Stores Nationwide Celebrate Comic Books Saturday

Comic book stores nationwide are celebrating the industry today on National Free Comic Book Day.

Over the last decade or so, comic book characters have been taking over the silver screen in movies like “Spiderman,” “The Dark Knight,” “V for Vendetta,” and this summer's upcoming “Green Lantern.”

“The thing about comics is really they’re movies on paper,” said Scott Rudge, owner of in Westlake. “If you go into the production process and look at the storyboard, that’s essentially a comic book. So in comics you’ll see panels drawn that are very cinematic with different view points, using lighting and shading.”

Rudge said comics are also a great source of original stories for movie studios.

“Up to this point, they’ve been fairly resistant to the idea, but it turns out that he number of original stories is endless, and Hollywood has run out of ideas,” he said.

But although comics are being adapted into screenplays, the actual comic industry hasn’t changed much, especially the customers. Rudge said the majority of his customers are men in between 20 and 50 years old.

“When I was a kid in the 60s and in the 70s, comics were being written for my age group. They were for younger and teenage boys,” he said. “Unfortunately, that demographic is not a huge buyer of comics anymore. They have videogames and DVDs and a million other things.”

From Archie, which started in 1941, to Sonic the Hedgehog who made the jump from video games to comics in 1991, and Disney, kids’ comics haven’t changed much.

“The same stuff that was popular 20 years ago is still popular now with younger kids,” Rudge said. “It seems that’s fixed.”

“I started reading with comic books,” Rudge said, noting that he is not alone. “A lot of little boys start reading with comics.”

“You get a slow reader or you get a kid that’s resistant to it and sometimes comics are the thing that breaks through,” he said.

But shops are working to develop younger comic book readers and attract a wider audience.

“If they don’t the industry is going to disappear,” Rudge said

Rudge himself is taking a new approach to the market, moving the Astound Comics store online under the new name Comics Fast. The new wesbite will be up June 1 at comicsfast.com. For updates, check out their Facebook page.