I Miss the Spinner

[Scarpad]

I'm Old enough to still remember the comic Spinner and going to the local Drugstore with my mom and while she shopped
taking that spinner for a ride and grabbing the best comics my my 60 cents would buy (Usually 2 or 3) Anyone else have any good spinner stories ?

[pud333]

I was 12 years old when i bought my first comic off a spinner. It was at the corner store, Uncanny X-men 274. It was the one with Rogue on the cover in the Savage Land. That Jim Lee cover changed my life. It was really expensive too, if I recall. It took a while for me to save up the money to buy it, and I would go to the store and see it sitting there. Taunting me to buy it. I remember paying for it and immediately diving into it as soon as I got outside, while my babysitter made out with her boyfriend behind the store. Eventually she would give me pocket change every time she babysat so I could go buy a comic off that same spinner for months while she hung out with her boyfriend. It was hush money not to tell my mom she had her boyfriend over all the time, but I felt it was a good deal. I read that issue cover to cover repeatedly until it fell apart. I remember getting tracing paper, and tracing over Lee's gorgeous art. I didn't have a light box or anything, so I would turn on the closet light, and press the comic with tracing paper against the closet door, and use the light that shone out through the slits in the door to trace.

Yeah, those were some good memories. I still see spinners here and there in various corner stores and comic shops, and I always stop and take the time to see whats on them.

[Mace Dolex]

Yep I was 9 years old in 1985 when I think it could have been a 7-11 that I picked up Marvel's Transfomers #6, it had a beautiful cover of Megatron and Shockwave blasting each other which was so far removed from the cartoon.

When buying off the spinner racks one needed luck to find a nice looking copy that wasn't bent and creased with finger nails from other people browsing, luckily around 1991 I found out a LCS in my area so I could buy back issues too. About the last time I saw any spinner racks at a drugstore might have been around 1996.

[Angilasman]

I only ever saw two spinners as a kid just starting to collect comics in the late '90s early '00s:

- The one in Waldenbooks in the mall my family frequented. I did some of my earliest browsing there, and picked up some of my earliest Spider-Man comics (I specifically remember a fat special collecting several issues of the 'Spider-Man Adventures' animated tie-in as my first ever superhero comic) as well as a nifty Hulk vs. Thing special that collected lots of classic stories.
- One in a dumpy convenience store near my childhood home. It wasn't regularly refreshed and had random comics that were often years old on it. In 1999 I bought a couple of Godzilla comics that Dark Horse reprinted in '98 off of this thing.

These were soon gone, as were the spaces in grocery stores where a few comics would be stocked. Naturally, I'd kill time there while my mother shopped. Within a couple of years comics were confined almost exclusively to comic shops.

[paurru]

For me, the comic book spinner racks were mostly around during the 1990s in grocery stores and small department stores like Pamida. B Dalton book store and Waldenbooks they had spinner racks but they were like the slow moving heavy thicker kind

Nowadays the spinner racks stilli exists at comic book shops.

The comic book shop that I go to once every few months when I get the chance, last time I was there like the last 3 months, they have two spinner racks that are full of the recent new Star Wars comic book series. Plus the bottom racks of the spinner at the comic book shop the bottom of the spinner rack still has the What If Age of Ultron junk

[Clark_Kent]

Great memories of the old spinner rack. My parents would go grocery shopping once a month at Walmart back in the mid 90's, this was where I got all my comics back in the day.

Why did stores stop carrying these, anyway? Did they get so expensive that they weren't selling?

[paurru]

Probably because clothes and videogames etc sell better at stores like Walmart.

I never did notice if Walmart had comic books back then during the 1990s.

I bought my fair share of what I could find for comic books at Waldenbooks, downtown drug pharmacy store here in town and Pamida.

also comic books and Wizard Magazine had subscriptions for ongoing comics anyway

[Dr Hank]

We had Pamida where I grew up too, vanished in the 90s sometime though. I think they still have one up in Two Harbors, though, if you ever get up that way.

First comic I bought was off a spinner rack in Colorado. I was very little (in 70s) but of course picked horror - bought a Boris Karloff comic of some sort, don't know the comic now. But it gave me nightmares, yet I kept reading it over and over. Still remember the panels that scared me, some creepy ghoul rushing down from the second floor. I loved being scared as a kid.

[SJNeal]

I'm Old enough to still remember the comic Spinner and going to the local Drugstore with my mom and while she shopped
taking that spinner for a ride and grabbing the best comics my my 60 cents would buy (Usually 2 or 3) Anyone else have any good spinner stories ?

This is pretty much my spinner rack story; except I usually had about $5, which would get me about 4-5 books at a whopping $0.75 a pop!

I miss the late 80's/early 90's...

[SJNeal]

Great memories of the old spinner rack. My parents would go grocery shopping once a month at Walmart back in the mid 90's, this was where I got all my comics back in the day.

Why did stores stop carrying these, anyway? Did they get so expensive that they weren't selling?

You can thank the Direct Market model for the death of comic sales outside of specialty shops.

[Clark_Kent]

You can thank the Direct Market model for the death of comic sales outside of specialty shops.

I did some reading up on it, and I had completely forgotten that comics were once returnable by stores if they tore the cover off. I remember now being 4 or 5 years old, and my brother (high school age) worked at our nearby grocery store (we lived in a small town of about 900 people). Once a month or so he would come home with a big box full of comics he had gotten for free, because the covers were torn off and the books were going to be tossed in the dumpster. This was around 1986. I hadn't thought about that in a long time.

I'm ashamed to say I'm a comics guy and never really had looked into what "direct market" vs "newsstand" meant until now. But after reading up on it, I can see why spinner racks disappeared.

[paurru]

Like I said before, the comic book shop that I go to once every few months here and there when I have the time and money, the shop still has one or two spinner racks that are full of older previous issues of the new Marvel Star wars comic series and some of the new What If stuff such as the Age of Ultron What if. Quite a shame to see a spinner rack thats been full of Star Wars Marvel series thats been in the comic book for the past 2 years now. Dunno why the staff dont put the older previous Star Wars issues in a short box or on the dollar wall

[SJNeal]

One not-so-happy spinner rack memory: Finding an issue you really need/want, and there's only one banged up copy - usually with a broken spine!

[Thor2014]

My local supermarket just got rid of their spinner about a year or two ago. Before the end it was only Archie, then they used the rack for maps.

[Mace Dolex]

One not-so-happy spinner rack memory: Finding an issue you really need/want, and there's only one banged up copy - usually with a broken spine!

Ah yes you had to make a choice either pick up that banged up copy or pray that another drugstore had a nicer copy.