I’ve been holding off this post for a while but now that it is official, I’ll provide my commentary. Hastings Entertainment will cease to exist, come October 31, 2016.
I’ve worked for Hastings since 2010, mostly as a Lifestyles Associate. In Arizona, it was one of my favorite stores, even when Best Buy eventually came to Yuma.
Since moving to Montana, it has been a source of additional income as well as my main source for comics. Once Hastings leaves, there goes my source of comics. I don’t see it being very feasible to create a pull list with the Kelly Komix as Great Falls is a three hour round trip for me. Nice town but what, am I going to go there once a month for comics? I doubt it.
My plan is to do what I do now, which might show how crazy I am – unless other people do this and then I will be comforted by that fact.
I Google “Week 30 2016 Marvel Database” on Tuesday, write all of the titles down on my handy small notebook. Which is barely is big enough, per page, to list every new comic for the week, often I have to make a second column on the same page for two or three titles. Then I check on it every evening until I know which comics I need and which ones I don’t – which are most of them. But sometimes I’m caught by surprised by a mention or a flashback sequence.
I’ve pretty much given up going to comicbookdb and checking for appearances that way. I still use that site to catalogue my collection and maintain my wishlist, that will never change but I don’t go there for second opinions anymore. I also don’t seem to go to UncannyXMen.net as much as I use to either. Just changing my habits I guess.
Anyway, so I will create my To Buy list every week and then once I have $40 dollars worth of comics, I’ll go to Mile High Comics and play my order as it is free shipping once you get to $40. Ideally, by the time I get to $40, those first week of comics wouldn’t be considered new anymore and maybe I can get a percentage off with one of Mile High Comics’ many sales. But I’m fairly certain new comics are considered new for months.
I was tempted to go the DCBS route but since I haven’t sold comics to My Comic Shop in a year, I rather not risk buying comics I don’t need and add them to a box that I will never get around to selling. My goal is still to sell a piece of my collection with our tax money as shipping the 125 comics to Texas essentially eats half of the profit of selling the comics so it is expensive to do it that way.
So going through Colorado, that means I get the comics that I need for my collecting purposes. Ideally, you dear visitor, wouldn’t see the effects of this with the way I do new comic reviews every other day, and I’m still currently having to post comics I bought way back in January. Then again, I’m not buying as many comics as I use to so the day may come when I am more current than I’ll like to be. But don’t worry, I have plenty of back issues to get us through then. Especially the comics I got from two years ago from both Father’s Day and Christmas that I have reviewed but haven’t posted as many of those. So I have quite the backlog waiting to be published.
It’ll be nice if another comic store could open up, but without my sweet discount of a dollar per comic, that will hurt. I had to pay full price for comics in Missoula, Muse Comics, and for two comics, it was nearly ten dollars, which isn’t great. It is nice though that we don’t have a state tax but paying full price is crazy with comics.
Also, I’ll be out of a part time job. I’ve applied to both Target and Shopko and haven’t had much luck getting hired by them. Hastings has like thirty employees so that’s thirty people also looking for retail jobs. I won’t try Wal-Mart again as I still see that one horrible manager is still working there so I can’t work there again until she is gone. I’ll try to apply at Albertsons too, but it isn’t easy finding a place that will hire me with what I’m hoping to work as – like a Friday evening and Saturday morning person. Hastings, in a cost savings measure, has really cut back our hours. I went from working both of those shifts to maybe getting one of those, so I barely make $60 in two weeks, down from around $150 – which worked.
I also started working for a new law firm that I’m making a dollar less at. I was hoping the pay increase would be after six months but it is a wait of a year. So I’ve lost money there and then Hastings is going belly up so I lost money there too. That is the main reason we put up the Support link but I wasn’t going to count on anyone’s generosity from that. Thanks to those that did click on the link, that has been helpful!
I still have a few comics at Hastings I still need to buy – Civil War II 3 and Civil War II X-Men 2, Old Man Logan 8, Guardians of the Galaxy 10 and another one as I know the total is $12 and I am not slated to buy any from any that shipped on July 20th. So that’s a huge relief. I think that last one is Star Lord 8 but Hastings didn’t receive that issue but it is on my Wish List.
Speculation is that Hastings will probably cease carrying new inventory (as why keep bring in new product just to box it up?) so maybe this Mile High Comics plan will come into effect before October.
Typing about October, I saw that Marvel October comics are suppose to have X-Titles still, not just Death of X, so that’s good news but I haven’t seen the October Solicitations yet, probably won’t get those until next week once San Diego Comic Con is over.
So lots of questions still up in the air, too many questions. I was going to post something regarding the bankruptcy a few weeks ago but I was holding out hope that this wouldn’t be required. Now that we are here, it is a sad day.
Helena, Montana really needs Hastings. There isn’t really another place to buy new books. Target’s small section can’t compare, which is the same for new movies. Target and Wal-Mart are decent for new releases but they don’t get that many copies of each release and they don’t have the floor space for older films either.
I guess there is always Amazon which is what has been hurting the brick and mortar stores, not just Hastings but Best Buy & Barnes and Nobles have been hurting too. I’ve read that even electronic book sales are going down, so I guess people are not reading like they use to.
We have Amazon Prime now, but we don’t really take advantage of it like we should. Mostly we just stream films. I’m so out of practice of buying BluRays that I essentially only buy superhero films now. Once Walker Dennis starts to show real interest in feature length films, we’ll start buying those animated films but we have been able to skip out on those. We bought Inside Out but besides the opening scene, it didn’t hold his attention. I wish that film was more about the daughter with quick shots of what is in her head and not the full-on head adventure it became.
I’m really hoping to take advantage of another 3 for $10 used book sale as I missed the last one. I do love me some cookbooks (I do enjoy cooking Sunday dinners) and for $10, there are still quite a few cookbooks I would like to own that the store has. Especially for that price, even if the book only had like six recipes, it is worth throwing three dollars down for.
I imagine the video game sales won’t go into effect for a while but I’ve been wanting a few games for my dying XBox 360. Games such as – Red Dead Redemption, Arkham Origins, Grand Theft Auto 5 and Deadpool. Those games I’ve been wanting for years now but haven’t had the time to really play nor the $20 to buy each of them. I doubt there will be a sale for 3 for $10 but that would be amazing. I wouldn’t mind trying Fallout New Vegas (I’ve always been on a mind that Fallout 3 was and still is enough for me) and maybe that maybe LA Noir, I want to say there was another game I had my eye on but I can’t think of it.
For films, I want to say we have the ones that we want, not on BluRay so we might take advantage of those sales.
Then again, we probably won’t do any of that as the store closing couldn’t come at a worst time for us but I keep having these thoughts of amazing 75% off sales but by that point, corporate would have shut the store down or the only items would be less than stellar items. The sale to take advantage of would be the 25% off everything but who knows when that happens.
I predict the Helena store is closed by October, maybe even mid-September but I’m hoping we can stay open until the very end. Or at least until I get another retail job, for purely selfish reasons.
I know I’m not looking forward to having to essentially recite the article that I linked above. My plan is to have a copy of that article in my back pocket so that I can just cite it or lend it to people so they can read it themselves.
Shadow and Flame with Magik 