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Pulp Fiction ComicsIt's been just over five years since Pulp Fiction Comics opened - in a field where three stores in the one town could be considered overcrowding, that's something of an achievement. It goes a little further than just business stability though, with the store's recent celebratory quiz night seeing almost 250 people turn up. So how do you foster a community like that? "I think that's just down to attitude," says owner Peter Moore. For anyone who's ever been into a comic store before, that should pretty much explain the difference between Pulp Fiction and other stores - it's an environment where you won't find yourself greeted with an inexplicable silence, or derisive and suspicious stares. Let's face it: comics retail has a bad reputation, and it's not exactly an undeserved one. "It doesn't matter what someone's reading," Moore notes. "I know that when I wanted to go into comic stores years and years ago, I'd feel a little sheepish ordering something that I knew may not be their flavour." And so, in January of 2004, Moore opened the store in an attempt to create something that provided "services that the other stores weren't" - somewhere people could "wander in and ask about things". "It's a pleasure to serve a customer," he comments simply, "be it someone who's spending $5 or $500. It's meant to be a fun, exciting industry - it's a colourful industry - and that's maybe one of the reasons I thought things were a little lacking here in Adelaide. I just thought we could do with comics being exciting again. And people can wander in and ask about things - we're not going to judge people on what they read, or whether we like it or not. It's completely understood that people have different tastes. We've got a couple of fantastic employees - we've surrounded the store with excellent helpers and excellent staff. No one's aloof to anyone else. It's just exactly what I would want a comic store to be like if I were to come in and order something. "We really just saw that there were services within the industry that weren't being provided," he emphasises, "and wanted to be the ones to provide them; selections of graphic novels, and things like that. We do focus on graphic novels, though we do get the weeklies in as well - we just thought Adelaide could do with a bigger range." Part of that range is also a large selection of local and independent comics, which represent a share of the store business that Moore is understandably proud of. "While a third of our sales are from the traditional superhero stuff," he explains, "a third of it's manga and a third of it is made up of all the other graphic novels and comic books under the sun. You could put that under alternative, or whatever - all the other material that isn't superhero, which is the area that I thought was lacking in Adelaide." On top of that, there's also the work Moore has been doing outside of the shop itself, including a quest to introduce graphic novels into libraries as far away as the Riverland and the Yorke Peninsula: "We're part of the Premier's Reading Challenge in terms of selecting what kinds of graphic novels make it onto that." And then there's the monthly meetings at the Grace Emily that have been instrumental in getting local creators publishing contracts. "We've been doing it for four years. A lot of writers and artists have had the chance to get together and create material, and we've had Scholastic representatives and people from other publishers." Oh, and also the annual Instantaneous Exhibition: "We've raised over $10,000 for homeless people over four exhibitions, with the fifth coming at the start of May, on the 4th at the Grace." Those undertakings might not be directly part of the shop's goings-on, but they're undoubtedly connected - more than anything else, it's things like that which have fostered the shop's community and repuation. "I think the most important advertisement that you can never buy is word of mouth," muses Moore. "Something positive, three people might hear, but something negative might be heard by ten people." |