Last year, we took a look at how the coronavirus pandemic impacted comic shops. Like all areas of business and entertainment, comic shops and the larger direct market was hit hard by disruptions to the supply chain, closures of “non-essential businesses”, and a myriad of other challenges all stemming from the spread of COVID-19 across both the country and the world. At the time, we connected with a variety of shops across the country to ask them about how the pandemic was impacting their business as well as where they saw things going in the future, not only for themselves but for their direct market as a whole. Since then, the story has taken several twists and turns, from new surges of COVID-19 infections resulting in shifting restrictions to business and daily life to dramatic changes to the direct market itself. Now, over a year after the pandemic began, we’re checking in with some of the shops from our original series to see where things are now, how the past year has changed things, and what’s next as well as lessons learned from the whole situation.
