Ryan McKern

Bat­man is not amused at your lack of retail savvy

I don't know how hor­ri­bly rel­e­vant this is or how many of you read comic books any­more (yes, they still pub­lish them and yes, some of us still read them) but I just wanted to make good on the old adage about telling 100 peo­ple when some­thing goes wrong as opposed to telling 10 when it goes right and let those of you who might shop there(for your chil­dren or for your­selves) that Bedrock Comics on Route 9 in Fram­ing­ham, Mass­a­chu­setts doesn't appre­ci­ate your busi­ness. Or rather, they didn't appre­ci­ate mine.

While I've had a mul­ti­tude of small issues with them since I started shop­ping there on and off in the spring of 2007, the worst issues are as follows:

They've often told me they're going to order some­thing for me, and when I ask them about it later they act as if this promise to order some­thing is news to them. This doesn't seem like a big deal on it's face, but it's an annoy­ing pain in the ass all the same and it's the first strike against them.

They've told me more than once that a book has sold out or didn't come in when there is a stack of them on the shelf right behind the reg­is­ter, and one of the two guys at the counter just for­got to shelve them… last week. Again, an annoy­ance. But shop­ping here has become the death of a thou­sand papercuts.

Finally, the very last time I was there I was rudely told to stop read­ing my books before buy­ing them, but not until after they're already rung up my stack and I'd signed the credit card slip. I'm not mad that I was told not to read the books (… yes I am), I'm mad that I was told this after I had pur­chased (read: PAID FOR) a stack of books.

I under­stand a "don't read the books" pol­icy, and I appre­ci­ate the basic premise. I DO! But as a con­sumer I also don't have the bud­get or the time to buy every sin­gle issue of every­thing with an inter­est­ing cover. A cover doesn't sell a story, and these aren't one-shot sto­ries I'm read­ing, so I screen my books. With­out screen­ing, my col­lec­tion would be full of 1 or 2 issues of a thou­sand some-odd inci­den­tal series, all too hor­ri­ble to name. Yes, I admit your store would sell a lot more issues (assum­ing I bought every­thing I'm read­ing now), but with­out screen­ing I have to stick to titles I know I want to buy or trade paper­backs that I already know I want; That means I'm not buy­ing doo­dly squat any­more, unless it's got Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman's name on it.

I prob­a­bly spend more on comic books and related mer­chan­dise in a year than I do lunches in the area, and I was spend­ing a fair amount of that at Bedrock. The shop knows me by sight, and while they've always had smil­ing faces, they've never treated me like I was any­thing except an incon­ve­nience to their ebay brows­ing time.

As much as I wanted to demand a $13.94 refund for my stack when this hap­pened and make this into a scene for the ben­e­fit of the unwashed, smelly, mouth-breather who was hap­pened to read­ing an X-Men comic (and there­fore wouldn't appre­ci­ate irony if he wit­nessed it in all it's scream­ing glory), I'm too old for that sort of thing now. I've grown soft in my desire to see peo­ple get their comeuppance.

I'm sim­ply going to write the owner a let­ter explain­ing every­thing I've just told you, and tell him that I'm done shop­ping there. Am I happy about dri­ving to some place like Somerville, MA for books (Com­i­cazi is an excel­lent local chain by the way, but they're an hour from my house) or giv­ing a larger chain like New­bury Comics my money? Not really. Well… Yes, I am because Com­i­cazi reminds me so much of Earth­World Comics back home. But I can defin­i­tively state that I'm never going back to Bedrock Comics, and if you're pas­sion­ate about this dirty, dirty hobby of ours, there prob­a­bly isn't any com­pelling rea­son for you to either.