Bad Idea Expands To 100 Retailers, Reveals First 50

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-studded ComicsPro 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
• Titan Comics
  3128 Forest Lane, Suite 250.
  Dallas, TX 75234
  (214) 350-4420
• Njoy Games & Comics
  8820 & 8824 Reseda Blvd.
  Northridge, CA 91324
  (818) 709-0599
• Comics Adventure
  15705 SE McLoughlin Boulevard, Suite A
  Milwaukie, OR 97267
  (503) 305-7946
• BaT Comics & Games
  218 Broadway St.
  Chico, CA 95928
  (530) 898-0550
• A Comic Shop
  114 S Semoran Blvd.
  Winter Park, FL 32792
  (407) 332-9636
• Alternate Reality Comics
  4110 S Maryland Pkwy.
  Las Vegas, NV 89119
  (702) 736-3673
• Anyone Comics
  1216 Union St.
  Brooklyn, NY 11225
  (347) 350-8422
• Variant Edition
  10132 151 St NW
  Edmonton, AB T5P 1T4
  Canada
  (780) 452-9886
• Fourcorners Comics
  42 Baltimore St.
  Gettysburg, PA 17325
  (717) 334-2336
• Pop Comics
  203 W Center St Promenade
  Anaheim, CA 92805
  (657) 208-3835
• Rick’s Comic City
  2720 Old Lebanon Rd #104
  Nashville, TN 37214
  (615) 883-7890
• The Collective
  515 E. Altamonte Drive, Unit 1023
  Altamonte Springs, FL 32701
  (321) 295-7091
• Comics Elite
  5575 Elmwood Ave, Suite E-2
  Indianapolis, IN 46203
  (317) 755-2533
• Memory Lane Comics
  201 Princess St.
  Wilmington, NC 28401
  (910) 392-6647
• Rebel Base Comics & Toys
  701 S Sharon Amity Rd, Suite C
  Charlotte, NC 28211
  (704) 442-9660
• The Adventure Begins
  525 Woodland Square Blvd #130
  Conroe, TX 77384
  (936) 273-3223
• Samurai Comics
  1602 E. Indian School Rd.
  Phoenix, AZ 85016
  (602) 265-8886
• Summit Comics & Games
  216 Washington Square South B
  Lansing, MI 48933
  (517) 485-2369
• Green Brain Comics
  13936 Michigan Ave.
  Dearborn, MI 48126
  (313-582-9444)
• Comics Are Go
  5214 Detroit Rd
  Sheffield, OH 44035
  (440) 695-8401
• I Want More Comics
  550 E Thornton Pkwy #114
  Thornton, CO 80229
  (303) 460-7226
• Nerd Store
  601 South 2700, West Suite G106
  West Valley City, UT 84119
  (801) 964-4776
• Ultimate Comics
  1301 Buck Jones Rd.Raleigh, NC 27606
  (919) 377-8778
• Flying Colors
  2980 Treat Blvd.
  Concord, CA 94518
  (925) 825-5410
• Beyond Comics
  5632 Buckeystown Pike
  Frederick, MD 21704
  (301) 668-8202
• 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

ENIAC #1 Preview Page 1

ENIAC #1 Preview Page 2

ENIAC #1 Preview Page 3

ENIAC #1 Preview Page 4

ENIAC #1 Preview Page 5

ENIAC #1 Preview Page 6