It's an old question these days:How do you get kids into comics? Well I can tell you this much....look to a recession to help out.I've been working in a comic store for 6 years now,adn while we've always had plenty of shelf space devoted to the Marcel Adventures,Johnny DC,Archie and other kid-friendly books,there was only moderate traffic for those books,mainly from comic reading parents picking up books for their own kids or the occasional grandparent who's at a loss as to what to entertain little johnny or Susie during a summer visit.
Lately though since the current recession has hit,I've had a marked upturn in phone calls and people stopping in looking for something their kids could read.Let's face it,even though we gripe and moan about current comic prices,it's still cheaper than purchasing a game system and the games to go with it when you're faced with a reduced income or looking to cut back.The past three months we've been selling out of Scooby-Doo,Archie digests and his related titles,Sonic the Hedgehog,various Marvel Adventures titles,Tiny Titans and so on.Star Wars books also have been targeted by parents as something for the kiddies(I went through 4 copies of the latest Clone Wars issue in less than a week and that title never sold that well except to die-hard SW fans).
Now I'm not condoning a recession to help the industry of comics but I'm also not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth either due to some extra sales for the store.The question is will this help bring kids into a shrinking reader market? I don't know but hopefully it picks up some new readers to keep things going.
