales are any indication. They watch the Marvel and DC movies, so exposure to the big two isn't a thing either. They know the characters. So, how do we get them hooked because this only has so long of a shelf life without them also engaged in the medium? Can't be all old folks like us.

[00:28:06] Well, access is a big key here. I have a lot of young child customers who come through the shop. I mean, I'm next to a music store. I'm across the street from a karate school. There are restaurants and a pizza place. It's in my little strip of shops. So, I get a lot of children passing through and buying comics and looking for stuff.

[00:28:32] So, they're not just buying the manga and the Dog Man books, which are also extremely popular. But, yeah, they're coming in looking for the comic books too. So, I'm fortunate in that I've always had a family-friendly shop to work in. It was the same at Ralph's. It was down the street from a high school when I was at Ralph's. So, I have plenty of kids coming through, which is good. I haven't had the problem with not having children buying comics.

[00:29:02] Overall, I'm not sure. But if you put comics in front of kids, kids will naturally gravitate to the comics. Whether it's manga or Spider Boy or whatever. They will come and look for the comics. One thing I did is I have a spinner rack filled with all-ages comics right there by the front door. So, kids are walking by with their parents and they look in the door and they see,

[00:29:28] I've got My Little Pony or Sonic the Hedgehog or whatever just right there. That grabs their eyes immediately. That gets them in the shop. So, I think, yeah, just making sure that you carry comics for all ages. Making sure they're accessible, that they're visible. As far as overall, through the entire world of marketplace, how to get kids to read comics. I don't know.

[00:29:53] All I know is if you get them in front of them, they'll look at them and they'll want them. I know a lot of shops do community integration kind of stuff. So, I'm just brainstorming here. If you have a karate school that's close by, go to the karate school for Wednesday evening classes or late Wednesday afternoon karate classes. Work with them to get kids into the shop.

[00:30:22] How much community outreach or community integration kind of thing do you have to do with the shop? Well, I haven't done a whole lot, to be honest, beyond donations to schools and to churches and to the local, you know, gay and lesbian and transgender groups. Okay. Yeah.

[00:30:46] And I've, you know, the music shops or music schools near me have been really interested in my store and have always promoted me, which helps. And I've, yeah, there's mostly donations and good relations with neighboring businesses, mostly. And, and like I said, this, and donations, donating stuff to the schools.

[00:31:09] So that, that tends to bring people to me as, as well as doing the free comic book day event, which is always a huge thing at my store. And that brings lots of people from, from all across the county to my shop. So that, that helps a lot too. Do you bring cosplay people in and all that? Um, I have, I have a local fella who does a lot of costuming and he's shown up as Batman to my, to my free comic book day events in the past.

[00:31:40] I have a, I have a photo of, of, uh, that fella, Mark, who dresses as Batman, shaking hands with Jaime Hernandez, who was, uh, doing a signing on one of my free comic book days. So cool. So that was, that was kind of a fun shot, uh, fun photo to get. Yeah. Well, one of the reasons I wanted to start these comic shop chats is that I miss the weird little nucleus of community that surrounds them.

[00:32:06] I'm still friends with both James and Ziggy, the owners of the shops that I mentioned previously. And there's still old customers that I'm connected with. One of them's, you know, working on stranger things and, you know, we're both connect. We transitioned over from Facebook to blue sky and we're connected. So we keep in touch that way. What makes comic shops such a haven for so many people?

[00:32:29] Well, and I had imagined in real life, they don't have the shared interest in comics with people that they see day to day. But when they come to the comic book store, obviously these are people are also interested in the same things you're interested in. So I've seen, you know, friendships sort of blossom there. You even just people just see each other at the store at the same time every week. Right.

[00:32:54] They'll hang out and chat and, and yeah, it's basically just finding people of shared interest. Now with the advent of the Marvel movies and the DC movies and other, you know, comic related media, more people are interested in this sort of thing, but they may be more interested in the media side of it than the print side of it.

[00:33:17] So while they can still get that sort of same, that sort of similar connection outside the comic shops, it's in the comic shop where they can meet other like-minded people. And you have to ride all these trends, which is something that after I got out of retail and looking at kind of how the, the industry morphed. You talked about pops, there's the gaming stuff, there's all these other little things.

[00:33:42] You've clearly weathered it for long enough that you're savvy enough to not avoid too many of those pitfalls of sinking a whole lot of capital into the thing of the week that, that may be the death knell for ultimately for a shop. So you have these things. How do you have an intuition as to what to say no to? Because there's so many different things you could, you could get into.

[00:34:10] I mean, I was talking to Curtis from, from Vault of Midnight in, in the Detroit area. And he was talking about getting into, they had gotten into Japanese candies and how this represents a not insignificant, you know, section of their, their weekly income, which I thought was wild. I never would have thought of that. You're talking to a man who once sold pogs.

[00:34:36] So, so in, during the crash period and as we're slowly coming out of it, we, we carry pogs that brought kids in. We, okay. We had tons of people buying pogs and slammers and the plastic tubes to keep the pogs in and everything else. And that, that brought in a big chunk of money we weren't necessarily getting from, from comics. I mean, we're still doing fairly well in comics because we were the big store in town or big store in the county, I should say.

[00:35:05] And people were still coming from all around to see us, but it was still a dip in business to what it was before. So having pogs to subsidize that really helped, but there did come a time when we realized, oh, this is kind of over. The, the pog distributor wasn't returning our calls anymore because they probably got out of the business too. And we realized, okay, it was time to put away pogs and focus on other stuff.

[00:35:34] And I kind of learned from that. I kind of learned, okay, keep an eye on when this stuff was slowing down and when to pull out of it. Now, in my case, in my, in my shop, it's, it's comics. I'm not going to slowly weed my way out of comics because that's the reason the shop exists. Pops are really kind of the only thing that I have in the shop where I have to kind of keep an eye on it and wonder when this is going to end.

[00:36:04] Yeah. And it hasn't ended yet. Like I said, having the pops on display in the shop brings people in. People are still interested in them and they still buy them. But I don't order nearly as many as I used to because I don't want to end up with a giant wall of pops and not be able to sell them. Yeah. And the decision may be made for me eventually anyway. If suddenly diamond goes away and I don't have a pop source anymore.

[00:36:33] But, but yeah, pops are like the one thing where I'm trying to make sure I'm not going to get stuck with too many. I'm going to get stuck with some eventually. That's just how it's going to work. And I'll be selling for a buck a piece at some sidewalk sale or something at some point. Or, or just outright recycling them. But for now, no, there's, there's still doing okay. I just, I got to keep an eye on it. And I haven't really got too much into other baddish stuff.

[00:37:02] The, the pro graded books I haven't really got into. Okay. Um, that, that's an aspect of the market that doesn't really appeal to me. That seems to miss the point of comics. I agree. I can understand doing this for like an action comics number one, which you're not going to pull out of the box and read anytime soon. Uh, you'll read a reprint of it.

[00:37:28] You're not going to handle the original thing, but getting pro graded comics that came out last month. If that's so you can shirt it around on eBay for, you know, 10 times the price. I don't know. It's just, that's just not a thing that I ever really got into. And I, it's hard for me to say, I can't imagine this last name because it has lasted. It's been around forever. It seems like forever anyway. I know it's only been about what? 15 years.

[00:37:54] But I, I just don't feel like that's an aspect of the market. That's necessarily a healthy one in the long run. Where it, it's okay for the old, actually like extremely expensive and valuable books, but doing it for everything seems like, I don't know. This doesn't leave a good taste in my mouth, frankly. No, I'm with you. I mean, I think comics are meant to be read.

[00:38:19] And I, I will speak from a Bradenton, Florida, uh, former residents perspective, which is about 15 to 20 minutes away from where the CGC is that we had two significant hurricanes hit in the last couple of years. So that would give me pause sending my stuff down to Florida. So given how long it takes to get some of them back, I mean, I've heard people six to nine months to get their graded stuff back, which seems insane.

[00:38:47] But I had stuff come in through the shop in the last couple of years that I, you know, ideally I should have sent down to get, you know, graded and, and slab like that. But, cause I had some really nice, like very fine and near mint silver age marbles come in. Okay. Nice. I had an amazing fantasy 15 come in. I had amazing Spider-Man one all the way up into the 1970s, you know, a collection like that come in.

[00:39:17] Uh, but I just, I, I, I couldn't do it. I couldn't bring myself to, to send it down to be, be slab. That just did not feel right to me. I was just happier selling them as is. And if other people want to do it, that's fine. But I just, even though I know I'm leaving money on the table by doing that in some cases, I just didn't want to do it. And from some of the slab books I've seen, I've never necessarily agreed with the grades that they put on them. So. Okay. So I, I have that problem too.

[00:39:47] You know, I don't want to send in a book that I know is like a fine plus and I get it back and they call it a very fine minus, you know, for example. And it's like, okay, great. It's a higher grade, but it's not an accurate grade. Right. Yeah. But I don't know. I, I just, that's, that's a thing. I just, I just never really got into. I just, that wasn't my thing. It's always a tricky thing to me. I mean, again, I, I lived where the headquarters is.

[00:40:16] It's a, it's something that I had meant to do and just ran out of time before we moved. Cause I had wanted to get over there and actually interview some of the folks that work there and find out how all the process works, you know, soup to nuts. And didn't get the chance. But again, this is, this is Bradenton, Florida. And it's weird to me. Obviously you can train people.

[00:40:39] And there's a science to it that people would go by, but it's, it's not like it's a major metropolitan area. So I just always sort of in the back of my mind, question the validity of some of the grading. And again, I'm, I'm a novice to it. I don't, I don't deal in that sort of thing for the most part. It doesn't interest me. I mean, there may be some stuff eventually, some of my really old stuff, like my first comic book ever that my cousin gave me when I was six years old. Would I get that graded? Yeah.

[00:41:09] Yeah, probably, you know, because it's sentimental to me and it would matter. You know, short of that, I, it's probably something I'll never get into. Yeah. One thing that really kind of bothered me is that they were, or one of these grading companies was the sponsor for the last free comic book day. And it's like, I couldn't think of anything more opposed to the purpose of free comic book day than a comic book grading service.

[00:41:39] Yeah. Like why? So they offered like free displays and stuff for the, for the event. And then I just passed on at all because I didn't want to promote that any more than I had to. Sure. Sure. Well, now that we have ensured that the CGC will never be a, a show sponsor. Well, let me be clear. People want to do that. That's fine. Like I said earlier, however you want to collect, that's how you, right. That's what you want to. Sure. Fine.

[00:42:09] It's just, it's not for me. It's not mine. Right. But I feel exactly the same way. Sorry, go ahead. I interrupted you there. No, no, no, no. That's, that's pretty much what I was saying. Well, given the, the very challenges of operating a shop these days, what keeps you going? What's Mike's true north? Well, I don't want to find a real job at this point. I just, I, I, I just like comics.

[00:42:31] I like, I get a satisfaction out of pricing and grading, you know, personally grading old comics and stalking new comics and, and, and finding comics for other people to read. It's, this is something I enjoy. I, I get a satisfaction with this. I wouldn't get from stirring beans at Taco Bell, which by the way, I did as a, as a teenager.

[00:42:58] Um, but not, not that that's a bad job for somebody. Somebody enjoys that. I know people enjoy cooking, but for me, I like handling comics and, and sorting comics and, and organizing and, and pricing. That just brings me a personal satisfaction that, that, that I enjoy. You just couldn't see yourself doing anything else at this point?

[00:43:24] At this point, aside from going back to my old library job, no, this is, this is pretty much what I want to be doing. Well, one of the other things that you've kept going is your industry blog. That's progressive ruin been going on for quite some time now. You know, I, I doubt, go ahead. I was going to say, yeah, I, I started that in late 2003 and I've been doing it ever since. Wow. Well, I doubt the intention at its inception was for it to sound like a politics blog.

[00:43:52] Although I would argue that comics have always been political, despite what some of the, you know, that's what troll crowd will say online. How have you found that this blog has changed over time? Is it cathartic for you to write it? Is it something you just flat out enjoy? So you'll just do it, do it. And it it's, you know, fun. Well, for me to add to your previous statement, all art is political.

[00:44:15] So anyone who says that isn't is just, just agreeing with whatever weird politics that, uh, they enjoy and hating politics of other people. So that's all that is. That's, I don't, I don't get the people who say comics aren't political. Yeah. It was super weird. I saw the other day that David proposed was talking about somebody getting on him for, um, captain planet, you know, and I hope that captain planet isn't woke.

[00:44:45] And I was like, do you, do you know what captain planet is actually about? Have you, have you ever actually watched the show? So, cause to me, it's pretty clear, even as a kid, it was anti-corporate looting the environment, you know? Yeah. Or, or the people would say, I don't like this new woke star Trek, not like the original classic star Trek. And it's, it's like, you've never seen the original star Trek. If you're saying this. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:45:09] It's, it's astounding, but no, my, my blog, it started out because I was seeing other blogs and they were having fun and I'd been doing stuff on like local bulletin board systems and a little bit on live journal. And I thought, you know what? I'm going to start just my own blogs. And so other people seem to be having fun. And I just want to talk about old comics and maybe new comics are coming out. And at first I hadn't intended to let anyone know that I worked in a comic shop. Okay.

[00:45:38] Seems weird now, but, uh, eventually I said, uh, forget it. I'm yes, I work in a comic book store and because I hadn't seen too much of that perspective and blogs at that point. So I thought maybe someone from behind the counter talking about the comics business might be an interesting take that other people weren't necessarily having. And that's pretty much how that started.

[00:46:04] It, the, the name itself is, is a self-effacing joke. It's Mike Sterling's progressive ruin. And basically, uh, my, my eventual decline in, in collecting comics and, uh, and working in the business. But it's, yeah, it's, it's just something I've been doing for fun for the last, you know, couple of decades and hoping people learn from it. And I realized I could probably at this point have a larger audience if I went on, on TikTok

[00:46:33] or YouTube or something, but actually writing, you know, typing out the words is, is again, more satisfying to me than, than sticking my face in the camera and yapping at people. So that's, that's about it. And plus I have a lot of, uh, readers who interact with the, with the site. Every year I do my predictions post where I have people predict what's coming up in the coming year for the comics industry. Yeah.

[00:47:03] I was catching up on that. That was great. Yeah. And, uh, yeah. And then I spent like the following January, you know, covering all those predictions and a lot of people guessing, you know, the demise of diamond and it's like, well, you're maybe a little too early on that, but yeah, it was, uh, it's a fun thing to do. And I'm surprised at myself that I'm still doing it when a lot of the comic blogs that were

[00:47:28] blogging along with me back in the mid two thousands are, are long gone, you know, defunct or just departed from the internet. Yeah. So, and, and that I'm still doing is just, I don't know. I'm just obsessive, I guess. Well, you always seem to be fine finding some bygone treasure to talk about on there. Do you keep a stash of old promotional stuff that, okay, ultimately might be destined for the eBay store, but you just kind of pull it out and, um, talk about it.

[00:47:58] Well, when, when my previous place of employment eventually closed up shop, you know, a few years back, I, I kept a lot of the, I got a lot of the boxes of the promo stuff from them. And so I still have all that stuff. Okay. I still work with my, my former boss. See, I still, I sell stuff on consignment for him. And I handle a lot of this, you know, the old promo stuff I sell on his behalf for him.

[00:48:27] So I, I just have boxes and boxes of stuff I can go through and pull from. Like recently I was going through some of his old catalogs that he still had from the mid eighties. And looking back at those, some of the retailer tips that the distributors used to give you back then, what the order on things, which is something I can't imagine a distributor doing now other than buy lots of them. Right. Right. But at, at the time a distributor would tell you, yeah, drop your orders on this like 20%.

[00:48:56] It's it, you know, they're trying to make sure that the business remained healthy and that you're ordering on things. And I just, I find that interesting. So I love having access to the, this old stuff, my collection of fanzines I'll go through occasionally and find interesting tidbits from, from days of yore. And, uh, yeah, so that, that blog is a way for me to get all this stuff out without necessarily quartering some poor guy at the shop and talking his ear off. So I can say, if you're interested in this, there's my blog.

[00:49:25] You can read all about it. Yeah. I'll have to put a link in the show notes for people to check out your eBay store because that's, I found that through progressive ruin. I was looking the other night and you have a dread rules, sign and Beasley promo poster from 1991. I have that one myself. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it. Uh, but I can't seem to let it go along with other things that my wife would really like me to get out of the house. So. Yeah. I got a lot of weird promo stuff. I got so much more.

[00:49:55] I, I kind of sort of backed off of eBay a little bit lately. I haven't put a whole lot of new stuff on there. I'm not happy with the fee structure there at the moment. So I've been selling either just posting things on Instagram and selling stuff there or, or just, I've been selling a lot through the store itself, which, which of course is ideal. Right. Yeah.

[00:50:21] I, I, I just have so much as promo stuff that I just don't have the time in the day to get it all listed and up there on eBay. So, but occasionally I'll find some interesting item, like a friend of a friend is a big Azrael fan. And I had like a little 3d sort of Azrael standee that I managed to sell to him through this friend of mine. And so it's, it's, I'm still moving some of the stuff anyway. Yeah.

[00:50:48] I had a big folio full of all that promotional stuff that totally cliche, but when we moved back to North Carolina, we were finally close enough to my parents who I grew up in East Tennessee. So it's just a couple hours away. They've been progressively as they visit sort of bringing some of this stuff and had this, you know, massive art folio full of all promotional stuff from back in the day. And as I was looking through it, I was like, I have no clue what to do with all this stuff,

[00:51:16] like characters that I'm just not into. So what do I do with this? So I just ended up going through keeping the stuff I actually thought I really care about. And then I took that folio to Acme over in Greensboro and, you know, handed it over to the owner who's a friend now and said, just, just make some people happy. Like if you can find a home for this, I don't want anything for it. Just give this to people who will care. So it was just really nice to be able to do that.

[00:51:44] He said people were just absolutely ecstatic. It was an old Eclipso standee from, I guess it wasn't quite a standee, but it was, it had a, it was that phase where everything had to have holographic stuff to it. And it was a diamond kind of in the middle. Right. Um, but I don't know if it was a window thing because it had some, some dimension to it, some 3d elements, but I don't think it was exactly a standee, but you know, just black condor,

[00:52:14] just weird valiant stuff from back in the day. So anyway, I think that stuff's neat too, for sure. Yeah. That's, I, I just, I love that old stuff. I love old marketing materials from the eighties. Um, so I folk, I try to focus a lot on that on my website as well. Just I pulling the stuff out. Cause a lot of people who are reading my site may not necessarily even been born of this stuff came out. So it's all new to them.

[00:52:41] You know, here, here's this great hex poster for, for the Jonah hex in, in the future. It's here. He's I, I love that poster. Yeah. For the thing. Um, yeah, it's just, there's a whole lot of history that can be found in these promotional items that I think people can, can forget about. For sure. Yeah. So that's the history of things. What are you reading right now that you absolutely love? Oh boy. Um, every time someone asks me, what am I reading now?

[00:53:09] It's my mind goes to a complete blank because I'm so far behind on, on everything. Um, that's that's owning a store does that. I'm sure. A few years back, I had some vision issues. Why does it have to read and anything? I couldn't see anything. I had to have, you know, my, my retired dad would come to the shop and help me, you know, read prices on things. Cause I literally couldn't see anything. Wow. Uh, my, my, my eyesight stabilized since then I'm, I'm fine, but good. Yeah.

[00:53:38] So I, there was like about a year and a half, two years where I didn't read any comics. So I, I'm still sort of catching up on that. And I'm mostly caught up on comics, but I'm still, you know, I, I'm still behind like graphic novels and things. Um, I just recently read the, the most recent Grendel series by Matt Wagner. Oh yeah. Okay. Which I've, I really enjoy. I, I've been a big Grendel fan for, for years anyway. So it's, it's always nice to see new stuff by him.

[00:54:08] I'm, I've been a Superman reader since the early eighties and I've been enjoying the Superman books lately. Those, those have been good. Even with a kind of wonky continuity issues that they've had over the last decade or two, I'm, I'm still enjoying those. I'm, I'm finding those to be quite entertaining. Love and Rockets, of course. I mean, I've, I've been reading Love and Rockets for forever. Yeah. I mean, there, I mean, I'm local to, to where those guys started.

[00:54:37] So, you know, we're all from Oxnard. So, so I used to see their, uh, Hernandez brothers, you know, punk rock flyers and stickers long before they were ever doing the comics. Oh, that's wild. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was, that's a good series. Anything grew by Sergio Aragonis. This finished the most recent series. Uh, there's another series coming up pretty soon. I'm, I'm pretty sure it's always like a masterwork of cartooning and it's a real shame that more

[00:55:07] of that stuff doesn't stay in print. Right. Um, I've been enjoying the new horror oriented Hulk comics. The Philip Kennedy Johnson run? Yes. Yes. Okay. Hulk is another comic I've been reading a long, for a long time. So I'm always appreciative of, of new takes on the character and sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. But in this case, I, I think it's been working really well. Yeah. I dig it. I dig it a lot.

[00:55:33] I thought the immortal Hulk run was really good because I'm very in and out on the Hulk and I, I don't want to bash anything. I just, that's not, not what I'm about. The, uh, the, that was the, who's the, the Cates? Ronnie Cates did a whole thing there for a bit. But that, that was just not for me and I'll leave it there. I'll give it points for trying something remarkably different. Yep.

[00:56:01] But I don't think it really ever gelled. Unfortunately. Yeah. I was in for it. I was willing to give it a chance, but this, unfortunately it didn't seem to, didn't seem to get any traction, which is unfortunate. That's, that's another thing. Just to go back to your question, what would I change in the industry? Stop relaunching books of number ones. It's not helping. Just, just, just keep the numbering. When Marvel went to their Marvel legacy numbering on the covers for a while, where they had the

[00:56:30] actual issue number of where it would, would have been like Moon Knight 160, whatever. However, yeah. Sales actually went up. Okay. Sales went up across the board on the, on the books that had that new numbering. Then when you refer to back to the issue number one, going back to issue number ones only gives you a temporary boost. It doesn't really help in the long run. Uh, okay. Going back to what I am reading. Um, I was enjoying the chips that our ski Batman run quite a bit.

[00:56:58] Uh, that it's coming to an end, unfortunately they're, they're going to do the hush sequel coming up next. And that's not, not entirely my thing. Unfortunately, I know people really like hush. I never really, never really warmed to it, but I know people really like it. I liked it. I, I have personal issue with returning to the well, you know, coming from the music business. One of my P's is always, I don't want to see a band that I liked 20 years ago.

[00:57:26] In most cases, 90 plus percent of the time, some people are doing new and inventive things and you know who they are, but, but you're not seeing the same thing. It's not the same tired tunes that you love 20 years ago. Music is a moment. And I feel like comics works in the same way. So I felt that way about the, the, the new Madripoor night stuff that, that Claremont just recently released. And I'm a big Claremont fan and it was okay.

[00:57:54] It just, it didn't really hit for me because I felt like I was listening to that same song that I listened to in the early nineties. Yeah. The repackaging of old stuff and the new formats is a little, can be a little tiring in the music business. I know I've, I bought the same album more than once because they suddenly there's, oh, here's some bonus tracks that weren't on the first album. Right. Okay, great. I'll buy it again.

[00:58:21] Um, other things I'm enjoying the new EC books from One. I've been, I've been liking those, uh, epitaphs from the abyss and. Okay. No kingdom. I've enjoyed too. I, I kind of like the more fantasy oriented ones they've been doing. Yeah. And of course the absolute universe. I know everybody's talking about that, but I've been enjoying those as well. Those, I think they've done a really good job doing an actual relaunch of these characters. Agreed.

[00:58:50] Superman's the, the standout for me, which I didn't expect. I thought, I actually thought that Wonder Woman would be the one that I really locked into and Superman was. So. Yeah. I, I enjoyed them all. I can never really decide which one is my favorite, but, uh, that's a good thing. Every time I read it, every time I read one, I go, okay, that series is my favorite. And I'll read the next, the next installment of the other series. I go, okay, that one's my favorite. So I, I, I think they've done a good job.

[00:59:20] I'm looking forward to, I am kind of looking forward to the new ones, but at the same time, I don't really want them to oversaturate the market with absolute titles. Yeah. Yeah. Like they're doing absolute flash and absolute Martian Manhunter. And I think absolute Green Lantern is coming soon. Yeah. So it's like, well, where do you stop? Are we absolute Aquaman? I almost guarantee that's going to happen.

[00:59:47] And I actually really like the, that new Aquaman run that just recently dropped with the kind of Kaiju theme to it. I think it's cool. I really like it. And, uh, I was talking to, I think it's, um, Demetrius from anyone in Brooklyn and we were back and forth about it. And it's like, okay, so what do sales numbers look like on this? And he's like, I just love that people are taking a swing with it because Aquaman is always

[01:00:15] going to have a limited lifespan on shelves as a standalone book. So do something interesting with it and see where it goes. So, yeah, that's a fair take on it. Cause it's, he, he is, uh, pretty much a B lister. So the, anything you do is, is gonna be just for now. It's not going to be, it's not going to be a run for the ages or anything, but if you put it out and you at least have fun with it, that's the important thing.

[01:00:44] And if people enjoy it, that's, that's good. Yeah. Well, my most important question of the day, how can people listening help your store support you? They can send me shoe boxes full of twenties. They can, you know, contact me via my site, sterlingsilvercomics.com. And if they have special requests or if they want me to ship them new books on a regular basis, I can do that. Mail order is not a problem.

[01:01:15] So as I mentioned earlier, I'm pretty much next door to a post office. So it's no problem at all for me to get stuff out in the mail to you. Uh, you can go to my eBay store, which like I said, I wasn't really putting a whole lot of stuff on there, but I do have stuff on there. So if you want to buy any of that stuff, feel free. Uh, I have a store on hip comic, which is another new comics or another comics, uh, sale sites sort of like eBay, but just specializing in comic books. I have a bunch of stuff on there.

[01:01:45] Okay. I didn't even know that existed. I'll have to check it out. Yeah. Yeah. It's hip comic.com. Okay. And yeah, you can just email me through one list and say, Hey, I'm looking for, I'm looking for some stuff. Do you have it? And I'll get back to you and tell you whether I do or not. Awesome. Well, I'll put link in the show notes for all that stuff, including the blog so that people can check it out and support you and the store and what you're doing. Mike is a pleasure having you on today to chat.

[01:02:12] Um, sorry for the technical difficulties we had there at the beginning, but I appreciate you carving out a little time and, and coming on chat with me today. Well, I appreciate talking to you. Thanks for speaking to me and, and putting up with my ramblings. So, uh, yeah, it was, it's always nice to talk about comics. Well, we appreciate it. This is Byron O'Neill reminding you to pick up your pulls. It helps your LCS to maintain that necessary cashflow. So don't leave it sitting. At least let them know that, that you're coming or what's going on with your life.

[01:02:42] It does help them tremendously. Thanks for listening to Let's Talk Show and we'll see you next time. Take care, everybody. This is Byron O'Neill, one of your hosts of the Cryptid Creator Corner brought to you by Comic Book Yeti. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of our podcast. Please rate, review, subscribe, all that good stuff. It lets us know how we're doing and more importantly, how we can improve. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode of the Cryptid Creator Corner,

[01:03:11] maybe you would enjoy our sister podcast, Into the Comics Cave. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. To be continued... ... Thank you.