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Bad Idea Comics has revealed its first 50 exclusive retailers (50 more coming tomorrow). The company first announced it would begin its rollout with 20 stores across the United States. The immediate demand following Bad Idea's star-studdedComicsPro presentation convinced the new publisher to expand its initial offering to 50 stores instead - which, today, the publisher has exclusively revealed will grow even larger to 100 retailers worldwide with locations in North America, Europe, and Australia. In order to qualify as a Bad Idea "Destination Store," the retailer must agree to a set of rules and guidelines set down by Bad Idea. This includes in-store placement of Bad Idea releases and promotional displays and a strictly enforced "limit one per customer" rule. Failure to comply could cost the retailer their spot in the program.
The program begins in May with the release of ENIAC #1. ComicBook.com can now exclusively reveal the list of the first 50 Bad Idea Destination Stores.
Here's the list:
Friendly Neighborhood Comics 799 South Main St. Bellingham, MA 02019 (508) 966-2275
Big Planet Comics 7315 Baltimore Ave. College Park, MD 20740 (301) 699-0498
Brave New World Comics 22722 Lyons Ave., Ste 2 Santa Clarita, CA 91321 (661) 259-4745
Knowhere Games and Comics 744 Grand Ave Ste 102, San Marcos, CA 92078 (760) 891-8333
The Dragon 55 Wyndham St. North, Unit T-19B Guelph, Ontario Canada (519) 763-5544
The Comic Place 105 E Holly St. Bellingham, WA 98225 (360) 733-2224
Time Warp Comics & Games 3105 28th St. Boulder, CO 80301 (800) 552-9108
Keith's Books and Comics 5400 E Mockingbird Ln Dallas, TX 75206 (214) 827-3060
Kings Comics 283 Clarence Street Sydney NSW 2000 Australia 02 9267 5615
Aw Yeah Comics 313 Halstead Ave. Harrison, NY 10528 (914) 732-3600
Cosmic Comics 3830 E Flamingo Rd, Suite F-2 Las Vegas, NV 89121 (702) 451-6611
The Fantasy Shop 10560 Baptist Church Rd. St. Louis, MO, 63128 (314) 842-8228
Safari Pearl 660 W Pullman Rd. Moscow, ID 83843 (208) 882-9499
Global Pop Culture Collected 7420 N Beach Street #236 Fort Worth, TX (817) 576-3656
Borderlands Comics and Games 1434 Laurens Rd. Greenville, SC 29607 (864) 235-3488
Space Cadets 27326 Robinson Rd #117 Oak Ridge North, TX 77385 (281) 298-1111
More Fun Comics and Games 103 W. Hickory St. Denton, TX 76201 (940) 387-5893
Pittsburgh Comics 113 E McMurray Rd. Canonsburg, PA 15317 (721) 941-5445
Captain Blue Hen Comics 280 E. Main St., Suite 101 Newark, DE (302) 737-3434
Books With Pictures 1401 SE Division St. Portland, OR 97202 (503) 841-6276
Alakazam Comics 17777 Main Street, Suite E Irvine, CA 92614
Big Bang Comics - Ireland 2,3 Dundrum Town Centre, Sandyford Rd Dundrum, Dublin 16 Ireland (+353) 1 216 5093
Dr No's Comics & Games Superstore 3372 Canton Rd. #104 Marietta, GA 30066 (678) 903-3705
Challengers Comics & Conversation 1845 N Western Ave. Chicago, IL 60647 (773) 278-0155
Cards, Comics & Collectibles 51 Main St. Reisterstown, MD 21136 (410) 526-7410
Speaking to ComicBook.com, the Bad Idea team says they were caught off guard by how strong the response was to its ComicsPro presentation. "We were not prepared," says Co-CEO & Co-Chief Creative Officer Dinesh Shamdasani. "This has become the story of Bad Idea. We were not prepared for the interest and the demand. I would say we had, in my experience at least, take the last 10 years of ComicsPro and you take all the best moments that we had and we put them together in one ComicsPro, it was not as good as the commercial we just had. We were easily the belles of the ball, everybody was fighting to get to us to talk to us. We had sign-ups out the wazoo.
"People really saw something, what we see," he continues. "which is that there was a way to take some of the clutter out, really focus on the books and that with the right strategy, those books can find a strong audience and the slow and steady approach to growth will work. And so we had a tremendous amount of sign-ups and a lot of people believing in the philosophy. Plus we had the books there. We haven't really shown a lot of art online. We've only shown a few pages from ENIAC #1 and a cover. We had eight, full completed books. And what was really heartening to us was just the reaction people were having to the books. They would show up the floor, excited about that for us."
Shamdasani helped relaunch Valiant Entertainment in 2012. The rest of the Bad Idea executive team are Valiant alumni as well. For them, Bad Idea represents the opportunity to do something bolder than they could have hoped for at Valiant.
"We can do a lot of things that challenge conventional notions of what an independent publisher is supposed to be in the year 2019 or 2020," says Bad Idea publisher Hunter Gorinson. "We spend a lot of time figuring out what are the cages we can rattle as well as what are the things that, for us, make comics really, really special. And as we'll see, it is a very, very different company than the one we worked at before, and one that hopefully just has a tremendous sense of fun and specialness to the books that we're putting out."
While Bad Idea is taking an unconventional approach to distribution, that doesn't mean they're looking to turn the established giants in that arena into enemies. "We love Diamond," Shamdasani says. "Diamond was a huge asset for us in building value then and even now they've been so supportive and they are integral to building this plan. There's no animosity there or with Comixology. But the structure that Diamond has in place, has some kind of commandments. You have to put a book on Wednesday. We don't have to put a book on Wednesday. We can send a book out to the stores and say, 'Street date is Saturday' and make an event out of that. We don't have to plug into the solicitation cycle that's three, four months long and put a book in Previews. We can create a book. We can talk to retailers and say, 'Here you go. We haven't talked about this. It comes out this Saturday if we want to. We can change a lot of the backend terms for the stores to allow them to more easily work their cash flows, be able to hand-sell our books, promote our books."
Co-CEO & Co-Chief Creative Officer Warren Simons adds, "From a content standpoint, it is just a limitless variety of things that we can touch as we move forward. Whether that's a horror and fantasy or sci-fi or a Pixar-ish kind of a children's story, the range of content that we're able to plug into at this point in time infinite. I think that's something that we've all taken a good amount of joy in as well."
"Literally the idea was to start small," Gorinson says. "It wasn't to do four-quadrant, open everywhere be everyone, a new 'force' in media. We want to start small and find an audience and find stores that we can work with one-to-one and do some really cool, crazy stuff, which at the end of the day, is what we think comics should be about."
You can see some preview pages from ENIAC #1, the first Bad Idea release, below. The issue hits Bad Idea Destination Stores in May.
Eniac #1 Cover
(Photo: Bad Idea)
ENIAC #1 Preview Page 1
(Photo: Bad Idea)
ENIAC #1 Preview Page 2
(Photo: Bad Idea)
ENIAC #1 Preview Page 3
(Photo: Bad Idea)
ENIAC #1 Preview Page 4
(Photo: Bad Idea)
ENIAC #1 Preview Page 5
(Photo: Bad Idea)
ENIAC #1 Preview Page 6
(Photo: Bad Idea)
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