Comic Attitudes

Kathy Mullen and Tim Schwindinger are betting there's an increasingly sophisticated customer base for comic books and a new kind of retail environment in which to buy them. The good news: Kathy and Tim may be right. The bad news: some big established companies think Kathy and Tim are right, too

Few things lift Kathy Mullen's spirits as much as the death of Superman, last November. Not that Mullen has a vendetta against the caped comic-book idol. On the contrary, she and her husband, Tim Schwindinger, have staked their livelihood on Clark Kent's alter ego and his fellow superheroes. As proprietors of Comic Attitudes, an $813,000 minichain of two comic-book stores with headquarters in Piscataway, N.J., Mullen and Schwindinger are more likely to be aware of recent events in the lives of Spidey, Hulk, Sandman, and Captain America than events in the lives of their family and friends.

"Superman died in a giant fight with a space alien called Doomsday, who basically came just to wreak havoc. And he died saving Metropolis," relates Schwindinger. "After a last kiss from Lois," adds Mullen. Their cause for celebration, then? "We sold out -- 1,000 copies of the Death of Superman issue in nine hours," he says.

Since the seventh grade 31-year-old Schwindinger has been hooked on comic books' serial nature, which appeals to the collector in him. "Give me something with number 17 on it, and I want to pick up numbers one through 16," he says. Schwindinger began following the adventures of Spider-Man when the webbed wonder was a teenager. Years later, bored with his job as an administrator in South Brunswick's recreation department, Schwindinger took to hitting comic-book conventions on the weekends, trading, selling, and upgrading his collection.

Conversations with distributors and retailers at the weekend shows, as well as reconnaissance visits to some local retailers, convinced Schwindinger people were making money at his hobby. Besides, Mullen, his girlfriend at the time, was less than thrilled at the prospect of spending endless weekends rising at 5 a.m., loading up the car with comic books, and heading off to yet another convention. So the two decided to draw up a business plan for a comic-book store and leased a 1,300-square-foot space in a newly renovated New Brunswick mixed-use project.

Mullen and Schwindinger then spent $35,000 (from personal loans, including one from Mullen's father) to paint, carpet, and furnish the space and buy inventory. Precisely six months after the couple noticed the For Lease sign, Comic Attitudes opened its doors for business, on November 15, 1989.

The mission statement of Comic Attitudes' business plan outlines an ambitious goal: "to become the first and dominant national comic-book specialty-store chain . . . to usher in mainstream acceptance of comic books as entertainment." To accomplish that Schwindinger and Mullen are looking to raise $2 million to expand to 25 stores in the Northeast by 1997, with the eventual goal of becoming a 400-store nationwide chain. They plan to open 1,000-square-foot stores in upscale malls and supplement them with larger superstores in less costly locations.

"Six months ago I read a book called Beyond Entrepreneurship: Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company," remarks Mullen, a 36-year-old former nurse. "One of the things it said was to pick for your mission a 'big hairy, audacious goal.' I think 400 stores fits that," she deadpans. Endlessly upbeat, Mullen is quick to point out that of the approximately 6,000 specialty comic-book retailers today, no one leads the pack. There are 500 multiple-store operations in North America, though none are larger than eight stores. To date there is no such thing as a true comic-book specialty-store chain.

But the race is on.

Despite the fact that they typically showcase guys in skintight suits punching each other out, comic books are serious business. The consensus among aficionados of the art form is that it's a nearly $800-million industry in the United States if sales of specialty products like Batman figures are included. About $600 million of those revenues are generated by the direct market, specialty retailers like Comic Attitudes. The remainder comes from the independent distribution market -- the newsstands, Wal-Marts, and K marts of the country. Roughly 800 titles are published annually, 75% of them by the industry's Big Two: Marvel Comics (which puts out tales of Spider-Man and X-Men) and DC Comics (which chronicles the exploits of Superman, Batman, and Swamp Thing). Revenues for the direct market have doubled three times during the past 20 years and are on track to double again over the next 5, according to industry consultant Melchior Thompson of Burlingame, Calif.

"The comic-book industry today is like the Oklahoma land rush," declares Thompson. Contenders in the race include everyone from the Blockbuster Videos of the world to mom-and-pop stores like Comic Attitudes.

In terms of household penetration the industry has slipped from its golden age, in the 1940s, when comic books were in 90% of all U.S. homes with children, to about 50% today. Even so, signs of comics' increasing presence in society abound. Comics grace the silver screen and the TV screen, the hallowed auction halls of Sotheby's and the literary academy. (The 1992 Pulitzer Prize for literature was won by a comic book, Maus, which chronicles the Holocaust.) Even Wall Street has been affected: Marvel went public in July 1991. The U.S. Army even publishes a comic book that teaches soldiers how to load a gun.

Comics are no longer just for adolescents, says Schwindinger, and recent demographic studies bear him out: while comic-book readers are typically males from ages 8 to 45, 67% of comic-book consumers are over 18 years old. The typical adult consumer has above-average levels of education and affluence and spends $1,200 a year on his (or increasingly, her) hobby. While Comic Attitudes wants to serve all kinds of customers, its tidy upscale stores are designed to appeal to older, affluent, and more-educated readers.

Mullen and Schwindinger think the industry is ripe for a make-over. "Most retailers have the approach I used to have," says Schwindinger. "They have a love for comic books, and their store's an extension of their hobby. They think that the customer is going to come even if their store is located in a lousy neighborhood and looks like the bottom of somebody's shoe. They don't understand that they should have a nice place for their customers to come to."