Mini me's; Stan Lee

I've been perusing other comic store blogs, and I have to say, I'm not impressed.

Most of them are so obviously self-promoting. Which is understandable.

But worse, most of them are innocuous and boring, as though they are afraid to say anything that might offend, or is in the slightest bit, controversial. Worse, they compound the problem with cute little asides about their kids or cats, or something.

But worst of all, they are relentlessly upbeat; like little mini-me, Stan Lee's.

I've been trying to focus more on my store, and local issues as they relate to my store.

But if I have to be relentlessly upbeat, I'll shoot myself.

Look, business isn't all up or all down. It's phoney to pretend it is. I prefer a little more reality.

I'm more interested in the nuts and bolts of operations, and into whatever insights I have, whether negative or positive, that I might possibly come up with, right or wrong. Indeed, expose them to the world so I can get feedback.

One of the inspirations of this blog was a blog started by a guy who was opening a comic shop. Riot Comics. I thought his theories were off base and condescending, and I suspected he was going to have his head handed to him by the real world. But, he wasn't afraid to expose his ideas, and I watched with interest as they played out. Sure enough, he failed within a year or two.

But it was very educational to watch him realize that some of his assumptions were wrong, and to confirm other assumptions, and so on.

I learned a lot from that blog, both from his successes and his failures.

Some of these other comic store blogs are pretty popular, so obviously their tone is what many people are looking for. But, I'm just going to check them out every few months or so to see if they've changed, otherwise....I don't think they have much to tell me. 11:10 AM