2020 Round Up Time!
(Thumbnail image of Batman fighting zombies as rough approximation of the challenges of 2020)
Where to begin? I started this year with one of my goals being to blog regularly. Seemed to be going relatively ok and then March Happened.
It hasn’t been easy, but things are finally relatively calm, so it is time to start posting here again.
First of all, our friends Maker Table here in Denton made us an awesome little ad that you can check out right now over at the More Fun Comics and Games Facebook page! You’ll be seeing this ad running around our social media pages in the coming months, we hope you enjoy it as much as we did when we first saw it.
I guess next I’ll address the biggest elephant in the room that I haven’t had much time to discuss here recently, namely how is More Fun doing in the face of COVID? The short answer is that, all things considered, we’re not doing bad at all. We have the support of so many locals who have really stepped up, combined with the fact that our product lines tend to be things people would enjoy at home anyway, to help us navigate the ups and downs of the last year. We’ve seen a big uptick in miniatures and model kits, which makes lots of sense. Barring something completely unexpected derailing everything, we expect to survive until things are “normal” again, and hopefully we’ll be thriving once that happens.
The OTHER elephant in the room? Yeah, let’s talk DC Comics for a minute here. If you don’t know all the details, Brian Hibbs did a comprehensive run down, including a great deal of historical context, over here. That said, while what has happened with DC this year isn’t entirely unprecedented, it was certainly unexpected. Marvel’s missteps with distribution in the 90’s was such a disaster, it was hard to fathom a similar series of events play out, yet here we are. It is notable that it just didn’t happen out of the blue, either. It happened in the middle of a vast majority of retailers simply struggling to figure out how to survive.
That said, DC is but a drop in the bucket compared to the challenges DC/WB/AT&T is facing. Hibbs’ article was published before WB announced they would be putting their entire 2021 movie slate to stream on HBOmax, which prompted furious backlash from many, including Christopher Nolan. If WB is willing to make a move that actively infuriates a director whose movies routinely make more money than the entire comic business does in a couple years (not DC sales, literally the entire market of every publisher combined), well, let’s just say that their concerns are much bigger than us.
I’m mostly disappointed in the dismissal of several people at DC who I had become friends with over the years. Virtually the entire direct sales department was jettisoned in the last six months, and that is hundreds of years of experience and knowledge out the door.
As for More Fun and DC? We’ll still be stocking DC going forward. We and many of you love many of those characters and creators and want to keep following them. I hope that, when things settle down, DC is able to come up with some strategies and plans that map out where things are headed and help support the comic business. but I’m also realistic and don’t expect anything near a return to the days of DC being the gold standard of specialty market publishers. It is simply how things go sometimes.
We moved the Game Center back to the original digs back in November and are now up and running four days a week there. A question I’m frequently asked is about when we expect to host events again. To be very clear, my plan is to host in store events and play again when Wizards of the Coast starts running large in person events again. WotC (backed by Hasbro) has a lot more money on the line to run events than I do, and they also have a lot more lawyers to fight potential lawsuits for endangering customers or staff. I will follow their lead on this front. We encourage everyone to stay home and play with close family and friends who are being safe and cautious during the pandemic. Also, check out the myriad methods out there for playing online via webcams. For example, Tolarian Community College has a great video that introduces you to playing Commander online, check it out!
In 2020 we saw the opening of More Fun Toys! just a few doors down from our original comic and game store, and the response has been great so far! If you have dropped in, I encourage you to stop by again in the future. In spite of the fact that I had the toy store in my head for several years, the opportunity to open came quite suddenly, and I have been moving as quickly as I could. That said, lots of products and fixtures are delayed due to the issues surrounding the pandemic. As a result, the product mix is shifting daily as stuff manages to arrive, so the store may look quite different, even by the time you read this!
I’m going to get back to work here, but thank all of you for your time and support! We really appreciate it and look forward to what we can do together in 2021!
- Tim