You Can Read Part 1 Here - https://northtexasnerd.weebly.com/home/shop-spotlight-tobi-padwick-part-1
By David Doub There is a lot of nerd shops and activities going on in DFW and North Texas as a whole. How do you see all that going in the next few years? What trends are you noticing? "Nerd shop?" Excuse me? I'm going to pretend that the question was about comic book shops and gaming shops all of which seem to have very cool people coming in to buy things. t's an interesting question. I have a lot of friends who are shop owners and we talk about it all the time. As a community, comic shop owners tend to be a fatalistic bunch constantly sensing an impending collapse. And we've seen plenty of economic slowdowns that have destroyed comic shops right and left. And yet there are still comic shops. There are still gaming shops. I think as I've gotten older, I've sort of taking the view that the shrewder comic shop owners will hang on for quite a while and might make a little bit of money at some point, but eventually they get sick of dealing with all of the nonsense that comes with owning a comic shop. The less skilled comic shop owners like I was in my first iteration and we'll see if I am in this one, simply fail. But there's always someone else who wants to take a shot at our shared childhood dream. I would say it's not as easy as it looks. You heard the saying "the grass is greener"? I think a lot of comic shop owners look at gaming shops and think the grass is definitely more dead over there and gaming shop owners look at Comic Shop owners and think the opposite. I am hoping if my shop succeeds it will prove that there are several different ways to make a functioning business involving these product lines, so you don't have to sell your soul to one distributor or another in a blind hope for success. So other upcoming shop owners of any sort in these product lines will realize you don't have to sell your soul to one distributor or another in a blind hope for success. You can look at a community and evaluate what it has and what it needs and see if there are product lines that fit what do you enjoy. You should enjoy what you're doing in life, because you'll drop dead soon enough. As far as future Trends and stuff. I'm not Nostradamus. If you listen to the predictions, you'll never open your own business. They tell you that people won't buy back issues. They tell you the Marvel and DC are going to electronically distribute their comics and you won't have new issues. They tell you that magic the Gathering will no longer be profitable because Amazon is coming to steal that market. Where else are you going to make money??? LOL! At some point you just have to say, "f*** it. I'm doing this and if I have to adjust my plan, I'll adjust my plan." I've been open since January 31st and my plan has evolved from selling Magic and Pokémon cards to not selling them. By this point next year maybe I'll be selling ice cream cones. Who knows? You may try and fail miserably but you'll never become successful if you don't try to be. And that's probably going to be in changing your plan a month or two in. Hell, if my shop Fails this time, I will have more knowledge about a comic book shops pale than just about anyone! I'll write a book and make millions! What are some local events, talent, or shops that you think deserve wider recognition from people of North Texas? I love this question! I actually have a semimonthly "artist of the month (+)" in my shop. I keep a certain amount of the wall space open and when I find an artist, I really dig who I think has something really special going I invite them to come in and set up in my shop for a little over a month. Right now, they ran for about a month and a half or until I get tired of looking at their stuff. 😉 Our first artists of the month was Madison Henline who is phenomenal. She set the bar so insanely High that I really struggle to find artists who can match that level. Madison handline is an artist who does a lot of what I would refer to as folklore art. She creates these fantastic creatures with pull a little bit from Japanese mythology and a little bit from European folklore. They are wonderfully imaginative. That alone made me likely to like her. But she is actually extremely precise in her brush strokes and she has the rare quality among artists where she knows when to quit working on something. Check out her stuff online she is amazing! Are second artist of the month was Phil Martinez a skateboarding no-goodnik from the Mean Streets of Fort Worth. Phil is one of those guys who goes around stickering stop with his art. If you ever saw Miles Morales in Spider-Man into the spider-verse, that is Phil Martinez. He pulls all the Cosmetics off society and takes a look at the raw people who make up our world. The best compliment I can give him is that I never seen an artist like him before or since. I'm talking to a lot of folks about being artist of the month in the coming year and I'm a little overdue with a couple of guys who I thought I would have this artist of the month towards the end of last year but some things came up that prevented that. One guy who I think is absolutely astounding is Brad W. Foster. If you Google him you'll find that he's not a young unknown artist , he has been a dominant Force for years now. I hope that I can schedule him in this year. His art speaks to my sensibilities ....very highly detailed, a magnificent sense of design and a mature understanding of how much black space to use in pieces for optimal effect. He is truly a master. Bryan Kelly is another artist I have talked to about having them display in the shop. He's a Denton artist and a truly brilliant creator. I would classify him as a "Cartoonist" with no intent of slandering him. To me you have to have an understanding of Comedy and storytelling and a variety of other mediums to be a true cartoonist. The man is exceptionally brilliant. Brad sent me his way to see his negative space monster and oh my gosh is that insanely cool. I would not mind having that as a permanent poster to sell in my shop. It is exactly why you should pay attention to Bryan Kelly's art. He comes up with an amusing and thought-provoking concept and then executes it to perfection. If you stop and think about cartoonist who can actually pull that off on a consistent basis it's not a long list. That list includes people like Dr. Seuss. Good company. The artist of the month has been a great program for me because it gives me a chance to feel like I'm giving back. If I can help raise the awareness of residents in the Metroplex of the elite artists who live in this area it will only serve to see them create more art. I feel like that's a big win for the Metroplex. As far as events, I would strongly encourage people to consider attending the two shows that I mentioned earlier each time they come on. The value for your money is quite good at both of those shows. At the last Dallas Comic Show, the little girl who played Tony Stark's daughter was there walking around and meeting people. She was an absolute delight. In addition, Mark had some pretty crazy good comic creators including Al Ewing the writer of the immortal Hulk as well as Cullen Bunn, quite an exceptionally strong comic book writer in his own right. Chris is no slacker either with the amount of quality creators he brings in. Last year I was reduced to a blubbering fanboy by the presence of the great Peter David. This year Chris has another pallet full of insanely good comic creators including Neal Adams, Bob Layton and, Greg Land. DFW has a lot of quality smaller shows as well including the North Texas Toy Show --- a great place to pick up Transformer figures, the Dusty Attic Toy Show on the south end of DFW ---- a great place to pick up Hot Wheels and Star Wars stuff, because I'm Texas comic and toy show in Arlington is a great place to pick up Pops and all kinds of toys, and the Toy Show at Louisville's Music City Mall is always a good time. David your own thematic conventions, the Texas Latino Comic Con and the Women of Wonder Con are especially worthwhile conventions that everyone should attend. The area also has handful of really cool Library shows like Cozby Con. In terms of shops there are a lot of great shops. The first comic shop I worked in in Dallas was the Atomic Age, a Keith's comic shop located in Carrollton Texas. Keith and his wife Cindy run some of the Metroplex's best community shops. Jeremy's Titan comics is a fantastic place to pick up back issues. Duncanville books has become a legendary shop over the last 20 years. The collected guys do a really good job with their shops. Doc's in Frisco is a pretty cool shop. Some of the best shops are relatively new though. Comic Warriors in Keller is a fantastic new shop that's exactly what was missing in that Keller Southlake area. They are one of the best in the Metroplex dealing with alternate covers. Tommy also comes across a variety of cool Silver age Comics that he prices to sell. That place is a hidden gold mine. My buddy Shawn owns a shop called Sanctuary located on MacArthur about two miles north of 635 that has an amazing back stock of comics. He has roughly 150 long boxes of comics on his sales floor... usually one copy of each issue. It's very impressive. He also is extremely dedicated to building up a gaming following, with his shop being open well into the night most nights for gamers. https://www.facebook.com/WMWBDenton/ By David Doub
By David Doub
What is Horrifically Nerdy? Horrifically Nerdy is my small business I started a couple of years ago. What started as a hobby for me turned into a business. I came up with the name from my love of Horror and everything nerdy. So is it like your collection come to life in a way? In a way yes, my collection got too big so I decided to sell some things. As I did I begin to make different things and buying things to resale as well. What got you into collecting? What things do you prefer to collect? I've been collecting for as long as I can remember. I started with sports cards and toys. I've worked myself into collecting vintage coins. I love to collect unique things others don't have or want. So how or when did you shift into the nerdy then? Probably after watching my first super hero Saturday morning cartoons. And we'll of course Star Wars. I was around 7 years old when Star Wars came out. Was never so happy to get the toys when they finally came out. Okay so now what is the the thought behind ViCon? Well I wanted to bring some fun to Garland. We have nothing like this here. And I thought what a better place than Vikon Plaza to help the vendors and Vikon to get back on the map. This year will be a small event but hope it gets bigger as the years go on. We hope to continue this for years to come. With the help of Daniel Calhoun I'm sure we can keep it going strong. https://www.facebook.com/HorrificallyNerdy/ |
AuthorNorth Texas Nerd is a site for news, reviews, interviews, and opinions about all pop culture and geeky things happening and being made in North Texas. Archives
April 2020
Categories
All
|