Jumpgate to close :(

It’s sad to see what I see as a Portsmouth institution unfortunately go out of business (Jumpgate will close in late August according to their website). “Jumpgate” was really the only decent resource in the Portsmouth area for not only comics & comic supplies, but also cool sci-fi stuff-Autographs, figures, and especially their discount novels. It is unfortunately, a sign of our times, and also might have something to do with the unfortunately ailing comics industry. Sure, it might look healthy from say, a multimedia prospective-especially Marvel which has a lot of hit films, and the trade paperbacks (Which collect several comics in a book binding) are doing extremely well, but the ‘floppy’ (the classic 32-page comic books) are going extinct. Part of the reason I believe is due to inflation-many comics are now 3.99 to 4.99 and this has affected sales somewhat.  To put that in perspective, they’ve leaped about $1.50 every decade, it seems (Most comics started out for a dime in the 40s but times have of course changed) I’m sure the Superhero franchises will go on in some form, be it by going TPB only, or digital archiving (Marvel and IDW have already took steps with this, although DC is starting to catch up). But classic comic books might become a thing of the past 😦