Time Pals
The Time Pals are geek dads with bad takes on every facet of retro pop culture. Releasing episodes twice a month, the Time Pals topics range from retro video games, nostalgic movies, classic toys, and vintage comic books. But never pro-wrestling.
...Okay, sometimes pro-wrestling.
Time Pals
Time Pals Interview Joe Field (Creator of Free Comic Book Day and Owner of the Legendary Flying Colors Comics)
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🦸♂️ Free Comic Book Day is May 2, 2026! 🦸♂️
This week, the Time Pals sit down with Free Comic Book Day founder Joe Field to talk about the origins of one of comics’ biggest annual events, how Flying Colors Comics became a beloved, community-first shop, his role as co-owner of WonderCon—and, of course, the stories behind some of his favorite comics and artists.
Find out:
• What was the rarest item to ever enter the shop?
• The comic that hooked him and started it all (and it involves a broken arm!)
• How Stockton, CA became the birthplace of the Fantastic Four
• Stan Lee delivering the most Stan Lee quote ever
• Underrated comics you should be reading
…and so much more!
This episode is packed with heart, history, and pure comics love. Don’t miss it!
Check out Flying Colors Comics in Concord, CA: https://www.flyingcolorscomics.com/
And be sure to take part in Free Comic Book Day on May 2 at participating stores.
The Time Pals Podcast is available everywhere you get your podcasts.
#FreeComicBookDay #FlyingColorsComics #JoeField #FantasticFour #JimLee #ThienPham #GeneYang #Comics #TimePalsPodcast #GeekCulture #Podcast
Minor economy at this other day, meet technical e the owner of one of the most legendary economics chapters and a country. It also happens to be mining general children. And help the last one of the digital conditions and california.
SPEAKER_04I try to try my best to call back to, you know, call back to those those shadow serials.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, this is not the first time Joe has seen or heard this, I promise you. We basically have it separated in halves. We want to talk about the free comic book day and stuff, but we really want to talk to you about actual comics and go into that. Joe Field, so you started in radio advertising back in the late 70s and into the 80s, and where you got this idea to get Stockton, uh California, named as the official hometown and birthplace of the Fantastic Four, and you led a very successful campaign for it. How did that idea come to be?
SPEAKER_01Uh well, it I was a comic book fan when I was uh working in Stockton at Kjoy Radio, and when Marvel's 25th anniversary was about coming up, I noticed that they were mentioning that the Fantastic Four were from a place called Central City, California. Now, Central City was mentioned in Fantastic Four number one way back in 1961, but Central City, California didn't get mentioned until sometime in the mid-70s. So uh, but when it came time for the 25th anniversary, they mentioned Central City, California. And knowing that all these heroes were uh usually based in real cities, New York or Chicago or Palos Verdes, California or whatever it was, um, I thought they should correct this horrible, horrible continuity mistake and and place the Fantastic Four in a real city, a real city that needed some heroes, and that was Stockton, California, which if you look at it is pretty much the most central city in California. So I put a uh I got together with the guys at Al's Comic Shop there, uh still on Pacific Avenue in Stockton, and Al Sr. is still behind the counter at 98 years old.
SPEAKER_04No, no, yes.
SPEAKER_01Yes, go go go see Al. And there's a huge Fantastic Four mural on the side of the building, too. So that's worth seeing. But I got together with Al and his son Mike, who was uh actually the guy who wanted the comic shop, his dad just happens to run it now, um, and uh asked if I could put a petition in there uh asking people to get behind this idea to have the Fantastic Four's hometown be Stockton, California. And we got hundreds of people to sign it. And then I did the sort of uh um uh out there kind of thing where I I attended a Stockton City Council meeting in front of all the city council members, I asked them to um pass a resolution asking Marvel to name Stockton as the home of the Fantastic Four. And after some snide comments, which you can see on my YouTube page, you can see it. Oh, cool. You can see me with with actual hair color uh standing in front of the Stockton City Council, and you you know, the the mayor wanted to be invisible woman, and you know, uh because she wanted to get away from things. And um anyway, so um, yeah, the uh after those comments, it was unanimously passed by the city council. And when that happened, the national news wires got a hold of the story. Associated Press and United Press International both ran stories uh about this, and I had reporters coming at me uh for weeks. Um uh it was it was a lot of fun. I I probably did a hundred or so interviews uh over the course of weeks. One of those reporters uh was a well-respected features reporter for the LA Times named Charles Chuck Hillinger. And uh Chuck uh actually, with a photographer, flew to Stockton to spend a day with me, had me climb the fire escape of the tallest building there so they could take photos of me looking like a superhero. Um all kinds of really weird stuff like that. And when his bit ran in the paper, it uh one of the things he did was he contacted Stan Lee. And uh Stan, in his uh inimitable way, said, uh, when he was asked if uh if he was behind the initiative, he said, It's our job to save universes every day. This is the least we can do for little Rostock.
SPEAKER_05That's the most Stanley answer I've ever heard in my life. Yes.
SPEAKER_01So that's that uh then he came to town and uh we were on the steps of City Hall with TV cameras from every TV station in Northern California, uh newspaper reporters, radio reporters. Uh we uh there were probably more reporters there than there were actual pe uh other people uh just there to see the event, but it was it was a fun event. And then we did a signing at Al's Comic Shop, and then we went to dinner, uh actually uh went to lunch, and Stan and the guy dressed as Spider-Man, where the three of us uh all went uh out for a meal, and uh Stan said to me, You did a great job on this promotion, kid. And uh I I said, Well, thanks, St. If you ever need a PR guy, just give me a call. And a few months later he did. So I wound up working for him on a freelance basis doing public relations for his wife's first novel. And that's what got the attention of these guys who were starting to do uh a convention in the Bay Area, which became WonderCon. It was originally called the Wonderful World of Comics Convention, and it was a little bit long, uh so uh WonderCon uh rolls off the tongue a whole lot better. And they had me come on to do advertising and promotions for them. And in short order, I became one of the owners of the convention. And Mike Friedrich and I owned that for uh about 15 years before we sold it to Comic Con. Okay.
SPEAKER_05Amazing. And I used to attend WonderCon when it was in the Muscone, but it was a wonderful convention. That one and uh alternative press expo way back in San Francisco.
SPEAKER_01And the reason uh uh the reason we sold it in 2001 when it was still in Oakland was that the the cost for moving the show to San Francisco uh were about triple what they were in Oakland. Um and that was just something that Mike and I weren't willing to do. So um uh we wound up finding uh a buyer in Comic-Con who had no problem moving it to San Francisco, and then uh a number of years later, uh the city of San Francisco decided they didn't want a comic book convention there, so they wouldn't give Comic-Con dates far enough in advance to plan WonderCon. And that's what moved WonderCon to Anaheim, unfortunately.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, that was a tragedy for us too, honestly.
SPEAKER_04So now we know who to to to funnel our anger at for us losing WonderCon. Exactly. I just I just assume they're like Moscone Center. No, we like the the the weather in Southern California. No, we have we get to blame San Francisco now.
SPEAKER_01That's right. That's right. Okay, and it's and it's it's actually in the charter of the Moscone Center for them to do community events. But the reason they gave for not wanting to give the dates far enough in advance is they didn't think that we sold enough four-star hotel rooms or restaurants. So, you know, uh everyone going to the show was going to McDonald's or Buka de Beppo. They weren't going to uh the top of the mark or or knob hill or whatever. So um, you know, understand that, uh, but it still flies in the face of what the actual charter is for the convention stuff.
SPEAKER_04That's got it. Yeah, well, so now we know if House of Prime Ribs suffers, we all suffer. That's right. Um, so so with with Wanacon, with what it became, what was the like what was the original vision for it before it became kind of that that I mean it was it was very large at its at its kind of height up here before. Oh, I mean, even bigger now, I guess.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, our goal uh w we had a basic uh thing that we wanted to accomplish. We wanted WonderCon to be the friendliest of the large conventions in the country, and also to be an actual convention where we would have publishers, we'd have uh creators, we'd have retailers and fans. Uh so an actual convening of the entire industry. Um, most Comic Cons these days are uh you know mostly about B and C level movie celebrities or people that you saw on TV when you were 14 that you want to pay $50 for an autograph for. That to me is not a Comic Con. Yeah so uh but but we really wanted it to be focused on comics. We had movies, we had celebrities, we had all that, but the focus was always on comics and the comic creators. They were always up front and center for us. And and we did, I think, really accomplish what we wanted to, which was to be the friendliest of the big shows in the country. Okay.
SPEAKER_04And what like at the time, what were some of the other big shows that you were kind of striving to be up against, as it were?
SPEAKER_01Well, San Diego's the uh the big one, obviously. Yeah, uh Chicago Comic-Con was huge at that point. Um, I don't think there was a huge New York con. I think that had there was a big Apple Con. There were a couple of other things that were good-sized events there, but not super long running. Even New York Comic-Con is uh has only been around 20 or so years, I think. But it was it was primarily Chicago and San Diego. Heroes Con in North Carolina is also another one that is one of the friendliest comics-focused shows, and they've been they've been going for more than 40 years. So um that was that was also one we were trying to aspire to. Okay.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Awesome. So uh after your experience with working the conventions, what made you decide in 1990, uh, sorry, excuse me, 1988 that that that was the right time to open up your first store?
SPEAKER_01Okay, well, it's that's a little bit of a complicated question, but I'll try to give you a relatively short answer. And that is that I would go to these meetings planning the convention, and it would be 12 to 15 people shoved into a huge booth at Denny's in San Leandro, and we're all doing our own thing. We're talking comics, we're trying to put this convention together. And some of them were retailers, there were a couple of people who were on the creative side of comics, there were others who were more into the anime and and the film end of uh of the convention. But they were all they were all really enjoying what they were doing. And while I had a good time in radio for a while, things were really starting to fall apart for the station I worked for uh once the uh original owner decided to retire and pass the baton on to his uh know-nothing nephew, um uh who basically you know torpedoed the station in fairly short order. So I was able to get out before any of that happened, but I just wasn't having as much fun in radio as as I was in the early years, and I saw these other guys having all kinds of great fun. Well, I had to go through the process of do I open a comic book store or what do I do career-wise? I had offers to go to other radio stations, I turned those down. I tried to at um to interview with uh San Francisco advertising agencies to be a copywriter and uh do some work there, but uh they all said start in the mail room kid, and I really couldn't do that because my wife and I had our family and I I really couldn't afford to start over.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01Um but starting over with a comic shop is not the you know road to riches, and uh and so that was actually probably the most the most high risk uh uh choice I could have made. But what it also did is it uh allowed us after the store had been open for five years to move back to the area where we grew up. Um my wife spent her teenage years in Arinda, I'm a Moraga native, and we really just wanted to be in Contra Costa, and and so we it it worked out well to be able to open the shop and subsequently move the family, although those were pretty five pretty hard years commuting six days a week from Stockton to Concord.
SPEAKER_05Oh yeah. Oh yeah, jeez. Uh because I I'm from Concord and the fact that flying colors is something we could hang our hats on was amazing, but I didn't I had no idea at all that it had to you're driving that distance every single time.
SPEAKER_01That's incredible. If you see pictures of me from that area, you'll go, that guy doesn't look healthy.
SPEAKER_04I'm gonna stop complaining about my Hayward to Berkeley commute now.
SPEAKER_05Um I'm not gonna hear the end of it, doesn't matter what you say. Um, so with with the vision of flying colors, what did you want flying colors to be that the other shops at the time weren't?
SPEAKER_01Uh well, okay, so my family, my wife and I have three daughters. At the time that we opened the shop, my three daughters were four, six, and eight years old. Is that right? Wow. Uh no, I take that. Yeah, they were four, six, and eight years old. And when we were going around looking at comic shops, trying to develop a plan for the kind of shop we wanted, they were my marketing research team. We would go to a shop, we'd all get out of the station wagon, I'd tell them, go in and shop the store, tell us what you like when we get back in the car, tell us what you like and didn't like. And we learned a lot from that. We took a lot of notes, and they really helped form the basis of a comic shop that was accessible and open and friendly to the entire family, not just the the fanboy element. Right. And uh so from the very beginning it was, I always uh believed that comics were this great entertainment for everybody, but in the 80s especially, it had really kind of narrowed itself down to uh to hardcore fanboys. There was a there was sort of sort of a boom and bust in the 80s when it uh the turtles came out in 84 and all these black and white things started to hit the market, and then that market kind of crashed in 87. You know, there was it was wide open to be able to do something that was a little bit different than what anyone else was doing with the comic shop. So, you know, our original tag one tagline was Flying Colors, the one comic shop for the whole family.
SPEAKER_04Oh, nice. Yeah. I mean, it's it's one of the things I do remember about the original location is that it was, you know, even when I first strolled in there at I think 11 or 12, um, you know, the staff was very friendly, the staff was very helpful, but I ended, you know, I felt I didn't really need, you know, I was able to find exactly what I needed. I mean, I even remember still in the back corner from where the original cash register and checkout was, I bought, I bought a Wolverine one hanging off that old border of of big number books that you had running around the whole store there. And it was just easy to just go, oh, okay, there's all the there's all the really kind of, you know, at the time, I think I paid 35 bucks for an 11 like 35 bucks for a comic book. Oh, yeah, oh my God. You know? And I was just like, that's all the good, that's all the really crazy stuff up there. But yeah, it was it just had such a great lap. And the new stuff, I mean the new store does too. And I I love it. I was I came out for the uh uh the Jim Lee signing you had a a while ago, and it was very easy, you know, just to get in and out. You guys had a ton of people there that day, and it just was managed perfectly.
SPEAKER_01Jim was amazing that day. He's always been a friend of the shop, and uh I've I've known him now for almost 40 years. You know, when he was breaking in at Marvel, that's when I first met him. Um I I I I always uh you know remind him that I introduced him to Stan Lee originally. And when when I did, Stan uh I said, Stan, I want you to meet uh one of the young artists who's now working for Marvel. He's doing Alpha Flight. I want you to meet Jim Lee. And Stan said, My long lost son.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. That's awesome. That is um well, real real quick, because for for me, I went to Ignatius Valley High. So your store is literally on the road beforehand, after, and in the middle. And they also had a Baskin Robbins. So every little league game, it's flying colors. Every time I have an older brother who got me into comics, like a lot of people, your sibling does, and that was where he would take us whenever he was sick of us. It would be like, I need to, I'm forced to take my younger brother somewhere, shove me into flying colors, and we would run around and like, you know, look for something. It it has such a strong connection with me to this day that I took my oldest daughter and my youngest daughter for the first time to your new location. Because by the time they got old enough to appreciate it, you had already moved. And so, and I was able to go and just go around and be like, I used to come here when it was here, back when I used to walk and used to bicycle and used to do all this stuff. Oh, yeah. And now I still do. You guys are still the place where if I'm gonna go, I'm going right there back to Concord every time.
SPEAKER_01Well, the people in the East County seem to like this location because it's just a freeway jump over here and not having to deal with Kirker Pass or any of you know Marsh Creek Road or anything like that. Anyway, I I yeah, uh originally you know, we looked at all kinds of different locations for the for the shop. Uh, we looked all over Contra Costa County, and I really zeroed in on that one spot at Treat and Oak Grove. And the the funny thing about it is that shop was not available, it was not on the market to lease. Oh wow. Um, but I noticed that every time I went by, the vacuum cleaner store that was there was never open. Okay. And so after, you know, and our process of opening this uh of getting a store ready to open was almost two years long. So this is over the course of a lot of different trips then to look at locations. And I would always see that that wasn't uh available, uh, that it wasn't open for business. So I I went to the uh property owner and I and I said uh that vacuum cleaner store never seems like they're open. Uh he said, Oh no, that well, they have a lease, and uh I'm sorry, uh if anything happens, I'll let you know. And I was at Comic-Con in uh July of 1988 when he called and said, I have just evicted the the vacuum cleaner store. Would you like that space? I went, we're done. Okay, we're going. And the funny thing about it is, as a comics fan, it was the perfect location to go into because it wasn't just a vacuum cleaner store, it was a Kirby vacuum cleaner store.
SPEAKER_05Oh my god. That's amazing.
SPEAKER_01So it it had it had the imprint of the of the king of comics on on the store. Uh we we had a good long run there for 36 years, uh, but boy, are we so happy to be where we are now in the new spot.
SPEAKER_05Being a comedy fan, I thought you were going to say it was a front for like a Russian mob.
SPEAKER_01Well, hey, when you were when you were talking about uh uh uh Baskin Robbins and you know dropping the kids off and all that. Like we we had it right there. There were three vices in a row. We had Baskin Robbins, a liquor store, and us.
SPEAKER_04And across the across the street for a while, across Oak Grove, yeah, there was there was a blimpy subs. I'd go get lunch too. Yeah, round table was right behind it. Everything you used you just live, you'd be down there all day, just comics, ice cream, lunch. Oh, I was, yeah. Awesome. I mean, so so I mean you've been you've been such a a big part of the community there. And and like what's it like for you being able to see, you know, somebody who came to you as a child, you know, coming back to you now as an adult, coming back to you now as an adult, even with their own kids as well. And you know, it's it's got there's got to be something that just just warms the cockles there, right? Oh, it does.
SPEAKER_01Um I see three generations coming in now. It's it it's it's crazy. People who were shopping with us when we first opened in 1988 now have grandkids and they're bringing their grandkids in. So it's yeah, we saw kids grow up and we're seeing those kids, and that's a lot of fun. It's hard for me to keep up, to be honest, with it, because sometimes people will only visit once every few months or once a year or whatever, and people change a lot in a short period of time. And and there's a a lot of people for me to remember. So uh, you know, I'm I'm getting to the point where there's more falling out of my brain than I can. So, you know, I always need to be reminded, you know, just refresh my memory. Did I was I nice to you?
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_01But it's awesome, it's awesome to have families come in and that it is a happy piece of their childhood or or teenage years. I I know we were really a fortress of solitude for a lot of kids who didn't have another place to go. And that really uh means a lot to me because when I was a kid, there weren't comic shops, but there was a pool hall down the street from my house. And the the the couple that ran it, Ma and Len, uh bless their souls, they they took the kids in and And treated them royally and cared about them. I bought my first car from them.
SPEAKER_05Oh wow.
SPEAKER_01And when we were uh getting ready to open the the shop, my wife, uh she's uh as sweet as the day is long, and she she said her prayer was let us be a mom and lynn porter for the comics community. That's awful.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, that's amazing.
SPEAKER_01We see that play out on a pretty regular basis. It's a it's a it's it's a really cool thing. And I I I I I love that we have a space in the community. We add a lot of character to Concord. Concord's been really good to us. Uh the community's been very good to us, and we, you know, had that option to retire uh rather than move the shop, but I just honestly could not quit on this community that we've built. I I couldn't I I couldn't disenfranchise so many people by uh just walking away.
SPEAKER_04That makes a lot of sense, too. And and I think I think everybody kind of held their breath for a little while because it was it it's it's a decision that you had to weigh, absolutely, for for yourselves and and after how long you'd had the shop open. But I you know I think a lot of people were well, I mean, not I think. I know a lot of people were very happy that you decided to move and and keep the shop open.
SPEAKER_01And they came with us, you know. We we uh put together the Flying Colors Hero Society to help people uh for people to help us uh with the building fund of the new shop, and they turned out royally. And I'm so grateful for all of them for doing that. It's you know, that's why we've got the the the big thing hanging in the store with everybody's name on it who who uh joined the Hero Society. Uh and without them we couldn't have done it. So it is it it's really a community business uh in a lot of different ways.
SPEAKER_05Oh, yeah, we're we're on there actually.
SPEAKER_04We we did that, yeah, yeah, absolutely. The time, the time pals is the four flying colors. You're heroes.
SPEAKER_05No, you guys are heroes. I finally picked up my gift after like not picking it up for like a year, and it's I didn't know it was like two boxes of things. I was like, oh, I expected like you know, like a handful of things, and I'm like, you guys are crazy generous. Like that was amazing. And then I thought about I'm like, does Joe know they're being generous? Because he might have wanted to pull them aside and be like, there might be too much love coming back in my way. So after about 15 years of of being a comic book retailer and creating some massive milestones, you helped establish the organization Comics Pro, which I don't think a lot of people are necessarily aware of. So we were kind of really curious about what led to the initial forming of it, who was involved, and how it was all brought together.
SPEAKER_01Well, okay, so this will all also go back to those early meetings that we had for WonderCon. There was a retailer group in the Bay Area. At that point, it was called the Northern California Comic Dealers Association, NCCDA, and where retail comics retailers would get together once a month or once every couple of months, they'd have a pizza, they'd talk over business, they might do some trading, share some information, that sort of thing. It was uh just a way to gain knowledge and experience uh from other retailers uh who were going through the same kinds of things. There are trade associations in almost every kind of industry these days, but every time trade associations started in the comics business, it would fall apart when the business took a downturn. So NCCDA was the first one tried in the Bay Area, and then there was another one I was a part of called Backer, B A C R, Bay Area Comic Retailers, and then we merged with another group from Backees. It was Comic Book Retailers International, and there was another one in the, I think, in the Midwest that was called PACER, the Professional Association of Comic Entertainment Retailers. There were all these attempts to do trade uh organizations, and all of them failed as the business went south. Uh, it wasn't until the early 2000s when things started to look like they were doing okay. And a retailer named Amanda Fisher uh had a store in Missoula, Montana, and she decided that she was going to incorporate and start a new uh retailer trade association because it was definitely needed within the business. So she recruited some of who she considered to be, you know, the top retailers in the country to be a part of the initial board. And uh I was capped as the the first president and I stayed in that role for about 10 years. And uh happy to say that that that organization is now more than 20 years old. It's still going, it's viable. We do a trade show every year. We get a lot of publishers and uh a lot of creators to show up for it. Uh, we had one just uh this uh past uh February in LA. I'm no longer involved on that part of it, uh you know, the the organizational part of the trade association, but I'm still an active member and very proud of the fact that we started something that I didn't have to turn the lights out on because all those previous I was part of one called the Direct Line Group in the 1990s, which was sort of the the secret cabal of top retailers in the in the country. And I was the spokesman. I was uh I had the smallest shop among all these uh uh other retailers. And when the business went south when the uh distribution problems happened in 96 and 97, uh that group dissolved and I was one left to turn off the lights. And I just I knew that if I was gonna get involved with something else, that I did not want to be that guy again, that it was gonna have to be something that had some staying power to it. Fortunately, there are a lot of good volunteers, there's a strong executive director, uh a really good board, and it's been continuously that way um since uh 2004. So yeah, it's a good thing.
SPEAKER_04That that's amazing. Yeah, and I I know um I mean there's a lot of there's a lot of representation from across the entire country, and I think one or two folks in in Canada as well who are active parts of the the board on there. So it's really uh I was looking at it the other day because um somebody I know who owns a comic shop in Oakland is is currently on their board. Um yeah, Aton, Aton from Cape and Capital, yeah, he's uh he's really cool. And and so I was like, oh, it's it's kind of amazing because it's you know it really shows too that that people want to be involved in it and and people across the country want to be involved in it.
SPEAKER_01Well, I think everyone wants to learn more about what their chosen profession is, and the best way to do that is to be with other people who are doing the same thing. And it can be it can be very lonely to be in a shop when the store is closed and you know you're left with looking at the paperwork or looking at the numbers, and what do I do? How do I do this? Well, it's nice to be able to be part of an organization in which you can reach out and talk to other people and learn from them and meet with them on occasion.
SPEAKER_04So, so on to on to our our big upcoming Saturday. Questions about our big upcoming Saturday, free comic book day. Um, so I'm sure, I mean, I'm I'm sure you've done many, many interviews on this subject and have been asked just a couple of them. So I'm sure I'm sure a a good many people know that it was your idea that you submitted. I'm I'm curious because I I I know that it was inspired, you got the idea from a completely different industry to do this free comic book day. So what what what was that inspiration?
SPEAKER_01Basically, the inspiration was I was laid on a deadline. I used to write columns for an industry trade magazine uh uh called Comics and Games Retailer Magazine. And April of 2001, I saw a long line out in front of my shop, and they weren't coming into my store, they were going into Baskin Robbins next door. I uh went and talked to the franchisee and asked her what was going on, and she said it's free scoop night. And uh the next day she told me that they did 1,200 free scoops that night at this shop right next to Flying Colors in Concord, and that her other store, a smaller shop in in Danville, they did another 900 scoops. And I just I thought, uh, if you can give away something for free and draw that kind of a crowd, we we should do this for comics. And I often joke that the only thing cooler than ice cream is comics. And uh, you know, it was what do there were a lot of good things going on in comics after the boom and bust of the 90s and the distribution problems that happened, and then the Marvel bankruptcy and all that kind of stuff. About 2000, 2001, things re things had gotten away from comic book speculation and back into these are really great stories, you've got to read this. So uh, but we had no mechanism to invite people into the shops to see what was going on. And so that was really the impetus for writing that column is is to just create this massive invitation for the world to come in and see what's going on in local comic shops.
SPEAKER_04That's fantastic. Now, because I know it was it was Diamond that really kind of took over and ran everything for. Did they was it like a they reached out to you like, hey, this was your idea?
SPEAKER_01Do you mind if we well, what I did when I when I wrote the original column for the magazine, the the the probably the smartest thing I did was make sure that it got reaction in the same issue. Because when back in the olden days, when magazines got published, if you wanted to write a letter of comment, it wouldn't get published for another two or three months and all the wind would be out of the sales. So I wanted to make sure that uh there was instant reaction to it. So I passed the article on, and my editors did to the to the right people at the different publishers and at Diamond Comic Distributors, who were at that point the basic source for comic books in uh North America. And the response to the article was resoundingly positive. Then a month later, we had a meeting at a convention in Las Vegas, and it was decided what day to put it on and how to make it work. But it was it was really getting that that instant reaction that I think uh really set it off on the right course. And I knew that Diamond was the company to be able to be the center point for it because they were dealing with the retailers, they were dealing with the publishers, they were gonna have to deal with the shipping of lots of free comics. So it was best for them to manage it. Now, I didn't know, you know, uh I never saw their bankruptcy coming or anything, but that's you know, that's all uh uh 20 some odd years later. But there was uh we had a meeting a couple years into the the success of free comic book day, and it was decided that it needed to be trademarked, it needed to we needed to make it legal. And uh they w, you know, they said, Joe, do you want to own this? And I said, I'm not doing the work on it. I think I'm interested in it. So I just uh you know I let it go. There was no money in it. It was it was it was more like I I didn't I didn't need the ego boost of owning a piece of intellectual property that would do me no good financially. So it just made sense for them to have it. When these recent distribution upheavals happened and Diamond went into bankruptcy, it was sold out of bankruptcy to a distributor primarily based in Canada, but now has a base of operations in the US called Universal Distribution. And they're doing some good things with it. And I think uh I think it it'll be in good hands going forward. Awesome. Awesome.
SPEAKER_04So with 2026's free comic book day, there's something a little bit new that they're going into, which I thought was really cool, which was the idea of of inviting in uh game and hobby shops as well to kind of part partake. And I kind of look at that as the you know, the the the wonder twin powers activating of of of nerd culture and nerd hobbies. Um, how do you feel about that?
SPEAKER_01Well, I I honestly don't know that there are going to be a lot of game shops that are gonna be giving away free comics. There are a lot of shops that are hybrid shops that do games and comics or cards and comics. And um, and I'm uh those stores have been a part of Free Comic Workday for for many years. But really, where the the um cooperation comes from is universal distribution has some good relationships with manufacturers of some of the trading uh trading card game products and toys and whatnot. So there's there is some promotional material that's going out to stores that's uh a way for us to sort of just extend the the experience for free comic book day. Whether they reach out to other game stores next year, I don't know what's gonna happen with that. Um what I do know is this is that this is um an event that is really about getting into comic shops. It's not about trying, it's it's uh it I mean I deal with my county library system, and they all they continue to do events after Free Comic Book Day for the next couple of weeks, which is awesome. But that one day, that one day, the first Saturday in May, that is for people to visit real live comic book stores. Um uh and uh I I look at some people in uh are uh some retailers are dealing with the fact that there are one-day conventions that have cropped up on free comic book day. And I couldn't be more ticked off at those uh convention promoters because they're they're they're taking what is a real pop culture holiday and trying to milk it in a different direction. And it and that's just not right. So it's for comic book stores. It was invented and conceived and all of that to get people into comic shops.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I I love it. And it's I I've had the unfortunate timing of missing it for the last four years due to um like earlier, uh early Mother's Day trips and things like that. So I'm uh I've been kind of itching to get back to one for a while. But um I I ran some loose figures just on various reports, and I think there was like a back in 2015 or 16, there was some some numbers published, but um peak years for Free Comic Book Day, 2,500 stores throughout the world, you know, on four different continents. Um some of some stores cite as many as a thousand, uh, a thousand customers coming in. But if we play, we'll play conservatively with the math that I did, we'll say 2,300 stores with 500 people in per day. That's 1.15 million people across the entire world. And the next and one day coming into local comic stores, having fun, meeting their peers, meeting their shop owners, the next closest event in pop culture to that, um, and somebody started arguing with me about this. They were like, well, what about the Super Bowl? I'm like, no, no, no, no, get that crap. No, no, no, that's not a pop culture. No, no, no, no, no, no. Um, the next closest are things like say the Ocomica and Comica in Japan. And those are like, you know, those are pushing 100 to 150,000 and maybe 200,000 now per day. So just just this idea that that one comic event brings, you know, on the low end, over a million people in one day across the span of, you know, call it eight hours of open business, because you know, maybe it's amazing. And that's and that shows just how much you know people love their comics and love their local comic shops.
SPEAKER_01It's uh so the numbers are uh a a little bit, yeah, you you're you're you're close, John. It's it I think at its height, free comic book day reached into 66 countries.
SPEAKER_03Oh wow.
SPEAKER_011.5 million people. There was well in excess of six million comics available for the giveaway. Comic-Con in San Diego is 150,000 plus for the entire five days. It's that's not a daily thing. Oh that's for the whole thing.
SPEAKER_04Oh, I must have misread that statistician.
SPEAKER_01Comic, I think, runs a little over 200,000 and and and has gone to a quarter of a million at some point. The numbers walk in me, you know, is doing the same thing you've been doing. But a number of years I did have some of the inside information looking at at uh at free comic book day and really blown away by that. But I think what's what's not included in that, that I think is also as exciting, is that what Free Comic Book Day has spawned are free comic book days. Now, I don't know uh what's the extent of this is anymore, but uh Germany has its own free comic book day with comics in German. Italy has their own free comic book day. I believe the Philippines had one. Uh there are comics in foreign languages that are free comic book day editions. A number of years ago, I was walking through the San Diego con and a guy tapped me on the shoulder and he has a very had a very strong accent, and he said, I want to thank you so much. Uh and I said, What's that? And he pulled out of his knapsack uh half a dozen comics with a free comic book day logo, the logo that was recognizable, but it was in Italian, and he had given me a bunch of Italian comics. This is so cool. Yeah. I you know, I I've um uh since the time I've opened the shop, one of the things I love about it is being able to nurture new readers, just having somebody come into the store and say, I I don't know anything about this, what can you lead me to? And and I I give them something, or my staff gives them something, and I see them the next day or the next week, and they say, I love that. It's like nurturing one person at a time. Well, free comic book day has had this massive nurturing thing where we're seeing all kinds of new people come into the shops over the course of these years. Even after doing this for 24 years, last year we still had about 200 people come to the store who had never been here before. Oh, fantastic. Either at the old shop or the new shop. So uh there's still a lot of um a lot of people who haven't yet been reached by the comics bug, but we're still trying to get there.
SPEAKER_04Great. Well, uh, before we move on to the section uh of questions we created for for Joe the fan, because we want to pick your brain as a comic fan. I what are Flying Colors plans for free comic book day? What what's what's going to be happening down at the shop?
SPEAKER_01Well, we've got a lot going on. Well, one of the things we're doing this year that's uh new and fun and different and very much community-based is we're doing a food drive for the Monument Crisis Center. Uh we we have a list of items that uh we'd like people to donate, canned foods and that sort of thing. They're all available at Trader Joe's right next to us, so it won't be hard to get them. And for a donation to the food drive, people will get a ticket and we'll draw a winner for a hundred dollar gift card uh from Flying Colors at the end of the day. But really, we just want to uh do as much as we can for the community. Also, as a part of that, we will have a young artist, his name is Ambrose McNeil. He'll be with the Monument Crisis Center and he'll be doing free head sketches for people, taking cash donations if people want to do that. But there's uh there's uh um there's no charge for the for the sketches. Our special guest this year is graphic novelist Tin Fam, who is the uh creator of the award-winning graphic novel Family Style, about his family's journey from Vietnam to the US in the 70s uh up to the current, and it's told through food. And it is, if you haven't read it, it is really beautifully done. It is funny, it's very touching, uh, and it's it's very real. Not only will Tim be here and he'll be signing that graphic novel, uh, I'm sure he'll be signing other things as well, but uh he's also the one who designed our exclusive uh flying colors free comic book day t-shirt. And uh that that had been a tradition with Diamond that they would do an exclusive free comic book day t-shirt every year, uh, get one of the publishers involved or a uh book a creator to do something. And when that didn't happen with the transition from the bankruptcy to the to the new uh company doing free comic book day, I I thought we needed to really step into that breach. So we've got our own t-shirt, and it's really cool. And I think we're already selling a bunch of them, so um, it is limited, so get in here and get it. So we've got that going on. We have we make it a party, there's uh there's cakes and uh all kinds of stuff. So it's just a good community event. And uh I'm uh Trader Joe's will be involved. Uh they'll have a snack stand outside and Starbucks close by. They're gonna they're gonna be uh doing some drinks and and whatnot. It's um uh we're hoping for good weather, we'll see what happens, but um it's you know, uh it's it's gonna be a good time like it always is.
SPEAKER_05Definitely. Raider Shine, it sounds like a fantastic time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and lots of free comics.
SPEAKER_05And lots of free comics. Oh, yeah, that too. That's I forgot about that. Go ahead, Mike. So just like John was saying, we're putting we're forcing him to put away his business hat. So no industry talk, no real retail talk. Just wanted to talk to you as a comic fan.
SPEAKER_04I mean, like like I said, I think when I emailed you, there's there's a whole lot of questions here. If we ask them all, it's just you know, you'll be here for three hours with us. So we'll we'll we'll do a couple of choice picks. Okay. We'll do a couple of choice picks here. But um I definitely wanted to like, do you remember the first comic that really hooked, like really got its hooks into you?
SPEAKER_01Yes. And uh I've told the story before, so bear with me. But uh, this is my comics origin story. Um comics were everywhere when I was a kid. Uh, you know, and I can remember Huckleberry Hound comics or Deputy Dog or, you know, things like that when I was four or five years old. I can remember being at the Russian River on vacation, and I one of our friends had a copy of Amazing Spider Man number 30, the claws of the cat from uh Steve Ditko. It was it was it was cool, but it didn't really hook me at that point. Fourth day of summer, 1967, I'm 11 years old. I'm Teaching a four-year-old kid how to climb trees, and I'm 20 feet up in a tree and I fall out of it. Oh my god. I fall out and my my arm breaks in several places. I I had to go to the hospital. I had to have, you know, had doctors around me putting my arm back in. And there were comics in the hospital. So I spent the night in the hospital and there were comics there. I one of the ones that I remember there was the Fantastic Four issue number 54, uh, which was really cool. Human torch on the cover, and humans were a part of it. It was it it was it was fine, but it was like, okay, what else? Well, when I got home, I was told bed rest for two or three days before uh getting back on the summer thing. And uh the neighbor kids brought little gifts, and one kid brought one of those uh paddle ball things, you know, the the little thing on a string, and it's yeah, like you tried doing that with a broken arm.
SPEAKER_04Because it couldn't have been your bad arm that broke, it had to be the useful one, right?
SPEAKER_01It was my right arm, yeah. So another kid brought me a beanbag frog, and that's good for a few tosses, but you know, sweet idea, okay. But you know, beanbag frog sits in a corner after a very shorter. But my my friend Steve, who's my lifelong buddy, and we've been friends for now more than 60 years, he brought me two comics. He brought me oh wow, he brought me Amazing Spider-Man 51 and Fantastic Four 65. Now, Amazing Spider-Man 51 is the first full appearance of the kingpin, and this is the the month after the famous Spider-Man No More, where he throws his costume in a trash can on. Oh, yeah. But this is he picks up the the costume and takes care of the kingpin and this issue and the next. The Fantastic Four issue, 65, is the first appearance of Ronan the Accuser, who some people may remember from the Guardians movies. Yeah. Uh very cool. Uh so Jack Kirby, um, John Ramita, and Stan Lee, those those were the two comics my my friend gave me. I must have read those a hundred times each that summer. That was the summer of 1967. Everybody thinks that that was the summer of love, but I got news for you. That was the summer of comics. And we would go everywhere looking for comics and save any pennies we could to try to buy these little 12 cent pieces of wonder. It was uh it was a magical time.
SPEAKER_05That's incredible. And what a pool. Like those are your first one. That's that's amazing. Yeah. So uh what were some of your other go-to characters then? Like the your pool list before you knew what a pool list was.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um, well, I really I started as a big Marvel fan. And so the entire Marvel line, at that point, there weren't a lot of titles coming out. Um, when I started in 1967, uh, this is something I only found out many years later. Marvel was prevented from um uh publishing tons of stuff because their distributor was owned by DC Comics.
SPEAKER_03So they didn't really either. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So they were limited to, I think it was 16 titles a month. And what so they had probably 30 titles, and most of them were bi-monthly. There were some that were monthly, Spider-Man Fantastic Four, some of those. Their output was relatively limited until 1968, when that distribution deal ended. They got another distributor, and then the flood happened. Tales of Suspense, it was Iron Man and Captain America, all of a sudden became Captain America 100 and Iron Man number one. A Mariner and a Hulk were separated from Tales to Astonish. It was a Silver Surfer series debuted, which is one of my all-time favorites. There's but I also started to really get into who was doing the comics. That meant a lot to me. And I noticed that some of the people who were working on these comics weren't just working on Marvel comics. Um Wally Wood may have done some stuff for Marvel, but he also did Tower comics with the Thunder Agents. And I uh and he also worked on Superboy for for DC comics. Uh Frank Robbins uh did Captain America years later, but in that late 60s period, he was writing some really good Batman stories and uh and Superboy stories that were drawn by other people. But he was somebody who came from comic strips, something I only found out many years after this. But um so uh I was pretty ravenous for all all kinds of comics and uh then discovered a comic shop in 1968, I think it was, uh a little store that opened a few miles from us, uh that was open a few miles from us. Uh and that's where I saw back issues for the first time. Because the the deal is that back in those days, without comic shops, without places to buy back issues, you had to scrounge for anything in between the uh the week that your favorite comic came out and the next month. That was a long wait.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so uh yeah, just I started looking for all kinds of different things. And uh comics back then were really pretty special. And I think everyone, I I I'm really pretty certain that everyone has their own personal golden age, which is about when they're 12 years old. And if you go back to the stuff when you were 12 years old, it'll hitch you in the feels every time. So uh and and that's the way it is for my stuff too, from that 67-68 period.
SPEAKER_04Absolutely. Yeah, I I think I think for me it was closer to like eight or nine years old. Um, but it was it was the uh the nightfall, I think the nightfall run of Batman where Bane breaks his back. I remember picking up an issue um at the gas station and just going, What who's who's this who's this replacement? This isn't this isn't Bruce Wayne, who and and that, you know, my grandfather had gotten me into a lot of comics back then, but for some odd reason that run really, really took me.
SPEAKER_01Um that a lot of people, to be honest with you. That was that was the that was one that really surprised a lot of people. Yeah. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_05For me, it did two different ones. I I inherited my brother's comics when I was a kid. So I had that full Beyonder series with Spider-Man in the black suit on the very front. I actually had it. I still have it somewhere destroyed. I'm never gonna sell it. It's just now it's not personal for me, you know. But it's one of those things where I would tell everybody he's got a black suit and nobody believed me because it wasn't a cartoon yet. And then after that, you know, I I read, I read, I hate using this term, but uh I read what uh a lot of guys would like snobly say, Yo, yeah, you read a lot of capes as a kid. Like, yeah, I loved capes. And then I looked l uh hooked up with a friend who wanted to draw comics. Um, and he was very art scene, very alternative. So um, I know you have 10. My guy was uh Gene uh Yang. So he did American Born Chinese, American Born Chinese, got into that. Yeah, a fantastic, fantastic writer. And because of him, I got into all what was quote unquote Indies at the time, a lot of war stories, you know, um tales from like Palestine at the time, tales, you know, these dark places of the people's imaginations, whenever they would, you know, go in and out of love, and all these names that now they made Batman and stuff. But at the time, they were just guys. Like I have uh I was telling John the other day, I have comics by a guy named Joe Matt, whose biggest claim to fame at the time was writing these really raunchy things about his life, about how much of a loser he was, but they were entertaining his headache, and then he went to do Batman. And then um I have Jeffrey Brown, who his we always used the line that he always used, which was every girl was the end of the world for me, because I was in college, I had just broken up with my girlfriend, and I'm like, I need somebody that feels what I'm feeling. And he had like these squiggly lines, and everything was super intense. And then now I was walking, well, it's a few years ago now, but I was walking around like a Barnes and Noble, and I recognized his artwork, and he was doing comics about like Darth Vader, if he was a good dad growing up. Exactly. And I'm like, this is the guy who made me cry on the bathroom floor, and he's doing Darth Vader, and it was incredible. And I'm like, that's amazing. So, like, I've had my two little golden eras. It's the golden era of I'm not reading capes anymore because my study friend didn't want me to, but I missed some good stuff because it's still great, great storylines. And then the childhood era of everything is Spider-Man, everything is Superman, everything is Batman, but those spoke to me.
SPEAKER_01That's a lot of good stuff in there, and uh and it kind of just shows what what the reach of comics can be. Comics can be anything, they can be slice of life and make you cry on the bathroom floor, or they can be super exciting and make you just want to go out and save the world. Uh there's there's there's all kinds of things that can happen in comics, and I think they've been typecast too much over the years, and we've tried to break that. Uh, there's to a degree superheroes put butts in the seats, but they allow us to show comics to all kinds of other people, to to readers that have different interests. And and you know, when you first walk into our shop, you're really not gonna see superheroes immediately. You you'll see them up on the walls, you uh uh see some of the decorations, but the the first display you're gonna see is media-related stuff, whether it's Star Wars or uh Event Horizon or Adventure Time or things of that sort. But but you're also gonna see a little spotlight section, and there's a couple of Jean Yang graphic novels there. There's the the Tin Fan family style. There's um uh actually one of the things we have on there is not even a graphic novel at all. It's the story of Trader Joe's because our shops are yeah, and it's it's a really terrific book. But there's also another prose book that we have that super highly recommended. It's by an author named Bill Bryson. It's called The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, and it's about a kid who's a true story that Bill Bryson is the Thunderbolt Kid, and he's growing up in middle America in the late 1950s, early 60s, with all of his pop culture stuff all around him, while the world is changing and the civil rights movement's about to happen, and uh the old world is passing away, and he sees some people as really stupid, and so what he does is in his mind he shoots them down with secret thunderbolts. He is the Thunderbolt kid, is his alter ego, and that's the way he shoots down the stupid people in his life. That's amazing. It's really it's so funny and but very heartwarming, and it's it's um uh is it's a book that anybody who loves comics and loves a history of comics should read.
SPEAKER_05Oh, fantastic.
SPEAKER_04I think it's going on the list, definitely.
SPEAKER_01For real.
SPEAKER_04Um, all right. Well, I we we I know we've got you at about an hour. Do you mind if we go do maybe like two or three more? You got it.
SPEAKER_02Any questions?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I appreciate that. You know, um, okay, so so you know, we went into we're talking about about some of the artists that have come up over the years. Are there any artists or writers where you you see the name, you know, I'm buying that, I'm reading that. Doesn't really matter if you know what what company they're where you just like that name's on there, I know it's good.
SPEAKER_01Well, I I I know this sounds like an easy answer because we've already uh uh mentioned him, but I'll I'll read anything that Gene Yang writes. Uh I I think he's uh just a brilliant talent and um just puts a lot of heart into whatever he does. So that's definitely one of them. One of the other ones that I I love is um, and he's doing mostly teaching now at the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont, James Sturm. James Sturm uh did a book about Satchel Page called um I think it was just called what uh Satchel Page Striking At Jim Crow. And it's one of the most moving books. It has it has probably for me the best page turn in a comic that I've ever read. Um where there's so much going on in the story, and then you turn the page and your mind is melted just uh uh because of what happens and and the heartbreak that happens. So James Durham is definitely somebody that I would put on that list. There's I I love what uh Garth Ennis and Steve Epting have done for TKO.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh partisan and Sarah are not only two of our best on graphic novels over the last number of years, but they're incredibly well crafted. They are uh books that are an easy read for anybody who's not been into comics because they're self-contained. Um, and they're just absolutely gorgeous. I do a lot, I we recommend a lot of the Ed Brew Baker and Sean Phillips stuff from from English comics of Criminal and Uh Fatale, and you just go on down the line with with all of the stuff that's come out from there. Pulp, which looks like it's got uh you know Robert Mitchum on the cover. There's those are sad and difficult books, but man, they're they're really engaging. They're they're like just really good movies waiting to be made.
SPEAKER_05Sad and difficult. You've struck gold with me, sir. Um I I do have to ask a couple of these because these are more, these are probably more of your softball ones, but it's just more of a curiosity for me. So, what's the rarest item that you've ever had come through Flying Colors? And is there a holy grail item for yourself? That's not necessarily worth money, but just something where you're like, that thing would mean the most to me if I had it.
SPEAKER_01I'll tell you the thing that would mean the most to me if I had it. This is the, and it's not about value. It's I when I was uh uh getting ready for my senior year of college, I was broke and I needed money, so I had to sell my first collection. So I sold my first collection to a guy I actually wound up going into competition against years later, who had the California comic book company chain of stores in Contra Costa County back in the 80s and early 90s. But I sold him the collection, and in that collection, I had an Amazing Fantasy XV, I had a lot of early uh Amazing Spider-Man, I had two copies of Giant Size X-Men number one. I had a whole but those aren't the ones that I'm talking about. The one that I'm really missing is a copy of Marvel Collector's Item Classics number 16. It's a reprint, but it was a gift that my late sister gave me. And on the inside of the front cover in pink ink, she wrote a big happy birthday message. And uh I would, you know, every time a copy of that comic comes into the store, I hope that when I turn the page on that cover that I will see her writing and I know it's gone, but uh, but it's it's still one of those things I would I would love to find. Yeah, yeah. So uh what's the rarest thing that's come through here? A number of years ago, we had an elderly gentleman who didn't drive, didn't have a cell phone, no internet, nothing, and he wanted to sell his comic book collection. And the first thing he brought out of his shopping bag was a copy of All-Star Comics number eight, the first appearance of Wonder Woman from 1942. And I had I had seen it in conventions before, but I had never seen it raw hanging in a guy's hand, and just here, take a look at this. And so over the course of the next few years, I helped him sell a good chunk of his collection. And he passed away about a year and a half ago, two years ago now. In his collection, I saw all kinds of things that I had wanted to see but hadn't seen before. A lot of pre-code crime and horror comics, uh superhero comics. He had detective comics that went back to issue like 40. So Batman from like 1942, and uh some timely comics featuring, you know, the Marvel characters of the 1940s, so Captain America, the human torch, and some mariner. It was just fun to deal with that collection, even though I I I couldn't keep any of it and we were doing the job to sell it for them. It was just great to be able to take a look at the stuff and have my moment with it. Where occasionally, I mean, if you go back through my social media post, there uh every once in a while I would just take a photo of a cover and post it, or or a really bizarre panel from a comic. I I couldn't let them go without actually having a look at them. You know, I had to make sure they were all in good condition. Of course, completely. Of course, yeah. There were there were some uh there were some comics in there from an artist that is sort of more revered now than he ever was originally. His name is Fletcher Hanks, and his stuff uh was uh he didn't do a lot in the 1940s, but what he did was so bizarre and cool. And he had a very singular style. And so some of those comics were in there, and that was a lot of fun. That is cool. That's really cool.
SPEAKER_04Like I said, my grandfather got me, got me into comics as a child, but I still remember kind of the one comic I wish I still held on to was a my my grandmother lived out in Daily City, you know, those big, tall, skinny buildings all smushed up against each other, and there's the alcove where the rotary phone is. I was, I don't know, six, seven years old one time, and just for no reason, I just picked up I picked the rotary phone up, and behind it in the alcove was a copy of um Superborn, the Legion of Superheroes number 230, 230 something, but it was where the Legion of Superheroes all gets arrested and then sentenced to hard labor.
SPEAKER_01247 was their first appearance, so it's a little bit later than that.
SPEAKER_04Okay, so yeah, but that's why that's why once we have a professional.
SPEAKER_05That's that's also why you have to be correct to begin with. That's fine. That's fine. I apologize, Jill. He does not represent the time.
SPEAKER_01I is it that's that's the one where the Legion they're basically in handcuffs on the cover and they're all being marched off to jail.
SPEAKER_04No, no, no. This is the one where it's it's like it's uh superboy, and I can't remember what the other Kryptonian on the Legion of Superheroes is right now, but they've got like the bars over their shoulders. Mon L, thank you. So it's superboy and mon L, and they're like they're carrying a bar over their shoulders with buckets of stuff from each one because they've been sentenced to break rocks effectively somewhere. And and years ago, I um I had a house with underhouse storage, as you can probably see where this is going. But um I I came in there several months too late to find out that a pipe was leaking right on top of a box of my comics um with some of my grandfather's comics in there, mostly, mostly early 80s and and and early to late 80s. I think like the biggest thing in there was that um that cat wolf run where Captain America becomes a werewolf. Yeah. Um so there was, you know, I didn't lose anything amazing, like an you know, like an amazing fantasy or anything, but um that was in there. And I just I still remember to this day, just randomly lifting up that old heavy phone and just finding a comic book there in my grandmother's house I did not know was there.
SPEAKER_01You did you see that story a few months ago of the the old elderly woman who passed away in San Francisco and told her sons when I'm gone, I have a few comic books. You want to take a look at them, and it one of them turned out to be the highest graded copy of Superman number one ever. Yes. They got nine million dollars at auction and another half a million for the other six comics. Oh wow, yeah. It's so rare for things like that to show up on the West Coast. Old comics, prior to I would say 1960, the comics distribution of the West Coast wasn't that great. So seeing things like that is is a rarity.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, the only thing I really know as far as big collections like that is the um the White Mountain collection that was purchased there, and then uh what is it, uh went to South Bees for auction. That's the that's I did not hear about the San Francisco one. That's really cool. Yeah. So what is a comic that you feel never got the love that it deserved?
SPEAKER_01You know, I thought about this, and uh my my my answer is I I always go back to this The Inferior Five. It's a DC comic. It's a DC comedy comic with superheroes. And uh it had a short run in the late 60s. To me, that could be the the movie where when all the other superheroes uh have checked out, these are the guys, these are the last ones you call because they're absolutely the worst. Uh, you know, Merriman and Dumb Bunny and they're check it out. It was basically uh a spoof of Marvel Comics done by DC Comics.
SPEAKER_02That's awesome.
SPEAKER_01But uh but kind of fun. Now, a similar thing like that happened with Mystery Men that was done by Bob Burden.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but the the original one was the Inferior Five.
SPEAKER_04That needs some love. I've never heard of it. Because like in my head, oh sorry.
SPEAKER_01I also am really fond of the uh and and again it goes back to my my time. My uh uh is is the the Ghost Rider run from 1967. So before he was on a motorcycle, he was a Western character, a Western hero, rode a white horse, and it was it was just a cool looking comic. Little did I know that that was a comic that actually was from the 1950s, it was done by Frank Frazetta way back when. Oh wow. When that company went out of business, uh years later, Marvel took the character and did the Western ghostwriter uh with Dick Ayers doing the art, and uh and Dick became a friend of mine late in his life, and he was a terrific guy. And uh that was uh that was one of his his comics that I loved a lot.
SPEAKER_04That's awesome. Yeah, that from the inferior five, I kind of get a like, you know, the inferior five walked so that the Great Lakes Avengers could run.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh definitely there is an inferior five vibe to the Great Lakes Avenue. And I I I'm also a big fan of, you know, like Astro City from the nineties. I um uh Kurt Busick, uh Uh, Brent Anderson and Alex Ross did some great stuff there. Uh, I think that's one that is uh instead of handing somebody, you know, a Marvel graphic novel or a DC graphic novel of characters that have 85 years of continuity, you can look into the superhero genre from more of a ground level perspective that is is kind of grounded in humanity in in really good ways with Astro City. That's that's still a that's still a great one. That's that's awesome.
SPEAKER_04I actually still have to get to read Astro City, but it's on it's on my list. Decades in the business, you know. What still excites you about comics in the comic industry?
SPEAKER_01What excites me about comics still is that uh I love happy readers. I love people who are enjoying what they're doing. Um when they come into the shop, when they when they get our recommendations, and then they come back and tell us how much they love the recommendations. I mean, we uh every every shop uh happening right now has been recommending a lot of Daniel Warren Johnson art. Yeah, you know, because there's something really energetic and kinetic about it. And so it's really fun to see somebody come in and go, okay, they'll pick up Space Mullet, and then they'll have to go to Murder Falcon, and then they'll have to do this. Uh the moon is uh not following us, and the everything on the Transformers. It's just really fun to see people kind of walk through the catalog of creators that they've glommed onto and done that because of our introduction. From the comics business perspective, what still gets me is that I uh the way I put it is this the comics business is a puzzle that needs to be resolved almost every single day. So there's always something about it. Um I've said many times, and a lot of people uh may have heard this, but there are all kinds of business people with big degrees and long histories, uh uh good resumes that get into the comics business and then don't know what to do. Because comics is not just commerce, it's art. And when you have this combination of art and commerce, you have something that is really a different beast when it comes to the business end of things. So, to a large degree, comics is a business that puts MBAs on their knees, they just don't know what to do. You need to know something about what it is that turns people on about comics, what it is that brings people back to comics in order to understand what it takes to move comics forward. And we've been through so many different management teams at all these different publishers, and we it's like we try to retrain them every time someone new comes in, but they'll make the same mistakes. And and the deal is that it is that really challenging combination of art and business, and so the cold hard numbers don't necessarily make all the sense, and then sometimes the the comics themselves don't make a lot of sense. So it's one of those things that it it's it's a problem, it's a it's a it's a puzzle that needs to be resolved almost every day.
SPEAKER_05That's an amazing way to put it. Puzzle needs to be resolved, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So I'll throw out one little factoid for you. Uh uh, maybe it'll be a question for the two of you. So when I was getting ready to make the decision about whether we would move or not, one of the little exercises I did was to start writing down the names of the shops that were in Contra Costa County when we first opened. Okay. And all the shops that have come and gone in the years since. Now, my criteria was this you had to sell new comics and you had to sell old comics. That was it. If you sold both of those, you'd be a comic shop. Do you know how many in just in Contra Costa County that was over 36 years?
SPEAKER_05Oh my God, I would have no idea.
SPEAKER_04I I'm torn in my head, I'm torn because I'm thinking about the few that I went to, but I also I want to say it was probably about 18 or so. 38.
SPEAKER_0538. Wow.
SPEAKER_01Jesus. Okay. 38. And now, granted, a ton of those were in the 90s when there was a huge boom and bust. Okay. So, but that's still a lot. And almost all of those, the reason they're not around is that they didn't represent the product for entertainment, they represented it as investment, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And that, you know, we consider comics an investment in entertainment rather than an investment. That's that's held uh and that's another way we try to take care of the community, too, is that we're not gonna we're we're not trying to sell you bad stock five years from now. We're we're trying to sell you something that's good for you right now.
SPEAKER_05That still happens. You know how many Funko Pops I've seen? Should I have been fidget spinners like just the problem, man?
SPEAKER_01Pogs. Yeah. Oh Pogs. Pogs are coming back, Joe. We had yo-yos for a little while. And I'm I'm actually very grateful for that because at the very bottom of the market in the late 90s, my friend who had Golden Apple Comics down in LA, he said, Joe, you got to do yo-yos is the biggest thing for the this holiday season. I went, I don't know anything about it. Uh, I'll tell you what to do. And it turned out that the world yo-yo champion was somebody who came into our store. Oh, get out of here. Yeah. And uh and the guy, the guy who ran uh Golden Apple was a yo-yo champion from the late 1950s. Oh, no. And anyway, so this one one Christmas season, we sold thousands of dollars of yo-yos when comics weren't selling at all. And it's like, you guys saved my bacon this Christmas.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I guess you can't look down at it too badly.
SPEAKER_04I did only one Funko Pop. I I remember getting into yo-yo middle school. I I would buy I would buy the yo-yos and you know, I'd bring them to school with me. I think I had three or four of them and just, you know, sitting at lunch doing tricks. I mean, there was a period where they came back.
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, if you want an up and down business, yo-yos is the way to go.
SPEAKER_04That was a good one. That's a good one. I like that. So uh I think the the last one that I have then to close us out is just what is next for Joe Field and Flying Colors?
SPEAKER_01Who knows what's next for any of us, to be honest with you. But uh um right now for Flying Colors for the comics industry, this is a really great time. It's a great time to be talking about free comic book day and and and the nostalgia that goes into comics and all all of that history. But it's a really great time for comics. And I I think it's um what's next for me is I'm hoping when free comic book day uh happens this week that uh we'll see some new people coming into the store and that we'll be able to turn them on to what amazing things happen in in comics. Um long term, who knows? You know, I uh I at my age I know the road ahead is shorter than the road behind. I'm enjoying every day I possibly can. I wouldn't mind taking a little bit more time off, but we'll we'll see how that goes. Um uh it's uh I really think that there's there's just so much good ahead in comics and and so many more people who could be turned on to the great entertainment the comics are. I've I've I've said this forever. Comics are the gooey nexus of all pop culture. I agree with that. And that is where uh where it all starts. If it's advertising, if it's video games, if it's movies, if it's TV, all of them start with these storyboards that are comics, panel-to-panel storytelling. So you can't have great TV shows or movies or video games or any of this stuff without that comics thing happening first. So why not check out what is really the nexus of all of this creativity? And there's so much good stuff going on all over comics and all over the world, to be honest. So get yourself to a comic book shop and dive in.
SPEAKER_04There you go. You heard it here, ladies and gentlemen. Get to a comic shop, learn about comics, learn about the history of pop culture, get to free comic book day this weekend, where at whatever comic shop is closest to you. You know, okay, we we have uh some some some people who listen to us in the most random of places, Joe. So we'll see, we'll you know, as just as much as we'll see in the US, we'll see a random, you know, somebody pop up in Albania and we're like, well, how do they find us? Um so you know get out there, find your comics, support your local comic shop and and and and comic community.
SPEAKER_05That's it. I like it. Thank you very much for your time, Joe. You've been amazing. I appreciate it, guys. It's a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_04Thank you so much. Yeah, this is really cool. And it's it's I came into it because it's it's just as much as like this is this is Joe. This is the guy down at the shop. You know, we go in there, we we say hi, we get the comic to, you know, and and but at the same time, it's just as as I grew older and kind of just learned more and more, there's also this kind of like, oh, this is Joe Field, WonderCon, free comic book day, then you know, the the the man, the myth, the legend. And so I'm you know, I'm kind of torn between that. I'm just like, no, I used to I used to take the bus down after school to go to the shop. I bought my first, I bought my first Japanese imported Dragon Ball Z VHS from Flying Tele. You you would be that too.
SPEAKER_05Let me know. That's gross.
SPEAKER_04You know, I mean, there you go. It's it's it's wonderful to to see somebody who's so community focused. Uh and especially after all this time, you know, you see a lot of people who, you know, they see the way the community goes, you see the way the economy goes and all of that, and it it takes its toll and it's hard. And you come in and you're just so upbeat and positive, and just this you really are a pillar of the community. And again, just right on. Well, Joe, thank you so much again. I really do appreciate it. Thank you. I hope you have a wonderful evening. You too.
SPEAKER_01Take care, guys.
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