Mal Briggs

Voice Over (00:03):
This show is sponsored by the Comics Shop. We hope you enjoy the show.

Leigh Chalker (00:25):
All right, good evening, and welcome to another episode of Tuesday Chinwag. My name is Lee Chalker. I’m the creator of the Australian Independent Comic Book Battle for Bustle, which is published through Comic Studio. So Tuesday Chinwag is based on, uh, couple of random prompting questions, who, what, where, when, why, and how. They never sort of go in that order. Things are fluid on this show. That’s how we like them. It just keeps rolling and rolling. And, uh, before we introduce the guests, the best thing that you can do is like, and subscribe the channel, because with every like and subscription, that means more people get to view all of the shows that are on the com X live streams and network. And, uh, it just helps grow the tree, the algorithm, and reach more people. And, um, you know, like we get to, uh, I guess, you know, touch base with a bigger community. So this evening, uh, I’ve been looking forward to this one. Um, it’s a gentleman that, uh, I, I would say judging, um, you know, like, uh, from that, uh, title on his jacket there probably knows a little thing or two about comic books. So, uh, without further ado, I’m going to introduce to everyone, Mr. Mel Briggs from Impact Comics. How are you, sir?

Mal Briggs (01:36):
Good evening. I’m very well.

Leigh Chalker (01:38):
That’s the way, man. That is the way. So, uh, Mel, I’m gonna tell before I ask you the big existential question, I’m gonna, I’m gonna say, um, I’m gonna tell you a little impact, story impact, comic story that, uh, um, came to my mind today because, um, I’m, I’m a really, I, I quite like NRL, I’ve grown up with that. So people in other states that aren’t New South Wales and Queensland, that’s the National Rugby League. So, um, you know, my favourite team is the Canterbury Banks Town Bulldogs. And, uh, I was just going to say, there we go. We’ve got a Can League supporter, uh, in the house, and, uh, my dad was a Canberra Raiders supporter because my, uh, the Chalker side of my family are from, uh, Gunder Guide, and most of them hang out around Canberra. And, uh, I was watching a Canterbury Canberra game last year, and, uh, suddenly smack bang in the middle of the field was Impact Comics.

(02:37)
And, uh, it was two years ago. Yeah, it was two years ago. Yeah. See, can Canterbury’s been getting flogged for that long, man, <laugh> track of time. It’s like, oh, you know, another year. But this year’s all right. But anyway, I digress, but Impact comic books was bang in the middle of the football field. And, uh, I thought to myself, that’s pretty cool. You know what I mean? Um, it, uh, took me to a happy place as my team was, I think 32 0 at that stage, <laugh>, and that was about 10 minutes into the first half. So as you can tell, that was, it was a good night. Um, but anyway, <laugh>, Mel Briggs, the Canberra Raiders fan, the Impact comics man who

Mal Briggs (03:23):
Canberra Raiders fan impact comics, man. Uh, I’m well, that’s probably it, man. You’ve got, you’ve nailed me already in the intro. Uh, I’ve been, I’ve been running the selling comics for over 20 years now. I’ve been into comics since I can remember. I’ve been stalking the Australian comics creators since the early nineties. Um, and yeah, I just, I don’t know what to I’d do if I wasn’t selling comics. So I, I think selling comics is the who. Yeah.

Leigh Chalker (04:06):
Yeah. Yeah. That, that’s cool. Um, so, so we can get into some, you know, like, some, some, uh, hello, Alex, how are you? Go the eels. Let’s go. You know, the eels were good last week too, mate, as they were demolished by Canterbury. So just saying, Alex <laugh>,

(04:20)
Hello, absent. Hi. Hi. And to Mr. Chana who said, good day. Here he is. Evening. Been looking forward to this one. So thank you for everyone. We do encourage comments on the show too, so please feel free if you’ve got any questions for Mel, I will do my best to, uh, um, you know, get you into the conversation. And, and, uh, Mel might be able to ask away some things that I may forget as I ramble on in, in, you know, like, just as I do. So, um, Mel, you know, let’s get into a little bit of crime, man, you know, like, because you already started my brain off thinking there. So you, so you said you were like stalking Australian <laugh> <inaudible> creators, man. Now this is interesting

Mal Briggs (05:00):
In a gentle, loving way, you know?

Leigh Chalker (05:03):
Oh, yeah, yeah. I’m pretty sure they all say that <laugh>, you know, like, that might, oh, sorry, sir. It was gentle, you know, like, but, um, you know, like who, who was your, uh, you know, who, who were the big ones that, um, stuck out to you back in the day, mate, you know, like that you wanted to meet?

Mal Briggs (05:22):
Well, the, the, the, the era, and I mean, as soon as I start saying names, people are gonna know exactly the era. But the era that really, really cemented Aussie comics for me was, was Jason Paulos, Tim McEwen, Gary Chana, um, Trudy Cooper, the, the Platinum group guys. The, I I was there when Damien Shanahan was recruiting. Um, all those guys that went on to, to make, uh, comic solid, uh, what was it called? Comicon Comic. Can’t remember now. I’ve made a goose of myself, can’t remember the name.

Leigh Chalker (06:09):
Someone out there, help him out. Tell us what this thing

Mal Briggs (06:12):
Was. Yeah, Chris Wild. I remember saying Chris Wilder in, in early stuff. And, and I was just, all of these guys were just doing this, like creating stories on paper with pens, and it blew my mind. Um, yeah, all the, it, when, you know, when issue one comics, you know, Sam Young issue, one with Zero Assassin. Mm-Hmm. Uh, drop Man, that was, I, that was my perfect sweet spot. I’m a big sucker for, for dystopian cyber punky stuff. So, so that really, really hit me in the real sweet spot. Um, but the thing, the, the range of stuff that was available back then, you know, like, yeah, going from, from that, that type of punky stuff through the hair, but the hippos through the, through the greener pastures, the platinum grit, I mean, what, I still couldn’t tell you exactly what platinum grit’s about. And I, I love every second of it. Uh, it’s, um, so yeah, all of that stuff, uh, yeah, it means a big deal to me, and it means, it means so much to me that I was this high school kid wide-eyed and surprised and scared and meeting Gary cer and oh my God. And, um, now these are guys that I can chat with, you know, like Gary’s there in the chat saying he’s looking forward to this interview. Like, um, yeah, teenage may be super excited about <laugh> the people I know now. <laugh>,

Leigh Chalker (07:57):
Do you ever, do you ever, like, pinch yourself, man? You know what I mean? Like Oh, yeah. Other than just right now, do you have those moments where you’re like, damn, man, do you know what I mean? Like, I can’t believe, you know, like the, I’m chatting with these people and stuff.

Mal Briggs (08:09):
Yeah, I mean, the, the opportunities I’ve had to do, like, yeah, I’m, I’m not changing the world or doing any amazing, um, expensive things or anything like that, but I’ve, I’m literally in contact regularly friends, close friends with some of them, with, with people that I considered my idols as a kid. I, I, I can’t imagine, um, yeah, being in a position that I would be more excited, especially looking back at where I came from and, and what excited me as a kid and where I now I, I, I would have difficulty being in a position where I’d be more excited about the people I know and the things I get to do. And, um, yeah. So, so yeah, I definitely, yeah, I living the dream

Leigh Chalker (09:10):
<laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s cool, man. It’s always nice to hear someone that, um, you know, like is in a good path and happy and stuff like that. Like, I could tell from just meeting you in the pre-show that you were, uh, a happy dude, like, and relaxed and, you know, <laugh> like, chilled out. And I was like, yeah, you know, like that, that’s what we like, you know, that’s what I like. I mean, I’m not suggesting there’s anyone else in this room, you know what I mean? There is Lloyd and Izzy, but you know, like the early class dogs as people, some people do, some people do not. And that’s, that’s the question that only you can, you know, the, the viewers and, and we can answer ourselves. Um, I’d also just like to give a shout out to, uh, Mel’s, um, little, little mate, little child out there that’s, uh, watching away on, uh, you know, like, uh, her little, there you go. And, uh, thank you for watching. It’s very nice to, to, um, uh, have you on, um, have your dad on and have you watching. So thank you very much. Um, uh, yeah, man, it’s, um, where like, so you’re in Canberra Impact comics in Canberra. You are, you’re a local Canberra boy, or you come from around the, uh, the Riverina area? Yeah, yeah,

Mal Briggs (10:20):
Yeah. I grew up, I grew up in the Riverina area. I, I came from, um, harden Mur Borough, so, and then spent a couple of years in Kundra. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, it, yeah, it seemed like I was, can Canberra to me was, was big enough smoke that I got excited about it, but not, I, you know, I, I like, I liked visiting Sydney and stuff because, um, it had that, it was just bigger, a bigger machine. Um, but I didn’t enjoy the size of it too much, I think, I think, and I think there was a certain element around Canberra, some of the architecture, and that it, it has a, a low rise, star trekky sort of quality. You know, you’d always watch Next Gen and everything sort of beige and certain angles, and nothing seems to be more than two or three stories high. And there’s nice gardens and everything. And Canberra had all of that. Like, it really felt like what the nineties thought, um, si like the, the ideal future would look like, you know? And I think it imprinted in my brain somewhere. And, um, so yeah. And because, you know, I grew up an hour and a half away. Things like, the weather don’t, doesn’t bother me. People love the big complaint about it, and

Leigh Chalker (11:49):
Yeah. Yeah,

Mal Briggs (11:50):
Yeah. <laugh>.

Leigh Chalker (11:51):
Yeah.

Mal Briggs (11:52):
Yeah, it’s good. It’s good, you know? Yeah. We’re two hours to the snow, two hours to the beach, not far to Sydney, not far to Melbourne. Like yeah, we can do, we’re in the middle of everything. Um, and, and yeah, it’s a, it is, it is like a big country town. Sometimes you get to know everyone who’s around and see the same faces.

Leigh Chalker (12:14):
Oh, you would? Yeah. You would. Like, I, I’ve spent quite a lot of time in Canberra over the years. Not as much, not as much time as I would’ve liked. I do. Um, I do enjoy that area of, um, of Australia, obviously. Uh, like, ’cause, um, my dad grew up in Gunga and, um, uh, I’ve spent a lot of time in Gunga and, uh, Canberra is where, you know, like the family seemed to spread to you, like much like yourself, you know. But, you know, like on, on a weird note, Mel. So when you’re growing up in Coda Mundra, did you know, was the Coda Ra Waddle your friend mate? Or was that just a John Williams fib, you know what I mean? Like to, uh,

Mal Briggs (12:53):
Well, like, I mean, that’s the thing. I only, I sort of just went to Mundra for the last two years to finish school. So yeah, I was, I was still playing football for the Harden Hawkes and Yeah. Yeah. Um, that sort of thing. So I, yeah, I, while I have Mundra school friends and I have friends now, like, um, yeah, I, I can’t, I can’t truly call myself a Mundra, and I, I don’t, I, I have no right staking acc claim to the Acacia Bailey or the, or, or Donald Bradman, like the rest of everyone from Mundra does like to stir up people from Bowral. So, um,

Leigh Chalker (13:33):
<laugh>, yeah. Yeah. The, uh, the old, uh, town rivalry down there, you know,

Mal Briggs (13:40):
<laugh>.

Leigh Chalker (13:40):
But I, I always like down that way too. ’cause it’s like, from where I am up in north Queensland, like the closest two 10, oh, there’s three North, south and, and west, and you gotta travel like an hour up and down, or an hour and a half. So like, you’re pretty isolated, you know, like when I used to travel around down there with the folks, and, you know, even by myself when I’ve been down on road trips and stuff, you know, it used to be like, you know, you’d get in the car, you’d fill her up, you know, like, you’d be like, I’m gonna head here. You’d light a cigarette and before you’d finish a cigarette, man, you’re already in the next town. It was like, oh, okay. Like, I was expecting a little bit of a longer journey, you know, like there’s, um, there’s a lot of cool places down there. Lovely area, man. It’s, um, it’s a good spot. But, uh, so when you, when did, did you go to Canberra for like university or something? Or you just went there for the, for the, the big smoke, you know, like, this is where I came. University,

Mal Briggs (14:31):
University was, yeah.

Leigh Chalker (14:33):
Yeah. Right. What did you study at university meant

Mal Briggs (14:36):
How to open a keg?

Leigh Chalker (14:39):
<laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. That’s, that, that, that’s been handy over the years. I guess that’s helped. Yeah. Yeah. That’s, um, helped with sometimes.

Mal Briggs (14:48):
No, so I was enrolled, I was enrolled in, uh, at Commerce. I was studying to be an accountant. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, I didn’t enjoy that at all. I, um, I would sit in the workshop classes and, and I mean, this is early nineties, right? So there’s no, the, the, the computer element of accounting side of things was very rudimentary. It was back then, and even first year, they don’t, you virtually don’t even touch them. Um, and I was sitting in the workshops and I was like, nobody’s doodling. Everybody’s just doing the numbers. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I can’t see myself doing this for the rest of my life. <laugh> Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And, uh, yeah. And so, uh, that, that didn’t, didn’t last. Um, so yeah, I went on and did industrial design. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I really enjoyed that. Um, but didn’t finish that. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, um, did a little bit of graphic design.

(16:09)
Uh, yeah. Not finishing industrial design really, um, upsets me a bit. ’cause I can distinctly recall the moment in a lecture where I looked around and everybody was doodling in their pads. And I was like, I’m in the right place. I’ve, I’ve found my people, you know? Um, but, but yeah. You know, things get weird and life, life changes and, you know, you have to take on a job that’s taken up too much of your time. You start missing handing in assignments or whatever, and Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you just sort of pivot and, and yeah. Eventually ended up giving up on chasing, uh, further education and just rolling from job to job. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And until I hit a point where I was like, no, I’m gonna work out how to sell comics and direct, direct myself there.

Leigh Chalker (17:07):
Yeah. Yeah. So you never, with your, um, you mentioned doodling a lot. You, you never, um, tried pushing on with your artwork or your writing when you were younger through your uni days and stuff. You know, like, uh,

Mal Briggs (17:18):
Uh, I still draw now. Uh, well, I don’t, I don’t find time to draw. I was just wondering if I did anything uni. No, I don’t know that I do. Um, yeah, there’s actually an eight page comic strip that I’m two years behind on the art on, so, um,

Leigh Chalker (17:40):
Tell

Mal Briggs (17:40):
Us more. Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s not my, it’s not my script to talk about, but Yeah. Basically, yeah. Look, I, when I was at school, I studied, I studied, um, top level art, top level math, and I confused all the career advisors, and they didn’t know what to do with me, and that’s why they sent me to Accounting <laugh>.

Leigh Chalker (18:02):
Okay. That,

Mal Briggs (18:06):
Well, the, uh, the big ironic thing out of that right, is I sat in that first year of accounting and said that I’d never do this as a job, but that’s exactly what I do now. Yeah. Like, that’s, I, that’s nearly all of my time and I don’t draw Yeah. Because I’m sitting doing accounting and staring at spreadsheets and Yeah, yeah. And balancing bank accounts and stuff. And, uh, you know, that’s, that’s what retail is like. A lot of people think a comic shop is all sitting around and reading comic books and being snarky to people, but, you know.

Leigh Chalker (18:37):
Yeah. What was that, what was that show? Um, was it Clerks? Not Clerks? What was that one where, um, uh, the dude who, um, played, uh, oh man, back in the early two thousands. Jason, Jason Lee, was it, I think his name was. And he played, um, he was in one of those Kevin Smith comic book shop movies, wasn’t he? And he was

Mal Briggs (19:01):
Oh, yeah, yeah.

Leigh Chalker (19:02):
Tracer, you know, like as he was Oh, yeah,

Mal Briggs (19:04):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Leigh Chalker (19:05):
Artwork and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah.

Mal Briggs (19:08):
So, yeah. More rats. No, it was,

Leigh Chalker (19:11):
Is it more rats?

Mal Briggs (19:12):
No, no. It was Cha Chasing Amy’s where the, the, the, the tracer chasing. Amy’s the one with the comic creators. Yeah,

Leigh Chalker (19:18):
Yeah. Right, right. Because, um, I guess like, ’cause we’ll get into like, the, the differences in, I guess, um, the vibes of comic book shops. Like, in, in My Town, my comic book shop was at first the book exchange that was run by a really lovely, um, Zimbabwean lady who decided to get rid of like, all of the, the, the books, you know, or, you know, size them down and bring in back in the day, um, uh, anime and, uh, you know, mango, what she could get, and opened up this room out the back with comics, you know, and it was, it was pretty, it was pretty cool, man. She was a really nice lady. And, um, she, she listened and learnt and stuff like that. So at the start when we were all young, um, you know, like it was, oh, do you have this?

(20:17)
Do you have that? No, but I will get it, you know, like, and then before you knew, I went from like a little box to suddenly like, you know, you’ve got stacks like this beg of Comic Man, and you’re like, you’re only working like 10 hours a week at Woolworths. You know, how the hell are you supposed to pay for this? But <laugh>. Yep. But, you know, like, I’m sure, you know, like there’s, there’s people around that still do those sorts of things. But, um, yeah, that was my comic book Shop Man. And, um, I, I really enjoyed that. Um, and when I’ve been to the big cities and things, um, I’ve, I’ve, you know, like obviously, you know, like comic book shops, from what I’ve seen, I’ve been into a few, you know what I mean? I’m not gonna say I, I, I’m like haunting the places or anything, you know what I mean?

(20:56)
Like, but I, I, I’ve, I’ve walked in the door of a couple and, um, you know, like from, I’m sure you have as well, mate, you know what I mean? Like, uh, o over the years, you know, um, what, what would you say that’s, um, you know, like describe for me as a dude that’s never been into Impact comics, like what’s Impact Comics, you know, like vibe and like, man, you know, like what, what, what’s the feel of the shop? You know, like, uh, uh, yeah. Um, like is it, you know, you are out the back, you know, like doing the numbers and the accounting, you know, like sort of going like, man, thank God I did the numbers for that year back in university and, you know, I wish I was still on the kegs. You know? Um, or, you know, like, and the dudes are out there milling around talking, you know, captain America and stuff, or, you know, what, what’s the vibe like, man, what’s happening? Well,

Mal Briggs (21:48):
The vibe, well, the first, the first thing about the vibe in Impact is the music. Um, my business partner Cam, uh, he’s, he’s quite the musical connoisseur. Yeah. And he has curated, uh, the musical selection for the store. And we regularly get, I, I’m pretty sure we sell records for the record store a few doors down by playing music in the shop, and people are going and running off to buy it. So, um, I’ve definitely seen people standing there holding up, like trying to Shazam the, the song

Leigh Chalker (22:26):
<laugh>. Yeah.

Mal Briggs (22:28):
So yeah, that’s the first thing, right? Yeah. Um, and the next thing is we’re in a lot of ways we’re a, a specialised bookstore now. Yeah. And I mean, any, any comic shop dealing with new stuff is a specialised bookstore these days. There’s so much, so much of the product is in book form. Yeah. Um, and we’ve always focused on doing as much as we can with the kids sections, but we’re actually looking at trying to expand that again right now, um, and see, see what the limit is, like where, where we can go with that as far as expanding the kids stuff. But, um, yeah, it’s really interesting. Like, like we’re in September, we took over 20 years we’ve been doing this.

Leigh Chalker (23:21):
Yeah. Right. So you’ve been, you’ve been there since Day Dot, you’ve been there since?

Mal Briggs (23:26):
Uh, I’ve been at Impact since Day dot, like, yeah, I was, I opened it, um, yep. The, the current door location, we opened the start of 2008 mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, um, so I don’t even know what’s that, 16 year? No. Anyway, uh,

Leigh Chalker (23:47):
You are the accountant now. <laugh>,

Mal Briggs (23:50):
Yeah. Numbers, man,

Leigh Chalker (23:52):
<laugh>.

Mal Briggs (23:53):
Um, but yeah, we from, I’d just come back from a trip and visited us stores and got a bit of a vibe of what was going on with some US stores. Yeah. Yeah. And one of, one of the things that I really did like was, um, Midtown Comics had like board floors. Uh, I dunno whether they were authentic, they probably were the build, the, the upstairs, the, the Times Square Midtown is probably in an older building that actually has real board floors. Um, but yeah, we just liked the vibe of those. And so that kind of set a tone. When we fitted out the store, we took over an old, um, stationary shop, so we actually took a lot of their fitting. So we had glass shelves and stuff initially, so, and that was kind of cool. It lets lots of light through. And that’s been a really big thing for us, is we want lots of light and the light, um, floating board floors and stuff, uh, bounce a lot of light around.

(25:01)
Uh, when the borders closed near us, we went and bought a whole bunch of border shelves. And so we’ve got those in now. Uh, they just sort of as a smaller footprint and taller and more capacity than the old glass shelves did. Um, and again, they ma the, that same sort of wood matched the floor and that, so the whole way we were being a special bookstore, you know, we were literally stealing design, so, well, not stealing. We bought their shelves, um, from Borders. Um, and so yeah, you sort of, the shop’s kind of weird that it’s got these sections. You come in and there’s the kids section, but then beyond that, if you go in the left lane, you’re going to Japan.

Leigh Chalker (25:51):
Yep.

Mal Briggs (25:52):
And if you go in the right lane, you go into sort of American pamphlet comics, monthlies back issues, new releases, and then if you head down the middle, you get your graphic novels and sort of, um, and the way we break up the graphic novels, we’re always chopping and changing what we’re doing. You know, we’ve got the classic sort of Marvel section and DC section. Um, but then we’ve got some like writer section. So we’ve got an Amore section, we’ve got a Brian ca one section, we’ve got a European section. Um, we’ve got horror, we’ve got young adult section. We had a really big adaptation section, but the number of adaptations seems to have been shrinking recently. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Um, I think that market might have burned itself out a little bit or something. Yeah. Which is weird because there’s so many books that are completely out of copyright right now that anyone could do a graphic novel adaptation of without paying a single li licencing cent.

(27:01)
And, um, and they could have a known brand. You know, there’s no, there’s literally nothing stopping anyone doing an adaptation of Mary Shell’s Frankenstein. Yeah. Yeah. Um, in graphic novel form, uh, whether or not there’s an appetite for an infinite number of those, uh, Shakespeare works really, really well in graphic novel form because, um, you know, their plays that were written pretty much just as scripts with minimal, um, stage direction. So you can sort of just take it as a comic script almost, and just work out where you want the panels to break up and turn it into a comic. Um, so yeah, there’s been, there’s Shakespeare adaptations on and off over the years. So yeah, we’ve got those sections and we’ve got, we’ve got the, we’re constantly making up with, we, we have a section we call Indie Legends, which is, you know, your, your, your strict, uh, your cartoonists, you, your Will EERs, Daniel Klaus, Jeffrey Browns, um, Niceley Burns, all of those sort of things.

(28:09)
Um, yeah, ultimately it’s about wanting, making sure that once you find something, it’s on a shelf next to other stuff you might like, whether or not you know of it. Yep. Um, and yeah, we’re constantly working out how to change that. The staff over the last month or so have started, uh, where we used to have end caps that were themed on whatever movie was out or whatever. Uh, the staff have claimed those. Um, and now they’re getting replaced with, uh, just nonstop staff recommendations. And they’re just handwriting make, just, it’s turned in, turned into a craft session at, at the front counter. There’s just like all these cardboards and pens and stuff, and they’re just, all these staff recommendation signs going up on everything now. So, um, which, you know, we, that’s a big part of what we do is recommendations, people coming in and asking and going. Um, and, and so I think the, you know, we’ve got, we’ve got some of the best mm-Hmm. <affirmative> staff, um, uh, at the moment we’ve got Grace and Katie, and they’re just, just terrific, um, at this. And, and what they’re doing is they’re just sort of taking what they’d normally be talking to people about anyway, and putting it on these little handmade cards all over the shop. And so it’s just sort of fast tracking some of those conversations, I think, and

Leigh Chalker (29:43):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s like you’re sounding like it’s a bit fluid like that with the staff, you know, like what they’ve read that day and like really enjoyed and stuff like that. It’s like,

Mal Briggs (29:51):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Leigh Chalker (29:53):
Like when, when you were, um, like with your, with your staff and things like that, do you tend to find that, um, just, you know, like, this could be a Pickles moment, I don’t know, but, you know, these are just one of those random questions that I like to, that just pop into Monogan, you know, every now and then with, you know, like with your staff and things like that. These staff generally come from, uh, you know, like customers that have been shopping with you for a long time. If a job pops up and you might just go, you know, a thing or two, you want, you know, you want a couple of quid while you’re at uni or whatever, or are they, you know, like, um, you know, like, you know what, you know, because what makes a comic book, you know, like store personnel, you know, like what, what’s in there? Makeup Man,

Mal Briggs (30:42):
I have no idea how to quantify it. Um, we’ve, we constantly have like a pile of job applications, right. And there’s a, there’s a mix. You know, we’re, we’ve got a big uni, um, population in Canberra. We’re pretty close to the A NU being in the city. Yeah. So you get, you get waves of uni students canvassing pretty much every business going looking. So we get those. But we’ve also got, you know, those kids we’ve watched Grow Up and they hit a point where they’re like coming in and probing and, um, so most of our staff have come from, from regular customers, but it’s, it is literally them, um, asking us or, um, them coming in and applying at exactly the right time when we’ve got a gap, or, or we, we do, we do advertise, especially when we’ve got someone who’s working close to full-time or whatever leaving We do, we do tend to advertise ’cause we wanna make sure that we we’re actually finding the people who can commit to those sort of hours, as opposed to just someone who’s looking for some casual work or that.

(31:58)
Yeah. Um, and yeah, occasionally we’ve had, um, some people that, that have, uh, come from completely different industries with very little comics, um, knowledge. And, um, sometimes they’re the absolute best. You know, uh, customer service is the key. It’s easy to get, it’s easy to get excited about comics. Comics are easy to get excited about. It’s not easy to be really good at customer service. Yeah. So the customer service is kind of the thing that we, we need them to already have developed. Yeah. We, we can pretty easily get people passionate about comics and up to speed on what they personally like. And, and every staff member tends to read different things, and it, they all compliment each other. Like, that’s part of, part of the thing. We, it’s nearly impossible to be across everything these days.

Leigh Chalker (33:01):
Oh yeah, man. There’s, there seems to be a wide variety of stuff. Um, so like, you know, talking about, ’cause I’ve done some retail jobs over the years and, uh, um, look, it’s safe to say that, um, I, I probably wasn’t as patient when I was younger as what I am now that I’m a little bit older. And, um, I, I tended to find that, uh, some people, you know, from time to time, Mel, as, uh, you may be able to, you know, um, agree or disagree with, um, can be a little bit, uh, what I would call, um, annoying and, uh, with their demands, et cetera, et cetera. You know, like, um, you know, like, ha in a comic book shop, it seems to me like a pretty chilled out place. Like, you know, like the ones I’ve been into, you know, like, you know, like everyone seems fairly relaxed, you know, and talking comics, networking, you know, like chilling out on selling, you know, da da da. Like, have you ever, you know, no names, you know, you don’t have to describe these people like, in any particular fashion, you know what I mean? But have you ever had any just real like, man, you’re in the wrong shop type of people <laugh> Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mal Briggs (34:19):
Stories. Well, I mean, part of, part of the thing with our store and part of the, the thing about where we set up and why we pay the rent we do mm-Hmm. Um, is we didn’t want to be an exclusively destination sort of store. Yeah. Um, you know, we didn’t want to be that comic book that’s out at the edge of the industrial area that you will go to because it’s good. Yeah. But you’ve gotta gotta be going there. We wanted to be the comic shop that you found yourself in and didn’t realise it was a comic shop. And Yeah. Cool. Um, we wanted to mainstream comics, you know, like, and I mean, we’re, we’re 20 years in now it’s, it’s, it’s a different conversation. Um, when we say we wanna mainstream comics, we were, uh, Munga was in the English language stuff. Like, love Heer had barely come out when we were, we, we started Impact Comics.

(35:20)
Um, so yeah, the, the idea of waves of, uh, of teenagers looking for Japanese comics in, in bookstores and stuff that they can now, um, just didn’t exist 20 years ago when we sort of set out to do this. So we’re in, we’re right in the middle of the city. We’re right in a pedestrian plaza area. We’ve got a, a gaming store a few doors down. We’ve got a, a record store, independent record store a few doors down. We’ve got, you know, all the, the, you know, the Vietnamese place that everybody lines up for a bomb me on at lunchtime during the week is just a couple doors down. And so we wanted to be right in the middle of that. And because of that, yeah. We get a lot of people who are in the wrong place. Uh, we, it’s, it’s the, the, the trick is so often, uh, too, people come looking for the, say the game shop, and they wander into us and ask about a game and <laugh>, and eventually they go, I’m in the wrong place. And I’m like, I, I in, I always do it. Um, and I’m sure somebody’s heard it more than once from me, and they think I’m a goose, but I always, always say, you’re not in the wrong place. You’re asking for the wrong things. Uh, and, uh, yeah, there’s, they never ever leave without having a good sort of eyeball at the place. Like they’re sort of casing it to come back later after they’ve gotten this whatever game they’ve been sent out to get. Um,

Leigh Chalker (37:05):
So that’s like, that’s like a, a mom or something who’s whose child said, mum, you need to get me this game. And mum sort of, you know, doesn’t really know the difference between comics and games and that, and like, oh, that’s, that’s a, that’s a vibe and place. And you go, you got this. And it’s like, yeah. See, I like, I like the way you say that. You know, like how you said, um, you know, like, um, what it was that you thought people would think you’re a goose for saying. ’cause like, oh, I think that’s a very gentle way of just, um, you know, letting someone, I guess down a little bit. ’cause you know, some people that don’t know much about comic books and games might be a little bit, you know, uptight about coming into one of those places. But, you know, the way you’re talking about with the wood, you know, like, you know, maybe, you know, we are not sure about the wood floors, but you know, like maybe some floating floors, <laugh>, you know, that, you know, where you’d roll with and the lights and you know, like, and it’s nice and lit because I like that because, um, a lot of the comic book shops I’ve been into, you’re right.

(38:06)
Are like down 20 metre long dark alleys with graffiti on walls and stuff, you know what I mean? And you go in there

Mal Briggs (38:13):
And I mean, that’s super fun, right? Yeah. Yeah. I, I love those sort of places, right? Yeah. Um, I think there’s a lot of, lot of space in the world for those. I I’m 100% not advocating that we should get rid of those sort of places. I love those places, but oh me, that wasn’t what we wanted to be, you know? Like we were Yeah, sure. Yeah.

Leigh Chalker (38:34):
Mean in a vibe and joint too, from the sound of it. How’s your damned Funko pop section going, still growing gu from Mr. Chana? How is your Funko pop section going? Actually, Mel, because they’re everywhere, those things.

Mal Briggs (38:49):
Yeah. They’re everywhere. So ours is shrinking now where Yeah. One stuff’s everywhere. We don’t want it.

Leigh Chalker (38:55):
Yeah, yeah. You

Mal Briggs (38:55):
Know, um,

Leigh Chalker (38:58):
I, I’ve noticed that, um, ’cause what I was gonna say is like, when, when going back from, ’cause Funko pops, I don’t know, man. Like I, you know, like you were saying about the comic book shops, I I think comic book shops are like beautiful in whatever fashion they’re in, man. As long as they’ve got comic books, really. I mean, I love comic books. Um, I was just simply suggesting that it, you know, like a, as some comic book shops might love them, have, like, some people are a little bit, ooh, you know, like to walk into them, you know, you’ve sort of seen with the light, you’re in a vibe and place with the indie record shop, the, the, the, the vibe and bookshop, you know, like, and, um, all the, and the game shop, I should say, all happening around you. So you’re like, you, you’re becoming like you accessor I guess you’re accessible to people that aren’t necessarily, you know, like they may want to come and, you know, like get watchmen, you know what I mean?

(40:00)
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> like they’re coming to you. ’cause it’s like, oh, you know, ’cause I mean, I guess it is to a certain extent, you know, like, um, you know, like, uh, appearances, you know what I mean? Um, are everything as well and accessibility for people and comfort and that, you know, like you tend to find, you go back to shops that you’re comfortable in with people who know what they’re talking about and things. Um, with, um, uh, earlier you were saying that, um, you, ya books, so are you talking about um, just treat me like an idiot. Okay. Like, I mean, I just like to ask questions and you know, like some of the questions can make sense, some questions will make sense at the end. It’s just how my bin works. Um, when you were saying before about like why a books and things like that, uh, are you talking about like, um, like the, the obviously the, the, the teenage books like, you know, hunger Games and that sort of stuff? Or are you talking about comic book versions of those things that, uh, you know, like you sell or you are getting into the books as well? So you’re definitely moving into like all cross genres of things. You know what I’m sort of getting at? So

Mal Briggs (41:13):
When you say books, do you mean, you mean like books that don’t have pictures in them?

Leigh Chalker (41:17):
Yeah, yeah. Those sort like

Mal Briggs (41:18):
Defective comics.

Leigh Chalker (41:20):
Yeah. Yeah. Them Hmm.

Mal Briggs (41:23):
Not really a thing.

Leigh Chalker (41:25):
No, that’s cool. I just, I

Mal Briggs (41:27):
Just wanted <laugh>.

Leigh Chalker (41:28):
I just look man, that that’s good with me. You do what you do, you do what you wanna do

Mal Briggs (41:32):
Down there, man, that, that’s not true. We do for

Leigh Chalker (41:34):
Anyone that’s not sure what’s

Mal Briggs (41:36):
<laugh>. We do, we do stock, we do stock a few novels and we do have, we do have a pretty sizable, uh, Japanese light novel section ’cause that stuff goes hand in hand with the man and stuff. But no, when I say ya I do not mean things like hunger game novels or anything like that. Yeah. There is a, i I mean, stuff aimed at that, that late teen market. Yeah. Um, right, right. From tweens through the late teens, we, we get pretty broad in what we put in our, what we’ve labelled our young adults section. Um, it’s sort of, it, it’s, it’s literary sort of stories. It’s the, the true graphic novel as opposed to comic book, um, for want of a better thing aimed at the teen audience, you know. Um, and, and for your more true young adult stories tend to be coming of age stories.

(42:36)
So, um, quite often all of the, uh, LGBT uh, stories tend to fall into that category. Um, the variety of those now is, is getting so broad, they’re almost demanding their own section. Yeah. Um, again, at the moment they have a, a featured section at the shop, uh, with the, in one of the end caps. It sort of staff picks. Um, um, so yeah, you, you get things, but yeah, you go, it goes all the way through like from things like Lumber Jones, which is adventure mostly. Um, and it’s serialised and that, but then you’ve got like DC having a go at doing graphic novels for teens, I think. And then they do mark some of them graphic novels for young adults. Uh, but based on stories around existing DC properties, the ones that took off were the Kami Garcia ones based around the Teen Titans characters.

(43:46)
The, the Raven Loves Beast Boys series. So there was a Raven, there was a Beast boy, there’s a Raven Loves Beast Boy, and then there’s Robin, and yeah, they’re doing all of these ones. And the, um, the following that artist had, uh, a name of the artist has just completely left my mind. Um, but they were marketing it for the book market. So they made Kami Garcia the writer of the big feature. It’s very much a regular bookstore sort of thing, you know, the artist is just the paid help. And I’ve gone and committed the ultimate sin by completely forgetting their name right now. Um, but the artist for us, the artist was who brought the, the customers in. You know, the customers weren’t coming in for Che Garcia. Um, but yeah, those books just sell and sell and sell and sell. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And for a lot of people, that’s the versions of the Teen Titans.

(44:42)
They know, like you’ve got, you’ve got Teen Titans Go Cartoons and you’ve got the Titans Netflix series or whatever it is, and you’ve got, but, and then obviously, yeah, Tom Taylor’s writing the main Titans book who functionally the Justice League now. Um, but for a whole chunk of people who would traditionally just be monger readers usually, um, that, that, um, that chunk of Titans is how they know these characters. Uh, and, and the other, the other thing that is getting into that same section, uh, quite a lot is stuff that’s was originally published digitally on web tunes. Yeah. I dunno whether you’re familiar with WebToons.

Leigh Chalker (45:29):
I found it, I’ve known of WebToons, but last week’s guests, um, filled me in on like some web tune, you know, like, and what, what it’s all about and everything. And, um, was suggesting that there were like collected additions of like the web tunes starting to roll out and things like that into shops and things. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mal Briggs (45:49):
Yeah. So stuff that’s come from WebToons, uh, almost always ends up in that same section. I mean, WebToons is a format, like they can tell a wide range of stories, but it seems to be that that market is who they’ve really nailed and that’s where they’ve really, the stories are really gripping, uh, like really getting traction is, um, in that, uh, that market, that teen young adult market. Yeah. Yeah.

Leigh Chalker (46:17):
Yeah. I, man God, you, you’d have, um, like I like from where we are now and let’s go back 20 years and, um, you had a few jobs and things like that. So what, what was the overall o obviously you were reading comic books and there’s a couple of questions gonna come at you here, man. And I got a machine gun you with a few. All right. So, you know, like, see what pops into your head first. What was your first comic book that you got that you loved?

Mal Briggs (46:50):
I honestly don’t know. Uh, I definitely had a lot of the old, uh, black and white Australian reprints of DC books. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I definitely had, um, Supermans and Batmans. I, I distinctly recall, um, yeah, like a old Batman one featuring Catman, um, that seemed to always exist in my life. And there’s no one else in my house who would’ve owned it. So it’s definitely was mine, but I don’t recall how young I was. But the, the, the story I usually tell about getting into comics and where I started collecting comics, um, was as a youngster, I had a sensitivity to, well, I developed a sensitivity to dairy, and so went onto a diet and, um, you know, country town, my godfather used to have this thing that he’d do every Sunday. And what he’d, what he’d do is he’d go to the news agent and he’d buy a stack of all the Sunday papers Yep. And he’d do the rounds and go and visit everybody and bring them the Sunday paper and have a cup of tea with them. And that was his, that was his way of catching up with everyone. Yeah. And um, when he’d come to our house, he’d bring me a chocolate.

(48:17)
Well, when I got the, the dairy sensitivity

Leigh Chalker (48:20):
Yeah.

Mal Briggs (48:21):
He went Right, I’m, I can’t bring you a chocolate anymore. So he started bringing me a Phantom comic. So he’d read the Phantom comic and then he’d give it to me. That’s

Leigh Chalker (48:28):
A cool godfather.

Mal Briggs (48:29):
Yeah. Oh, he was the best man. Um, and yeah, he, that was the first collection of comics. That was the first stuff that I really got into it. And I understood the law and the stories behind it, and I wrote away to join clubs and all that sort of stuff was the Phantom. Um, so yeah, a very particularly Australian way of getting into comics, I think. Yeah. Uh, we’re all, although not an Australian character, but Yeah, yeah. Through, through Phantoms, uh, not a story that people outside Australia even understand. So. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

Leigh Chalker (49:18):
But you, you’d, you’d also know that like so many people that like, I guess aren’t, um, as comics knowledgeable as others do think that, you know, like Phantom is an Australian created character because I guess he’s just, you know, he was in every newspaper, he was, God, you could go to a petrol station. There was Phantom, you go to the corner store, there was Phantom, you know, everywhere you went there was a phantom, you know what I mean? Like when I growing. Right, right. You know, like, it was unbelievable, man. The dude was everywhere. Ghost two walks. All right, man. <laugh>. Yeah. He were like turning up everywhere at your door, you know? Um,

Mal Briggs (49:53):
So Well, what’s great about now is there so many Australian creators actually working on The Phantom, you know, like there wasn’t, there wasn’t, back then, they were all just sort of imported stuff, so, well there was, yeah. Not when I started. There was definitely a patch in the middle, but

Leigh Chalker (50:07):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it is cool man, to see dudes like, um, Jason and stuff like that and, um, you know, Glen Lumsden, all them hooking into that sort of stuff. Um, with, um, so you got your Phantoms and Godfather didn’t get you chocolate ’cause of your dairy intolerance, you know, like, um, and look, who would’ve, would’ve thought that a dairy intolerance would’ve led you down this path, man, do you know? Oh,

Mal Briggs (50:33):
It’s like my superhero origin, right? It’s my weakness led to a Yeah, <laugh>.

Leigh Chalker (50:39):
Well, that’s right, man. You know, now, um, you know, like before I get onto the next subject, still have a dairy intolerance.

Mal Briggs (50:46):
Uh, no, uh, no. I drink so much coffee that I, I mix it up with soy just so that I’m not drinking like a couple of litres of milk a day. So <laugh>. Yeah. Right. But no, not that I’m aware of. Uh,

Leigh Chalker (51:00):
Okay. Well, I’m glad you’re doing well. So if, for anyone out there that’s worried about Mel’s wellbeing with dairy intolerance,

Mal Briggs (51:05):
We can Plenty of chocolate. I have plenty of chocolate.

Leigh Chalker (51:08):
Okay. We can definitely rest Easy. Mel’s back on the Chalkies mate. Alright. So you, you, you got your Phantom Comics and, um, you, you’re out in, um, small Town River Arena way, you know, that sort of thing. And, you know, you get to, you get into Canberra and you’re at uni, so, you know, you’re accounting, you, you’re not really, you know, the numbers who would’ve known the dairy, you know, like product issues and accounting, the two things that you didn’t like would be, would’ve led off onto being so ha, you know, hand in hand further down the track. It’s weird life, man. Um, and you know, like, so when, you know, what were you doing at uni? Like, you know, were you, was there a comic book shop at that stage in Canberra or were you going to news agents to buy your Australian comic books and stuff like that? Were you solely Australian collecting or were you dabbling in a little bit of, you know, Batman, some uncanny X-Men picking up whatever you could find around

Mal Briggs (52:11):
The place? Oh yeah, I was get, I was getting all sorts of stuff. Um, but yeah, there was, um, impact Records was this big record store that we stole the name from. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Uh, I, I worked there eventually. Yeah. Um, uh, but it, it sold, uh, comic books. Um, and Canberra ended up getting a couple of phantom zones at one stage. And, um, Dee’s comics had always been in Canberra. Yeah. So, yeah, I was hitting all of them <laugh>, and I was <laugh> and you know, I lived on campus at uni, so I found other people who read comics, which was a bit of a difference to being in a country town once, once Australia outside the Phantom in a country town, it’s, there’s not too many. Um, yeah, yeah. But it was, did

Leigh Chalker (53:06):
You have Friday nights? Like where is that? It was that uni period. You sort of like come out of like Phantom and then you meet another like-minded people who were like GED up around comic books. That would’ve been like, completely like mind altering. I would assume you would’ve discovered lots of things that you’d never, ever heard of. ’cause Yeah, this is pre-internet for people that are listening that are, that are younger than us. Like you could, ’cause I’m from a smaller town too. Like you’re isolated. You’re not only in the news agents and gas, you know, gas stations,

Mal Briggs (53:37):
News agents, you

Leigh Chalker (53:38):
Know, like petrol, you know, um, places,

Mal Briggs (53:42):
News agents in the country. Towns. Yeah. Man, that was, that was it.

Leigh Chalker (53:45):
And then there was nothing

Mal Briggs (53:46):
Outside of that, but the os But, but then the Ocon Oscon conventions happened and, ’cause I was finding, because things like, like, uh, issue one, comics were making it into news agents in country towns,

Leigh Chalker (53:59):
And this is where your career in crime began when the comic book conventions came around. You saw them for the first

Mal Briggs (54:06):
Time

Leigh Chalker (54:07):
<laugh>.

Mal Briggs (54:08):
Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, and there’s ads for conventions, and I’m like, all right, how do I do this? Right. How do I buy tickets? And, you know, doing stuff like going into a ticket tech to buy tickets and trying to get ’em to find the tickets on the, the system and Yeah. Oh, I’m having weird flashbacks now to that and load, load myself up like,

Leigh Chalker (54:33):
Mel, don’t worry. <laugh>.

Mal Briggs (54:35):
But yeah, even from high school, you know, loading myself up on the train to go to Sydney and, uh, go and hang out and all that sort of stuff. Uh, and, and yeah, it was just, yeah. Blew blew my mind walking into this room full of all these people doing all this stuff pretty wild.

Leigh Chalker (54:56):
Yeah. Yeah. I could see, I could see you’re like GED up thinking about it now. So like, did you go with anyone else or was this just like a solo mission you had to like, no, I’m going, man, I’m, I’m going, you know, like I’m going by myself.

Mal Briggs (55:09):
Uh, the first time I went, the first couple of times I went, I went by myself. Yeah. Uh, um, one time in high school I took one of the other guys from, from school and, and, you know, little country town, uh, word got out, these two boys were going off to a comic convention. Next thing you know, we’ve been invited down to the news agent and we’ve got a sit here and do drawings for, for the newspaper and <laugh>.

Leigh Chalker (55:41):
I thought you were gonna say like the church, the priests came down to like, you know, like anoint you before you went

Mal Briggs (55:47):
To the <crosstalk>. Oh, I’m sure there were some that were worried about that. Yeah. <laugh>. Um, but yeah, no, we were, there was a writeup in the, the newspaper because we went to a comic convention. We weren’t tabling or anything. We were, we were punters, you know, but <laugh>, we were, we were two kids who were studying art who went to a comic convention. So everyone lost their minds and Yeah.

Leigh Chalker (56:06):
That’s cool.

Mal Briggs (56:07):
You know, so that was probably the first time I was ever in the newspaper as the comic book guy, you know, so Yeah, yeah,

Leigh Chalker (56:13):
Yeah. With, you know, like, well, there you go. So, you know, we’ve, we’ve established that we’ve established a track line here of how Mel Briggs has become Mel Briggs now, mate, you know what I mean? Like from, um, dairy intolerant, phantom devouring, um, now on the soy milks and eating plenty of chocolates. So past that youthful, you know, like health issue, um, onto, you know, like getting into the, the small town news agents because you’re rocked up to a comic book convention onto getting the university to, you know, to have your mind blown because there’s people that would’ve been, you know, showing you stuff that you’d never, you know, like Yeah, yeah. Um, heard of. And your networking and things like that. You’re buying things from all over town, you’re cutting sick, so you, your appetite, you know, like you, you are 84, you know, like you’re into it. Yeah. So, you know, let’s get back to, um, impact records, right? So Impact Records, and you know, like if, if this is a Pickles moment, just let me know.

Mal Briggs (57:26):
<laugh>, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll tell you when it is.

Leigh Chalker (57:29):
Yeah. All right. Um, so, you know, without drawing certain obvious, um, comparisons, Mel, um, there seems to be a, a similarity in, um, <laugh> name <laugh>. So, uh, how, how, how did, uh, this all come about mate?

Mal Briggs (57:55):
Yeah. Right. So, um, yeah, so I was working at Impact like, so early two thousands I was selling vacuum cleaners.

Leigh Chalker (58:06):
Yep.

Mal Briggs (58:08):
And I had one of those, what will you do if you didn’t have to work for money? And I was like, I’d probably hang out in a comic shop all day. And I went, right, I need to work out how to hang out in a comic shop all day. And the biggest comic shop around was the comics counter in the back of Impact Records. And so I just cold sent him a letter and said, how about it? And I got lucky. They were, they had a new manager in, they were looking at changing a few things. And, you know, again, I had that customer service skills. Yeah. Like I say, you can’t, so I just got lucky. I ended up taking a pay cut to go there. Um, but yeah. And so I worked there for a couple of years, uh, and that’s where I met Cam, who is now my business partner. He’d already, he was already working there. He was effectively my boss. Um, he was my supervisor, um, manager, whatever, uh, when I got hired there. Um, and then in 2004, uh, we got seven days notice, I think that the shop had been sold.

Leigh Chalker (59:26):
Yep.

Mal Briggs (59:27):
And, uh, the new owners weren’t going to be doing comics, and we were all gonna be shifting over to working for the new guys. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Um, and we had to start telling the, the customers, there’s no more comics and liquidating the comics and stuff like that. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And we were really lucky we got approached by, uh, a guy who owned a nearby business who happened to own the building he was in. And he went, I’ve sort of got half a shop that I’ve got nothing in, and it looks like there’s gonna be a gap in the market, and you guys set up a comic shop if I fund it. And so there was six weeks we, we went from working in Impact Records and it was sold to opening Impact comics like six weeks later. No idea. Um, and we, man, I look back on that now and I can’t work out how we did it. I, I couldn’t imagine do it. There was a lot of late nights and just ordering pizza and just, and we were, man, the things internet speeds back then were super slow and I was doing it from home and we were just making it up as we went along and going and buying secondhand everything. And, Mm-Hmm. Um, and yeah, it, and that first week we were, we were terrified. We didn’t know what was gonna happen.

Leigh Chalker (01:01:10):
Yeah. Yeah.

Mal Briggs (01:01:11):
We were up off street level, and, um, and we’d already, we’d already helped all of the customers go and find a new shop.

Leigh Chalker (01:01:22):
Uh,

Mal Briggs (01:01:23):
So yeah, it was, it was pretty crazy. But then, uh, when we put up the sign in the window, the newspaper wanted to do a story about us, and there I was again in the newspaper being the comic book guy. So, <laugh>, it was, um, so we got really lucky, uh, and I mean, yeah, we’ve got some customers. There’s literally customers who came in on that first day who are still our customers now.

Leigh Chalker (01:01:50):
Yeah, yeah.

Mal Briggs (01:01:52):
Yeah. That’s, uh, one of her good friends had just had a baby, and so they brought her in. And so we’ve watched her. She’s, she’s like, our reality check on how old the shop is.

Leigh Chalker (01:02:05):
Right.

Mal Briggs (01:02:07):
<laugh> go

Leigh Chalker (01:02:08):
Through <laugh>.

Mal Briggs (01:02:10):
She’s, she’s an adult now, <laugh>. It was like, oh, okay. All right.

Leigh Chalker (01:02:16):
Yeah. Yeah, man, I am,

Mal Briggs (01:02:17):
So, yeah. So the strictly speaking, there is no link between impact records and Impact comics. We literally had to start from scratch. We had nothing. Um, but when we went to register the business name, we were like, nobody owns this. Uh, we used to be the guys where the faces that everybody knew we’re gonna be really close to where we were. Let’s just use it, um, to make, to make the transition, um, simpler. I’ve spent the last 20 years going, no different business <laugh>. So, um, there are definitely days where I wish that we hadn’t used that name

Leigh Chalker (01:03:00):
<laugh>. Yeah. Yeah.

Mal Briggs (01:03:00):
But, um, but, you know, it is, we, we, 20 years, like I say, you know, the, the baby who came in on day one is now an adult. There’s, there’s people who literally their whole lives have only ever known us and don’t know, um, that previous business. Uh, so yeah. Yeah. We’re, we’re sort of making our own thing.

Leigh Chalker (01:03:22):
Yeah. That’s beautiful, man. Um, I, I like the, when you’re talking about, like, if you look back on that six weeks and now you look back on it and you go like, man, I don’t even know how we got through that. Would you suggest that there’s sort of like some youthful, um, uh, just chants, you know what I mean? Like, we can do the energy, like let’s have a crack at it. You know what I mean? Yeah. Who knows? We do just to give it a go, you know, like, and

Mal Briggs (01:03:48):
I, I honestly think I got dragged through. I don’t, I don’t think I did a lot of the heavy lifting there. Like I’m, yeah. I have, I have a habit of thinking about things for too long, and someone else has already picked something up and, and done it. And I’m, I’m thinking about 6 million other things on top of it. Yeah. But, um, so yeah, definitely we got a lot of help and yeah. Everyone just went nuts and Yeah. And they just, people just came outta the woodwork and they’re like, whatever. Let’s, let’s just make it happen. And it was, and it’s been great ever since. Just

Leigh Chalker (01:04:23):
So, so from the first shop, oh, Nick May, a trip to Canberra is not complete until the family visits impact comics. There you go. Miss

Mal Briggs (01:04:32):
Them. That makes my day. That’s exactly what we live for.

Leigh Chalker (01:04:36):
Yeah. You

Mal Briggs (01:04:37):
Know, um, the love, a love when kids get excited, like that’s the goal, right? I don’t, like I say, the sort of shop we want to be is the sort of shop where the moms and the grandmas wander in and just sort of feel comfortable to wander in and ask a question. Um, but also I wanna be that sort of shop where the kids just look forward to it. A family, it’s a family outing. I want it to be a family place. Uh, like I say, when we first opened, we were upstairs, right? So the, the exit of the shop, or entry in the exit of the shop was a staircase that came up right in the middle of the shop. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And it just, my day, it was, it was tense as, but geez, it made my day was one of those days where the parents were like, we’ve gotta go now. And this kid’s like, Nope, I’m not going. And they’re like, we’re leaving. And they start walking down the stairs, and this kid stood at the top of the stairs and he just stared at them, and they’re like, we’re leaving. And he is gone. Then go,

Leigh Chalker (01:05:37):
<laugh>.

Mal Briggs (01:05:39):
And I’m like, have I just adopted a 6-year-old? What, what, what’s happening here? This kid was, yeah. He, he was willing to let his family leave. He, he was not going anywhere. And I, I was like, yeah, this is, we’ve made exactly the shock that I want us to be <laugh>.

Leigh Chalker (01:05:56):
Yeah. That’s cool, man. <laugh>,

(01:05:59)
I mean, you’re, you’re a retailer and I mean, you would’ve seen lots of different, um, I guess, dynamics of people come through, but like, how, like, how I got into comic books was, was my dad collected, um, comic books when he was a little boy in Undergo and stuff, you know? And, uh, some of the best times that, um, I had were like, him being just as enthusiastic as me going upstairs or going down into basements or, you know, like into these, you know, you like what I’m talking about? Like those sort of comic book shops, you know, like, and the cardboard boxes everywhere. And, you know, like, ’cause, um, now I guess, I mean, I, I’m probably going back here a long ways too. ’cause some of the younger, like listeners and people that may watch this in the past, present or future may see, you know, comic book shops as being different.

(01:06:53)
But, um, they, you know, like they did have a very, like, I look man, when I was drinking, I liked dark seedy bars. They had character, you know what I mean? Like, I, I liked, you know, like the, you know, I just liked that atmosphere and comic book shops or, you know, like they just, you know, other than the comic books, they did have an atmosphere. When you cruised in there, it was like, well, what is in that corner? What is in that box? Mm-Hmm. You know, that sort of thing. And I think that’s, um, part of like the mystery and things like that too, because, um, do you, like, do you tend to find that, ’cause I mean, I don’t, again, being from Townsville, our comic book shop up here, and no disrespect to our comic book shop, I love them because they sell comic books, but they’re also, as was said earlier, um, um, stated, there’s also, uh, man, when I went in there, they, they were called the comic book shop or factory.

(01:07:54)
That’s what it is. And, uh, and it was very comic book orientated. And then slowly over time, obviously you’ve gotta keep your businesses, you’ve gotta find what works as you’ve had, you know, like in 20 years of experience, I’m sure you would’ve, you know, as you’ve said, you bought Franco Pops in, you notice now they’re shrinking. You’re trying to get more of this in. You’re tr things adapt, you know, things are fluid, you know, like, and we go, they, they’ve gone, um, and set up gaming tables in there now for like War Hammer and stuff like that. So I know War Hammer dabbles obviously in, in, you know, books that aren’t comic books. ’cause they’ve got too many words in them and not enough pictures. Um, you know, uh, and you know, is how, how’s, like, have you delved into the war hammer world yet, man, like, over time and is it big down there?

Mal Briggs (01:08:50):
So we’ve, yeah. So we’ve, we’ve definitely stocked some of the Black library stuff, the War Hammer, uh, novels. And when, when there are comics, we always stock the comics. Yeah, yeah. Um, we’ve actually got, one of our customers has written, um, war Hammer novels. And so, you know, we’ve gotta make sure that we, we support, you know, the customers as much as they Sure. Um, but, uh, we, we don’t really have a lot of space for the gaming. Uh, when we, when we, in our old shop upstairs, we used to host hero Clicks. Yeah. Um, tabletop gaming stuff. There’s a little, little army of guys that do hero clicks. Um, but when we moved into our current location, we just couldn’t justify the space for, and we’re not gamers ourselves. We, you know, we, it wouldn’t be real authentic for us. But the other thing is that yeah, one of our neighbours is, um, well, they’ve been there for longer than we have.

(01:09:57)
Uh, they’re now part of the Good Games franchise. But, um, but yeah, they’ve been been there for forever and they’ve got a whole upstairs gaming area and, and stuff. So we sort of compliment each other without having to be in the same shop. But yeah, gaming, gaming in a comic shop with a gaming section is, is almost a, a standard sort of way for them to expand around the world. Definitely a very normal companion sort of thing to have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We’d probably be more likely to put in a bar, but <laugh>, just

Leigh Chalker (01:10:37):
Get back to the old Kegan days, mate. Yeah,

Mal Briggs (01:10:39):
Yeah. That

Leigh Chalker (01:10:42):
Back in the day, it’s too much

(01:10:44)
<laugh> mate at the Mansfield. This taken me back now, my God, like when we were 18, me and my mates used to go to, you know, the nightclubs and everything. We’d go and crash it, our mates flat that was, um, living in the city in like, oh man, you know, like, not, not a pretty place, but, you know, like it was, you know, like just young fellas, you know. And then there was this pub called the Mansfield, and it used to open like, man, like real early, like seven, eight o’clock in the morning, you know, like to get the night shift workers coming through for a beer. And they used to put on, on Saturday mornings a $5 keg. So they’d snap open a keg and you’d drop down five bucks and it’s all, you could drink whoever was in the bar. And if you got there early enough, mate, there were like five blokes in that bar.

(01:11:39)
And, you know, <laugh> and you know how many, you know, like, uh, pots of, uh, beer, there are in a keg, man. You know, like, uh, so not often you’d see lunch, but anyway, um, you know, like, uh, so that was a pretty good, uh, follow up from a Friday night. But, uh, yeah, kegs good times. Um, now the reason, yeah, the reason I ask Warhammer is because, man, I just see a lot of Warhammer stuff like flowing through and things, you know? Um, but what do you, um, with the advent, like being in the comic book shops and that, you know, look with the advent of, uh, media and movies, Peter, lame. Good evening, buddy. How are you? Um, thank you for watching, um, with like, uh, all the Marvel movies and the DC um, ue or let’s just go with DC I can never keep track of these, you know, like extended university thing, whatever they’re going on about.

(01:12:32)
Um, do the intent, have you found that, um, those sort of comic sales are up, or, you know, like what, what’s the flavour of the month, man? Because, you know, like, I know this is a conge, you know, this is a, a, a topic that comic bookshop owners may be sensitive about. So I apologise if, you know, this takes you back to your, um, um, dairy Days. But, um, you know, you tend, you tend to go, uh, into what is now like, um, bookshops and they’re selling, uh, an absolute tonne of, um, like manga, you know what I mean, in various forms and all that. So are, are you seeing in the comic book specialty shop a consistent rise in that? Or, uh, you know, people still coming in, like getting their marvel ’cause they’ve just seen Iron Man and things like, what’s the vibe like in it, man in general, you know, like,

Mal Briggs (01:13:33):
Um, so the thing the, the, the link between Hollywood adaptations and Western Comics is, um, it doesn’t help sales except when it does,

Leigh Chalker (01:13:53):
I think. So is that <laugh>? Is that like, when a new movie comes out, everyone will be like, oh, ah, man, you know, or something like that. And then after that bird, if,

Mal Briggs (01:14:03):
If, if it’s a character that the general population is likely to feel familiar with already and the TV representation of them is what they would expect the comic to look like, Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it doesn’t tend to move the needle at all. So, um, a good quality Spider-Man film

Leigh Chalker (01:14:32):
Yep.

Mal Briggs (01:14:33):
Results in almost no movement of the comics, because people are like, yep, that’s Spider-Man. And that’s exactly what I thought he did. And if I’d wanted to read a comic, I would’ve done it by now. Yeah. Uh, when they do something unusual, that’s when people come in. And so, into the Spider verse, definitely made more people ask questions. Probably not too many new readers, uh, but definitely, uh, people who were familiar with comics who’d never read a Spider-Man before, asked questions about Spider-Man for the first time. Um, but kids, movies, movies make kids excited. And you’ve got a whole generation of kids out there who didn’t grow up with every news agent having a rack of comic books. Yeah. Yeah. And so this idea that these characters that they’re familiar with come from comic books, uh, is an amazing novelty to a lot of kids.

(01:15:35)
And when they discover these things, then they really want them. There isn’t always kid appropriate stuff to sell ’em. That’s part of the trick. And when there is, quite often it’s in book format and it’s not in traditional comic book format, and it doesn’t quite have the same magic for them. Um, but you know, that said, comics to kids in graphic in little graphic novel book form is far and away the biggest selling, um, format. Munger comes second after that. Um, but yeah, things like Dog Man and that, that, that stuff sells. But going back to the movies, um, and you, this, this goes back a long way, you know, like, um, the Crow Once people, when people saw the crow about the

Leigh Chalker (01:16:21):
Crow, I’ll talk to you all night about the Crow Man <laugh>,

Mal Briggs (01:16:25):
But people saw the crow and it blew them away, and rightly so. Um, and then they were like, that’s a comic. I didn’t know comics could do that. Mm. What sort of a comic is that? And it’s like, and then, and then when they read the comic and realised that, oh, you thought that movie was dark? Oh my goodness, this comic is so much darker than that. Oh, yeah. <laugh>,

Leigh Chalker (01:16:48):
You preach into the, you preach into the converted here, man, I’ve been obsessed with the Crow since, uh, my grandma used to take me to a book exchange, uh, and in the late eighties, man, maybe 1990, I can’t remember, I was like, maybe just, Hey, Ben, how are you buddy? Um, randomly in Townsville, there were two issues of the Crow in the book exchange, and I was just, and I was mad uncanny X-Men and Wolverine and Daredevil dude then, and there was nothing new there for me to get. And I just saw these two Crow comics and just thought, oh, you know, like, why not grandma’s paint <laugh>? You know, like, and, um, I’d never seen anything like it at the time, man, <laugh>. And,

Mal Briggs (01:17:38):
Um, grandma probably had never seen anything like

Leigh Chalker (01:17:41):
It. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, like, um, yeah, which was pretty cool because if she would’ve opened up the comic books or proof, you know, like she might not have been, been happy with it, but yeah. But, um, getting, getting onto this book exchange, Mel, I’ve told this story before, but senior, a shopkeeper and you’re into retail, the owner of the, of the book exchange, his name was Jim. And Jim used to make a strange noise when you asked him a question that was a little bit like an African beast, and you’d go like, Jim, how much is this like, sort of a thing, man? So, um,

Mal Briggs (01:18:16):
Probably not. That was a processing sound. Yeah. <laugh>,

Leigh Chalker (01:18:20):
I’m not, I’m not sure, but <laugh>, but, uh, hopefully, you know, those days of retail, um, being a retail assistant and making noises like that have disappeared, mate, because, um, Jim used to scare a lot of people off, but he didn’t scare me. Um, and, uh, and or my grandma from her Catherine Cookson books. Um, but, uh, yeah, the Crow was Ripper Man, and, um, yeah. That did you another movie. Like, I know what you’re getting at and I’ll come back to You. Um, I remember seeing at the Cinemas, the Road To Ion

Mal Briggs (01:18:56):
Yeah.

Leigh Chalker (01:18:56):
Um, with Tom Hanks and Jude Law and Daniel Craig in it, and I remember, yeah. And I remember watching that and really, really enjoying that movie. And, you know, you just start reading about it. And I found out at that stage that was a comic book too. And I, you know, at that stage I was like, wow, man, you know, like comic books are so cool how they cover so many genres, you know, like, um, but yeah, I digress Back To The Crow. Back to the Crow.

Mal Briggs (01:19:21):
But I mean, that’s a, that’s a, that’s another perfect example where people go, whoa, how, how does Road to Ion from a comic? And not only that, when you find out Road to Ion is a comic, but that comic is inspired by Lone Wolf and Cub, which is another comic, then that’s where you get a new reader, right? That’s the moment. That’s the, that’s the bit where you grab ’em, right? Yeah. Um, but yeah, like all of those sort of things that do something that people go, no, I, I know what comics are. It’s Spider-Man Cartoon. I’ve seen Spider-Man, I know What’s comics are. Um, and you know, where people use the word comic book movie to this to be this catchall phrase that is basically everything that is an Iron Man clone, where, you know, per person with some sort of power fights differently coloured person with same power at the end, everything’s fine and it’s fine, whatever.

(01:20:15)
Um, and which is pretty much half of the MCU movies and, and you’re just like, but comics do so much more than that. That’s not what a comic book movie is. You know, and, and yeah. Road to Petition a History of Violence Vi of Vendetta Watchman from Hell, like every one of these, every Sin City. The second they put sin based on the graphic novel Sin City, and ’cause it was so visually striking that people, their brains process, that’s definitely from a comic, but also the sort of story it’s telling is not what I expected from a comic. People went outta their way to find Sin City comics when that happened, you know? Yeah. Like, and three, Frank, Frank Miller’s 300, you know, uh, people, people went outta their way to find it. And, and now the animated, a lot of the DC animated movies are getting that sort of thing. Like, they went through the Killing Joke and I can’t even remember which ones they were now recently. Um, but those all seemed to convert because again, they were the more interesting stories, they were telling stuff that was outside of what you’d think like the cliches are. Yeah. Um, and they’ve got a new animated version of Watchman coming up, and, and I think that’ll probably see us have another bump in Watchman readers. The really interesting one was Deadpool and not the Deadpool movie.

Leigh Chalker (01:21:42):
Yeah.

Mal Briggs (01:21:44):
Wolverine Origins where Ryan Arnolds first played a completely different version of Deadpool.

Leigh Chalker (01:21:51):
Yes. Yeah. Yep.

Mal Briggs (01:21:53):
That movie caused an enormous explosion in Deadpool sales because it was like, people saw the character and went, okay, so this character’s clearly important. And I dunno, they must have, uh, got on Reddit forums or spoken to people who knew, and they were like, oh, the character looks nothing like that, and the comics are so much better than that. And all of these people just out of the woodwork, just suddenly became Deadpool fans, um, based on the Wolverine movie. Like the, the Deadpool movie really only got made because that Wolverine movie had sort of laid enough groundwork, you know, it had introduced Ryan Reynolds to the character. He got excited about it and he pushed for it. But also there was enough fans that comic would’ve been cancelled if it wasn’t for that. Like, like they were going through the whole, um, agent X story and, and stuff like that. Deadpool was not happening. I

Leigh Chalker (01:22:53):
I remember picking up the New Mutants issue 98, um, from the news agents, um, years ago, how, um, Peter Lane, how are sales of and Wolverine going leading up to the hype of the movie? There you go. There’s one for you.

Mal Briggs (01:23:09):
Uh, not, not anything special, to be perfectly honest. I mean, there is a, there is a Wolverine Deadpool comic, but that’s selling to the same people that would’ve been buying it, regardless of if there’s a movie. This is the thing, once it, once you’re hitting like the third movie, people are feeling like they, they know the character, like the, the character they’re seeing in the movie is the character they’re a fan of. Yeah. It’s not necessarily the comic, um, character. And they, and they don’t feel like they need more background. They don’t feel like they’re missing anything. You know, when you’re into like three movies worth of, of a character, they feel like they’ve been told all the story they need about that character. So, um, yeah. Yeah.

Leigh Chalker (01:23:50):
Well, man, when I, when I picked up, um, new Mutants issue 98, back in the day, I was still in like, um, I was still in high school. Like, so we’re talking like, man, what was it? Maybe 91, 92 sort of period, you know what I mean? And, um, yeah, there was Deadpool and I remember read, and I remember vividly reading that comic book, and I was far more interested at that stage in what life felt had done with the New Mutants and Deadpool just seemed a bit of a, um, a filler sort of a character to a certain extent at that stage. And, um, I never really, obviously I read comic books with him in it and knew who he was, but he never really like grasped grasped me, I guess, as, um, I dunno if I said grasped or grasped me there. So <laugh>, you know, we’ll make that up to the viewers at home, uh, uh, you know, like, but he never really, I’m gonna say, got me. Um, so there’s no like, you know, confusion, um, like as a super, super duper character. But when I, and I missed the whole comic book Deadpool thing, but then I saw the movie and from someone that wasn’t fussed on him as a comic book character, when I saw that first movie, I actually remember watching it and went, I get that dude now. Do you know what I mean? That was just how in my mind, like, yeah, okay, now I’m, now I’m picking up what they’re putting down. You know, like

Mal Briggs (01:25:18):
How <crosstalk> Well, I mean yeah, the screen that, that very, that very early Deadpool wasn’t really fully formed Deadpool, you know, like Yeah. Over the years it definitely evolved and established where it was, you know, I was, yeah. I was reading it just before it blew up, you know, with Gail Simone was writing it, and she, she was, she was the comedy writer, you know, they brought her in because she’s the comedy writer and let her loose on Deadpool, you know, and she was having a ball with that book, um, throwing Task Master in there and making fun of him and all sorts of stuff like that. So, um, yeah, you can see that, yeah. If they did, if they forced Deadpool too early, um, yeah. And not let that sort of progression of creators come through and find the voice of the character, uh, yeah. It would not have been the same fertile ground for Ryan Reynolds to really to play in Right. Let his natural comedy work with it. Yeah. Yeah.

Leigh Chalker (01:26:29):
Right. Man, for the job too, man. Um, yeah, with, with, um, like, sort of just while we’re vibing on this, you know, you get your, your big anime series and that come out, um, you know, like I’m just, I don’t watch much anime. Um, but just thinking of one, for example, like if something like, uh, oh, what’s it bloody called? Attack on Titan. Attack on on Titan, and it boom and it starts, you know, like dropping bombs. And people love that. You find that those comic books are like, people are gravitating from the anime to see what

Mal Briggs (01:27:02):
The, so that’s, that’s where, that’s, that’s where the Japanese stuff is so different to the American stuff. Yeah. Because, um, where I, I say it’s sort of hit and miss with the American stuff, and once they get into a certain point, it just doesn’t really sort of convert anymore. Um, the Japanese stuff, man, if there’s, if the anime is hot, the books are just crazy hot, and they’re telling exactly the same story half, like, nearly, nearly all the time, they’re telling almost chapter for chapter the same story. They’ll, quite often, the books will have just a bit more detail in them because the, the shows are taking up time with action scenes that are sort of burnt out in a single page or something in the monger. So, um, you get a bit more room to tell, to tell a media story in the mga.

(01:27:56)
But yeah, man, it converts. You can, you can tell what has started screening by the sudden sellout of a, a title. Uh, and yeah, I don’t even need to be sort of finger on the pulse of, of what, what is screening right now. You can see the book just suddenly move. And, uh, the, the big, the perfect one to, to see this is, uh, one piece, you know, one piece is a worldwide phenomenon. Now, when it’s started, like when we, when the English translations of it first started, we could not sell that. Nobody wanted to touch it. The art was too cartoony and weird. It wasn’t very Munger inspired, all this sort of stuff. And then when the anime hit in English, all of a sudden everyone got it. And all I, all I can put it down to is, it’s one of those things that the, the animated stuff, you can consume it passively.

(01:28:59)
You can, you don’t have to be invested to read the story. And so you can get the vibe of what it’s like, um, and then go, yeah, this is a story I’m interested in, and go and find the books then. And so yeah, we’ve definitely seen Waves of all the biggest stuff going through at the moment. The, um, yeah, tack on Titan was monstrous. Uh, one piece is big now. Naruto Dragon Ball. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, uh, my Hero, academia, demon Slayer, and then a whole bunch of the other smaller ones. Things like Blue Lock and, um, yeah, there’s a whole heap of stuff coming through, but the, the big thing that just doesn’t, just cannot stop selling in the Japanese stuff is, uh, Juntos horror books and Yeah. Yeah. Um, each one of those is kind of a standalone story, so, um, you don’t end up getting this 105, 110 volume run like you do with one piece, but you, um, but yeah, man, they just sell and sell and sell, like everybody wants their creepy, creepy Jido books.

Leigh Chalker (01:30:11):
Yeah. I, I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for Berserk and, um, oh

Mal Briggs (01:30:15):
Yeah, great

Leigh Chalker (01:30:16):
Blade of Immortal, the that. Um, yep. Um, I loved that comic book Blade of the Immortal Man that sort of led on to that from Lone Wolf, from Cub, you know, like Read L Wolf when I was younger, I was like, what other Ninja <laugh>.

Mal Briggs (01:30:30):
Yeah. You know, what else, what else? You know, this I need, I need, I need my feudal period. Japan. Gimme a Sword. Yep.

Leigh Chalker (01:30:37):
Dude, I’m a sucker for that stuff, man. Let me tell you. It’s like, you know, I reckon, um, I reckon if, if you wanted to put me in a happy mood mate, you know what I mean, like, you just, you know, I don’t know, like maybe buy me something nice, like some futile Japan, you know, like, uh, black and brown comic books and, you know, like I, I’d be all right. <laugh>

Mal Briggs (01:30:57):
Was, that was literally, I had a friend, I had a friend, uh, bring me back a, a Japanese copy of Lone Wolf and Cub from Japan from like some second air bookstore somewhere. And I was like, this is my favourite thing.

Leigh Chalker (01:31:10):
Oh, yeah. Beautiful man.

Mal Briggs (01:31:12):
<laugh>,

Leigh Chalker (01:31:14):
Just man, unbelievable. The, the joy I’ve had like reading those comic books, man. And, um, how, how I discovered Lone Wolfen Cub is when I was very like young and the TV SBS was just starting. So we are talking

Mal Briggs (01:31:35):
Very

Leigh Chalker (01:31:36):
Young and at like, you know, midnight 1:00 AM in the morning, they’d drop out those lone Wolf and Cub movies,

Mal Briggs (01:31:43):
Baby Courage on the River sticks. Yeah.

Leigh Chalker (01:31:46):
Yeah, man. And it was just like, what is this? You know what I mean? Like, and I’d just sit there and that red,

Mal Briggs (01:31:52):
And he pulls the sword outta the handles of the baby carriage, and you’re like, what

Leigh Chalker (01:31:58):
An installed dude? Like, it just blew my mind, man. And then, yeah, so, you know, like in that regard, yeah, you might be right with how this, do you think this stuff translates? Because you mentioned like there’s not much differentiation between the anime and the manga in terms of just touch of storytelling. The, the, the foundational story is pretty much there where, you know, if you go to, let’s just take X-Men, right? Um, whatever you want. You’ve got the Uncanny X-Men and stuff. So you’ve got that. And then you’ve got the X-Men movies, which obviously to fit in, you know, like 500,000 issues. They’ve gotta create their own story into three or four movies, you know what I mean? Which give it a different feel, like, you know, so people can follow one or the other, but then you get the cartoons as well. So, you know, you’ve got X-Men 97, you know, like back in the day was totally different to what they were putting out.

(01:32:54)
And, and do you think that, do you think that the such sudden sharp changes in like story shape and mould is something that may not appeal to people? Do you know what I mean? Like, does the anime and the manga together being similar, attract more people because they know what they’re getting as opposed to, you know, what’s Wolverine gonna be like in this? He’s not the same as that. Or what’s gambit like in that? I preferred this version of Gambit as opposed to that, but, you know, like, it, it, it, it seemed it, I even got confused when I was in my prime heyday. You reckon that’s something that would be

Mal Briggs (01:33:36):
Yeah. Oh, completely. Like, they don’t, they, they don’t produce them with an idea of crossing over, like the, the companies that make films want you to watch the films. They’re not interested in you going back and reading the comic. And as far as they’re concerned, they’ve, they bought the rights to the, the story in the comic, and, and that’s all the payment that needs. And that’s, and that’s one of the biggest problems with the movie studios owning the publishers, is that the licence rights aren’t flowing back to the creators. You know, when, when Robert Kirkman sells the rights to The Walking Dead for a live action series, or, or Invincible for an animated series, whether they’re authentic to the book, which on both of those, they up and down, they’ve been pretty authentic to the book. He’s been an executive producer and co-writer on both of them, and that Mm-Hmm.

(01:34:33)
<affirmative>. Um, but even if they’re not authentic to the book, he gets a solid paycheck out of that. Yeah. Whereas, whereas Marvel Comics, the, the comics publisher doesn’t see a bump on their balance sheet when Marvel Studios makes a new Iron Man movie or something. You know, when, when Marvel Studios makes this upcoming Fantastic four movie, there’s not going to be some royalty payout that flows to the publishing arm Yeah. And that they can then reinvest in paying talent to make something else exciting and new. The, the publishing arm is expected to be self-sufficient. And, and that’s one of the biggest problems there, is that the studio are taking all the studio money

Leigh Chalker (01:35:31):
Hmm.

Mal Briggs (01:35:32):
That they’re building using ideas that come out of the comics guys and not letting the cash flow go back Yeah. For the comics guys to invest in creators and royalties for creators and whatever else. And so we’re seeing weird publishing decisions, uh, happen all over the, the place. Um, and, and it is one of the, the better things about indie productions that, that the, the indie comic creator, when they sign the rights away, they actually, the money does actually flow back into comics publishing. Not now. Not every indie publisher is like a Kirkman who just is constantly just reinvesting in making another comic and another comic. Some of them literally just make comics in hope to sell a movie or a TV thing. ’cause they really just want be doing that. Yeah. Um, and I’ve completely forgotten why I started talking about this. I’ve just rambled on. So <laugh>, this is

Leigh Chalker (01:36:27):
The fluidity of Chinwag Mel. Like, this is the <inaudible>. Woohoo. We’re off and running now, like we’re fluent. Um, like with that, I just, we were talking about the congruency of like the, the storyline with the anime and, uh, manga as opposed to, you know, um, the Marvel stuff and then the, the independent, like veering off, let’s, let’s go into the independent side of things. Um, you know, we’ve talked about the big two and know how they work and things like that. But, um, you know, like, um, like you got image, uh, and independent, like when I was really like Vibe and into comic books, because I’ve sort of like these days I’m very, man, I’m eclectic what I read, Hey, like, oh God, I’ll read. I I, I don’t even know what I’m reading sometimes, man. You know, like I just, I don’t read anything in order.

(01:37:22)
It’s like, I’ll just be like, oh, I wanna read Swamp Thing and I’ll go and get Swamp Thing. Or then the next I’ll be like, you know, I haven’t read Berserk in a while. I’m gonna go and read Berserk, and then I’m off and I’m, I’m, I’m reading, you know, like, what, what, what have I been reading? Let me think. I’ll give you an example. So there was, um, this, there Is Swamp Thing. There’s some Australian comic book stuff, um, gods Amongst Men and Foes I’ve read recently. Um, what else is in there? There’s a whole heap of scar stuff. I’ve been reading those Australian legends, Steve Carter and Antoinette Rider. I’ve got a stack of them, man, I’m churning through at the moment. It’s like, but anyway, I’m all over the shop with like, what I read is what I’m getting at. So with, with your independence, um, and, uh, you know, uh, like, so for me, dark Horse was cool, even though they’re not independent, but like, they were cool in their day because it’s like they had all the Star Wars and predators and aliens and that, you know, and they gave a whole new world of existence to, you know, movie type things, but like independent, um, comics, what do you, what is, what’s your top man?

(01:38:37)
Like, what, what’s vibe and in that zone of the, you know, the left or right or centre stage mate of the

Mal Briggs (01:38:43):
Well, I mean, yeah, this is, this is an interesting thing too, and it’s tough, like in Independent becomes a really weird label because, you know, dark Horse did licence stuff, but also Dark Horse is the home of Sin City and Hellboy, and those things are straight up creator owned there. It’s effectively an independent publisher. Um,

Leigh Chalker (01:39:08):
Let’s not forget Barb Wire <laugh>.

Mal Briggs (01:39:11):
Yeah. Well, Bob, well see Barb Wire. Barb Wire was sort of rolled into that whole effort that they had to try and create a superhero universe that, you know, they had X and barb wire and, um, I can’t even remember all of them. They all had a logo, thought they all had a logo. White

Leigh Chalker (01:39:31):
Man. He was a

Mal Briggs (01:39:32):
Cool, yeah, yeah, yeah,

Leigh Chalker (01:39:33):
Yeah,

Mal Briggs (01:39:34):
Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah. So every now and then, yeah, you get ’em, you get a company like that comes up with, wants to make a superhero universe invincible an image was part of their sort of, yeah, we’re gonna have this cohesive superhero universe. And it’s sort of, every now and then an image seems to come out with another wave of, oh, we’re gonna do a superhero universe. And it’s like, nah, just don’t just <laugh>, just, just tell stories, man.

Leigh Chalker (01:40:03):
Yeah,

Mal Briggs (01:40:04):
Yeah. We don’t need another superhero universe. We, we need, we just need good stories. Yeah. Uh, like, I mean, right, right now, Daniel Warren Johnson’s doing, uh, transformers, uh, but man, his things like murder falcon and, um, and, uh, do a power bomb. Oh man. When I read the first preview of Do a Power Bomb, I was just like, this is, this is the best thing ever. This is so good. Do nobody, nobody draws action like that guy, you know, like, um, oh man, there’s a whole bunch of, oh, the, the thing that is blowing my mind right now is, um, beneath the trees where nobody sees, I dunno whether you’ve seen this thing.

Leigh Chalker (01:40:58):
No, I have not.

Mal Briggs (01:41:00):
Okay. Uh, so, uh, what was the name of that? That, uh, Dexter, you know, the, the serial killer hiding out as the Cop? Yeah, yeah. You know, they made TV show’s based on novels and that, right? Yep. So Imagine Dexter, but instead of, he’s a, instead of working for the cops, uh, he’s a woman who owns a hardware store, but he’s actually a serial killer. And instead of it being a woman, it’s like a Richard scary style teddy bear person who lives in a little village of all these anthropomorphic animals who live their quaint little lives. And yeah, this, this teddy bear who, who runs the hardware store, takes her truck and drives into the city to pick someone off to go and murder them in, into the, in the forest, because that’s how she gets her kicks and somebody dies in the town. And so she’s scared that the cops are going to investigate that murder and find her. And it’s this amazing murder mystery where your protagonist is actually a murderer themselves, and everyone is a cute little animal, and it’s all watercolours and it’s bonkers. It’s just so good. That’s probably the one that’s blowing my mind right now. Um,

Leigh Chalker (01:42:26):
So that’s, that’s, that was a, that’s gonna be a question later on, is what’s, what’s got you now? And,

Mal Briggs (01:42:32):
Um, yeah. That book, that book just about everybody that I went try this, it just came back and went, what the hell was that? And

Leigh Chalker (01:42:39):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, it’s cool to see, um, um, such an array of different, um, like stories and, and people trying different things too, man. Uh, uh, um, a lot more of late, you know, because I, I think for, for me, one of the factors that I, to an extent, uh, got a little bit fed up with the big two, I apologise for anyone out there that loves them. They’re comics, we all love them, but if everyone in the world had the same taste, it’d be a little bit boring. So anyway, back to what I, I’m I’m yaking about is, um, I got a little bit, you know, when you’ve read like 250 issues of the uncanny Ex man, you’re starting to see, you know, <laugh> like the same story, you know, like a few times in that run. So you sort of tend to get a little bit like, well, I’ve been here and done that, you know?

(01:43:32)
Um, and while I do enjoy very long series in the monthly, you know, like, um, issue five hundreds and six hundreds and all that, I, I really enjoy, um, I guess as they still call limited series, where you get like four or issues that are just like wicked. You know, like they’ve trimmed the fat man, you know what I mean? Like, they’ve just tried something really different, you know? And, um, and whether it hits and misses with some people, it’s like, it’s all about the, the creative process and, you know, having a crack at it. Hey, they’re the sorts of things that excite me as opposed to, um, you know, like, I don’t know. Do, do you still get people that come in for, you know, the 467th issue of the uncanny X-Men in a row? Oh, yeah. Religiously. They’re in 8:30 AM Thursday morning. And if it’s not out of the box mal, where is it? Man, <laugh>.

Mal Briggs (01:44:31):
Yeah. Well, it’s, it’s Fri Friday’s here, man. ’cause we’re, we’re inland, you know? But, um,

Leigh Chalker (01:44:36):
<laugh>, it doesn’t take that long for the, oh, maybe it does, you know?

Mal Briggs (01:44:40):
Yeah. You gotta add an extra day. It’s, yeah. Um, the, well, X-Men are just about to relaunch, um, Xmen X-Men iss a great example of like, like you say, they, they start telling the same stories. That’s part of what I really dug about the recent Koen era, um, stuff. It alienated so many people because it took a big leap and said, every here is a story that respects everything that’s come before, everything that you feel excited about. I’m going to fold it into what we’re doing, but we’re going to evolve and we’re going to change this, what this book is about. Yeah. And, um, they gave it a red Hot Go, and there was some really cool stuff in there and some really wild sci-fi concepts in there. Um, but I think that’s kind of what it became, was this big political sci-fi book. And it wasn’t this, um, rebellious, heroic, minority adventure book.

(01:46:01)
Um, and so my understanding is that’s where, where we’re going with the, the, the relaunches is we’re, we’re going back to brass tacks. Mm-Hmm. And, and I mean, X-Men, X-Men goes through little waves of resets like that, uh, things like the House of Am Age of Apocalypse, you, you get these little resets. Um, they almost have their own, um, Marvel version of a DC style crisis event in the X-Men where they, they kind of reset things and, um, rejig things back to where they belong. And so every now and then, it’s a good time for some new wave to jump on. And you know, what, if they’re doing that every now and then, and people take it as an opportunity to jump off as long as there’s new people jumping on. Yeah. Uh, I don’t, I don’t think there’s any problem with them going back then and retreading the same ground with new, new writers and new artists are always going to approach it from a different way. Um, and, and there’s gonna be new trends in the way the storytelling works, and it’ll appeal to a new generation. I mean, yeah. If, if the Tina, if the X-Men aren’t appealing to

(01:47:18)
Teenage audiences who feel like they’re on the fringes of society, it’s probably not targeting itself very well. Like, that’s, that’s where it sort of belongs. That’s where the whole, the whole metaphor of it belongs. You know, each character kind of has their, their sort of part of society that they, that they represent. And, and that was what they, um, yeah. And e Xmen is very, very particular in what it, what it does. I mean, yeah. The idea of them becoming a, a political world power was a natural progression of everything. But it’s probably not the story people wanna read in another 10 years time. Dude, you know, <laugh>,

Leigh Chalker (01:48:12):
I would, I would agree with you in terms of, um, for me as someone that’s grown up with comic books Yeah. Like, take X-Men. ’cause I, I always obsessed with X-Men. I’ve got like, man, like four, 500 comics over there of X-Men. You know, like I was well into them. And, um, and uh, like as long as people, you know, again, we come back to like, ev not everyone’s gonna like the same thing or the same creator of the same artists and all that. And it’s like, as long as, as you said, if some people drop off, some people might be attracted to, you know, like what that new version of them is and you know, like Carry on the Wave and the Wing and that. And, and those people like, might be like my dad, who, you know, like enjoyed one part of Spider-Man, and his enthusiasm for that brought me into, you know, comic books through that.

(01:49:05)
And like, it just, it’s a cycle that just rolls on with families and kids and stuff like that, man, which keeps it all alive and things. And, um, I just, stories are good man in general, you know, as long as there’s a quality to them, it doesn’t matter whether I like certain things or don’t, you know what I mean? As long as it’s, it’s the, the variety is the main spice of life, you know, like, I think, and it’s all good for the, um, the genre in itself, you know, um, the market, um, the man I’m, I’m gonna get to, um, we talked earlier about, um, when you’re a young man and you went to, you know, Comic-Con conventions and you, and, and your mind was blown, you know, like, because issue one, you know, you’d come across and, and you and I must be similar ages.

(01:49:59)
’cause I remember when Issue one came out and Zero Assassin and all that, I was buying them off the shelves too, and was like, whoa. You know what I mean? This is some good stuff, you know, and I have a bit of a, I’m a bit of a sucker for the old dystopian science fiction cyber punk setting myself, Mel. So, um, you know, like, uh, just, just saying, um, now man, when it comes to, um, like, you’re obviously, well people, you know, know people, uh, in the Australian comic community, and, uh, you, you no doubt keeping an eye on creators and stuff around Australia. How, how are you, um, how do you feel about, um, Australian comic books as such? Like, do you find them healthier than what they’ve been, have they always been healthy after 20 years in the comic industry or, you know, comic shop and previous being a fan? Where do you see Australian comic books as a whole mate over your time dabbling since issue one? Wow.

Mal Briggs (01:51:05):
Um, wow. <laugh>, I don’t know. Um, I think what I, what I really like about comics in Australia right now, uh, is the variety that’s being produced, and I mean, the variety of storytelling, but the variety of formats, the variety of markets they’re reaching out to. Um, yeah, you’ve got your comic, your comedies and your adventures and your single issue comic books and the traditional formats and stuff. And then you’ve got amazing graphic novels that are getting published by, by big mainstream publishers, you know, um, the nonfiction stuff and just the variety’s crazy. It’s, it’s really hard to get a beat on what’s going on, you know, like I’m in the shop the whole time and very much, um, part of our, the shop’s role in the market and the industry is facilitating stuff that’s mainstream releases. There’s so, there’s so many conventions in this, the country now that just about any indie book is available at a Artis sally somewhere. And I, anything that isn’t being published by mainstream publisher is almost always getting funded through something like a Kickstarter and that, so, so you’re getting this market that is being served directly by things like the Kickstarters. Um, and it’s a whole ecosystem that’s happening without

(01:53:11)
Me being savvy to like numbers or rhythm or what’s going on. It’s not the same as like the in week out rhythm that I see with American release stuff. And, um, so yeah, just trying to get a bead on the scale of it and that, and when I was in the early nineties when I, I feel like I, I basically wouldn’t touch an American book. I was just reading. I was, I was full blown hipster on this. It was like, yeah, I read comics, but you’ve never heard of them. Yeah. You know, like it was like, if you read the same comics as me, I would, I would know. I would’ve seen you there buying them, you know, like, so, um, yeah. And so I, I put a lot of effort into being as informed as I possibly could be with no internet and know, um, you know, just doing whatever the heck you could back then. Um, whereas now, yeah, like, I mean, my job kind of stopped me from having the time to, to, to chase all of these different corners of the market, which I suppose ultimately, I guess I’m trying to get around to saying is, is it, it looks pretty exciting and big and healthy and stuff simply, simply because it’s hard to get, keep a track of like, I mean that if we, with all of the opportunities and avenues and everything, if it was easy to keep a track on, um, it would be disappointing. Um,

(01:55:04)
That said, it would be lovely if we could have a one single catalogue that we can go, here’s everything that’s around or, or something. But, um, and I mean, you know, there’s definitely efforts to do that between things like Comex and, um,

(01:55:24)
Owner indie and, and, and, um, things like that. And, and again, lot, lots of opportunities to, to get the creators directly to the consumers, um, which is terrific. And, and then there’s a whole wave of people too that are getting published out of the us You, you Tom Taylor and Nicholas Scott and Andrew Constant and John. So, and I don’t know who is Glen doing something in Glen Luson doing something in the US at the moment? I don’t know. Like there’s just, there’s all these people like, uh, working away quietly in their own rooms, <laugh>, nobody knows what they’re doing. Um, and then, yeah, and then you’ve got things like IPI comics coming out, and it’s showing up in the American catalogues and we’re importing those like with Australian written across the sort of going all the way round again. Um, yeah. You, there’s no way I can say that. It doesn’t feel good. Um, yeah. Yeah. The, yeah, the stuff that’s available now, and it’s just diverse. It’s just everywhere. Everyone, anyone who wants to make stuff can, um, there’s nothing stopping ’em. I think so. Um, yeah, why not?

Leigh Chalker (01:56:42):
Yeah, it’s, it’s good that, um, it’s interesting you, you said that. ’cause uh, I mean even from like someone, like from my perspective that, you know, like partakes in the comic books and does Chinwag and has met people and reaches out to people and stuff and, and has met other people through live streams and things in the community, there’s still so many people that I’ve never heard of, and there’s still so many comic books that I see and I’m like, okay. You know what I mean? Like, it’s up to issue what six, you know what I mean? Like, I know, you know what I mean? And like, it, it is, man, it’s like really, I mean, it’s pretty humming for me, I guess, but a lot of factors, like you just said, you know, like printing’s a lot cheaper now. There’s, um, you know, print runs aren’t, you know, from just talking to people through Chin Wags and over my time here, you know, back in the day of like issue ones, there were giant print runs, you know what I mean?

(01:57:40)
That you needed like threes and five thousands and stuff where now you could print 20, you know what I mean? If you really wanted to, you know what I mean? And, um, and put the effort in and, and there’s web terms and you know, like, um, all those sorts of things. So there’s a lot more content obviously getting out there. I guess it’s not like a, will I use it as a house deposit or buy a car? You know what I mean? Like, or, or will I try and print a comic book and get it into, you know, like <inaudible> Australian wide through got, what is it, Gordon and Gotch or

Mal Briggs (01:58:09):
Whatever, Gordon and Gotch. Yeah. Who, you know, heaven knows if they’ve kept numbers of how many comics Gordon got shredded because they got returned from news agents.

Leigh Chalker (01:58:19):
Oh, man, <laugh>. Yeah. I, I heard a really sad story. Um, I, I went to get an issue with a Phantom about 12 months ago, and I was a little bit late on it. I’d just been caught up and just hadn’t thought about it. I was going past the news age, and so I was like, oh, maybe they’ve got it. And I went in and I spoke to the, the lady that was working there, and I said, oh, if you’ve got this issue with the fandom. And she said, oh, you just missed out. And I was like, oh, bummer. You don’t have it out the back or anything. She’s like, no, they’re in the bin if you want to go out there and look <laugh>. I’m like, oh, okay. Like, let’s, you know, don’t send it back. What? You know, like, and I, yeah, I was a little bit like, you know, um, but anyway, um, I thought that sucked.

(01:59:03)
But, uh, yeah, that just from me being a creator and like thinking that these people are putting their blood, sweat and tears into something and sitting in these little rooms under lights, man, you know what I mean? Like, to find out that, you know, like, um, their works, you know, certain numbers of copies or, you know, like in the industrial being out the back, you know, like to me was a bit like, okay, but that’s not cool, but that’s the way it works, I guess. Um, yeah, like with, um, now that you’re in the, the hip and j and section of the Canberra City, um, do you have many like, um, independent Canberra comic book creators and stuff coming to you, Mel, you know, like trying to apply their wares onto you? Like Mel, will you, you know, like, uh, buy a couple of these comic books, mate, you know what I mean? Like, and see if they can sell. How, how do you operate like that man, do you know, like,

Mal Briggs (02:00:04):
Not a lot. Um, I think we’ve probably, this is, this is, this is the reality of the, the flip side of how easy it is for the creators to, to sell direct to the consumers, whether that’s artist Sally’s or Kickstarters or whatever else is that the economics of how they price the books. And, and that, um, means that there’s not a lot of meat necessarily left to pay a retailer’s cut. And as much as I wanna be the guy who supports these things, I, I gotta pay my rent. And, uh, oh, there’s that

Leigh Chalker (02:00:54):
You have to make as well. So I guess from, yeah, the person coming to you, I mean, it’s almost, I guess it’s a prestige, I suppose, for them to have a couple of issues of their comic book in your shop so that you can continue to be a comic book shop. Because we do know that comic book shops are, um, you know, getting rarer around the parts, you know, like the, the, the nation in America and stuff. Yeah, for sure. You know, from a business man, you know what I mean? You gotta think about that as well. Um, you know, so, uh, it is one of those things, but you haven’t found that, like, for you personally, you seem like a pretty cool dude, but like, I know a couple of, like, I, I’ve got a couple of like, you know, Amer, you know, I, I don’t have many friends, Mel, but you know, the, the couple I’ve got are like, I’m gonna talk about it, my American friends who are, they’re really not my friends, they’re just people I talk to on the internet.

(02:01:51)
So, you know, like if that’s what friends are these days, hey, I dunno, you know, what’s your definition? Who knows? But anyway, there’s people that I know of by name and, and stuff, and <laugh> see where the, like, the fluidity of this goes. But anyway, I’ll just get to the question. Some of them have kick starting, you know, they, they’re publishers that, you know, like, and it’s all good, man. I’m just saying what it is. And, and they publish their comic books in large numbers through Kickstarter and stuff. And some of the comic books shops in America, um, don’t stock their comic books because, um, like they see Kickstarter as, I guess a distributor, which it is to a certain extent, you know what I mean? Like, your customers come to you, you’re shipping it out, et cetera. So they fo uh, they feel that it’s, um, not beneficial to that those guys as a comic shop to sell kick started comic books. Now, I’m not, I’m, this isn’t saying whether you do or not, but as a comic bookshop owner, what are your thoughts on that? Do you see Kickstarter as a competitor? Because, you know, like, uh, I to, in a certain extent, you know, because people are going to kickstart of the buy comic books, or do you not phase yourself by it because they’re not things that you’re aware of or, you know, what, what’s your thoughts about that whole, like, um, looking at things?

Mal Briggs (02:03:27):
Well, it’s definitely eating up part of the market. Like, and, and, and again, this is, this is the thing. If that, if that’s, if that’s the ecosystem, like if that’s the market that a book needs to sell in to sell, that’s cool. That’s fine. But it doesn’t, um, it isn’t always additive. Like, like I know that I’ve stocked things sometimes I’ve stocked things that I knew were kickstarted, sometimes I’ve stocked things that I didn’t know were kickstarted. And, um, I have on on examples of both of those had people who I was sure were gonna be interested in this book

Leigh Chalker (02:04:11):
Yeah.

Mal Briggs (02:04:12):
Who came in and went, Hey, this thing just got released. Have you seen this? And they were like, oh, cool. I backed this. That must mean that my copy’s on the way sometime soon. And, and you know, like, I ordered this because I thought I knew my customers. Yeah. Um, and I did, I nailed it. I nailed it so well that that customer was so invested in that market that they backed it directly with the publishers. Yeah. Yeah. And if, if the market was so big that I knew for every one of those that I knew there was two or three other ones that would like the same stuff

Leigh Chalker (02:04:54):
Yeah.

Mal Briggs (02:04:55):
Um, then that wouldn’t phase me at all. Yeah. But the market’s not that big. And, and the diversity of product, especially things that go to Kickstarter tends to be, um, ultra niche stuff that tends to have a less than broad spectrum appeal. So when I lose that customer, I can identify from my books, then I lose any opportunity to multiply that. Like, to give you an idea,

Leigh Chalker (02:05:29):
Yep.

Mal Briggs (02:05:31):
If I order in four with most publishers, if I order in four copies of a book with overheads and margins and stuff, if I don’t sell all four copies, if I’m left with one copy on the shelf, I have lost money stocking that book. Right. Right. So if I know that I’ve got five customers that I know will pick something up,

Mal Briggs (02:06:06):
I

Mal Briggs (02:06:07):
I’ve got margin now that I can afford to risk one more copy on the shelf.

Leigh Chalker (02:06:14):
Yeah.

Mal Briggs (02:06:15):
And that’s where it becomes a multiplier that I’ve got customers who will discover things and I’m, as a business, I’m prepared to take risks on things

Leigh Chalker (02:06:25):
Like that. Yeah.

Mal Briggs (02:06:27):
But if it’s a product that I think I’ve got four, maybe five customers, but two of them might be already buying a copy from Kickstarter. Now I’m like,

Leigh Chalker (02:06:44):
Yeah, now

Mal Briggs (02:06:46):
I don’t, I don’t, I don’t wanna risk stocking this unless someone comes in and specifically asks me for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, because if I put this on the shelf, I, I, even if I’m left with one left, I literally made nothing on that product. It didn’t pay it rent for the shelf that it was on. It cost me money. Um, and, and it’s just one of those hard realities that, you know, I, if, if there’s a book that we can just sell by the box load, and there are indie creators, there are indie self-published things that I literally go keep going back to the well and going, send me another 20, send me another 20. Um, because I know that I’ve moved enough that even if I order in another 20 and I never move one again, I’ve still not lost any money.

(02:07:35)
Yep. Yep. Um, and so that, that’s that multiplier. Because, because yeah, if I lose four, four readers to an, uh, Kickstarter that, you know, would’ve bought it off the shelf, then I’m not, then I’m not going to find that fifth one. Whereas if all four of them come in and buy it from me, then I’ve got enough margin to risk stocking another copy to, to find that fifth person. So Yeah, it’s a, it’s a balance, man. It’s, yeah, you gotta, it’s, it’s wild. And we’re doing it literally every single week through the mainstream things, across single issues and books. There’s well over a hundred different products. Uh, you know, it could be some weeks, 200 different products, and then those comics will then have four variants each. And just like, it’s just hundreds of things. And that’s just the mainstream stuff that we’re, we’re literally making these calculations on. There’s, there’s Marvel books that we, we rack one copy. ’cause it’s just like if I, if I rack a second one, it’s a, it, it’s, I’m risking my money. So for it to be an indie thing where, where a percentage of the potential market for that is kick starting it, um, yeah. I, the numbers have gotta be real good.

Leigh Chalker (02:09:04):
That’s a super interesting perspective that, you know, like that you gave then because, um, um, like from me, like I can see from like your perspective as a business owner, I mean, essentially you wouldn’t really want to even be having back issues, would you? You know what I mean? Like, well,

Mal Briggs (02:09:23):
I mean, this is the thing. If it, if it’s a product

Leigh Chalker (02:09:26):
<crosstalk> issues, but you wouldn’t want those extra, you know, one over, like on the shelf for a long period of time because it’s like, it’s taken up shelf space to get new stock in, then you’ve gotta break down because like the first issue might sell. But then you’re taking a chance on the second only what, you know, they’ve got those, you know, things I’ve read, like the second dish shall only ever sell 75% of what the first issue did. What? Know, that’s

Mal Briggs (02:09:51):
Thing plenty of titles, it’s 50%.

Leigh Chalker (02:09:53):
Oh, there you go. Like, man, you must, no one, do you ever get outta that office in there, Mel? Or, you know, like these are the things that go into it, mate, you know? Yeah. That no one ever like, um, thinks about, you know, because, um, yeah. The, I from asking you now as, as a, um, business owner and seeing your perspective on the Kickstarter side of things, you know, there is a, um, definitely cleared that up as to why that would be, you know, the way that you would think, you know, and, um, you do have to make margins like, like you said, to, to keep your lights on and you know, like pay your staff and everything. ’cause um, as we said, you know, like comic bookshops are certainly, um, you know, like getting less and less mate, you know, um, you read about it a lot over the last couple of years, which is no good. Um, so the ones that it’s still there, you know, gotta try and strengthen and, and numbers and stuff. Um, I, um, I like the fact that you’ve, you’ve, um, stayed in that area, man for so long, you know, and, um, you’re in a hip jive and place, you know? Um, I, I like the fact that, um, you know, for a lot of the reasons that you, you like, uh, oh, there you go. Nick, may I completed my run of oil, oy oil issues at Impact. There you go. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know,

Mal Briggs (02:11:23):
That’s a good anthology. Yeah. Yeah. I like that book. Yeah.

Leigh Chalker (02:11:26):
Yeah. I’ve got a few issues of oil, oy, oy, myself, mate. You know, that’s, um, back in the day was, um, where I first, uh, discovered, um, Dylan Nailer and a few other pla um, people.

Mal Briggs (02:11:38):
Oh wow, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In those issues I’ve got, I’ve got, yeah, I’ve got, um, some Fireballs posters by Dylan, but Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Leigh Chalker (02:11:46):
Yeah.

Mal Briggs (02:11:47):
Old, old nightclub I used to work at when they were closing down, they had, they had all of their posters from gigs that they’d had that were mounted on the wall. And I was like, I just want the firewalls ones. I have to have the Dylan Nailer firewalls ones <laugh>. So

Leigh Chalker (02:12:01):
Yeah, that, that you still got that floating around.

Mal Briggs (02:12:04):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep.

Leigh Chalker (02:12:07):
That’s cool. You must have got on on another note. You must have got some cool merch over the years, man. Do you know, like, uh, uh, I’m, I’m, ’cause I’m assuming back, like the other thing I was getting to earlier about comic book shops when we were growing up is there wasn’t Funko Pops and there wasn’t this and that. There were like fold out, you know, like posters and, you know, like there were cardboard standee, you know what I mean? Like, and rare T-shirts, man. Like you would, there wasn’t heaps and heaps of T-shirts getting around like there is now. You know, if someone

Mal Briggs (02:12:36):
Had, we had, when I say, okay, here’s a, here’s a weird story. Um, I say that we, when we left Impact Records, we didn’t take anything and we started from scratch. We

Leigh Chalker (02:12:51):
<laugh>,

Mal Briggs (02:12:52):
Some things came with us

(02:12:56)
<laugh>. We had, we had a war machine standing d that was from, what was the name of the title, drawing a complete blank on what the actual series was. Anyway, this is a war machine stand, and it had a motion sensor with LED lights and a, and like a gun sound like when you walk too close to this thing, all these guns, little red LEDs and would blink in and it go do, do, do. We had that in the shop from like, almost day one. And it was like, we had no war machine coming <laugh>. Like there was, nobody knew who War Machine was. We hadn’t had Iron Man two yet. Like it was just when Iron Man two hit though, we were like, all right, now we’re doing some promo with this thing <laugh>.

Leigh Chalker (02:13:45):
Yeah. Yeah.

Mal Briggs (02:13:47):
I think, I think some dude won it in a raffle. Eventually we were like, yeah, it’s, it’s done. It’s done. Its time that thing’s gotta be vintage by now. Like Yeah. Yeah. I have no idea where that’s ended up now, but yeah. Yeah. So, so yeah, no, definitely send some cool merch.

Leigh Chalker (02:14:00):
Yep. Yeah. That, that probably would’ve been back from the, um, what was that series? Call man, um, iron The Iron Wars or something like that?

Mal Briggs (02:14:10):
No, it wasn’t Iron Wars, it was something worked works with an Egg <laugh>. Yeah, something like that,

Leigh Chalker (02:14:21):
You know, like yeah, probably something, you know, very much like that. Like, oh, we’ll go to Planet with some aliens. What’s the name of the series? Fighting Aliens in Space, you know, you know, like <laugh>, I both got super original mate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, yeah. No, that’s really cool. Um, well, Mel, as, as we start winding down our chinwag mate, there’s um, of, um, I’m gonna, I’m gonna do my best to, to to get, you know, like, to condense everything, you know, like, ’cause I like to do this just to, just to let you know, I’ve, I’ve been, I’ve been listening and enjoying our conversation and stuff and, uh, and, and so we’ve got, let me, I gotta, I gotta, you know, now that I’ve given myself this big wrap, you know, like I’ve gotta get on the game, man. I don’t want to be an egghead, you know, like even though I am.

(02:15:14)
But, um, it’s, so we’ve got dairy, dairy issues. We’ve got Godfather was a super cool dude, didn’t bring you chocolates, and you started bringing your Fandom comics. So you started getting a taste for fandom, not chocolate. Okay? So we’ve got that. Then you started going into your news agents and things like that, you know, starting to get a few more fandoms and things. Then as you started going into the big, you know, you finished in Kda Mundra there, ’cause the Kda that we’ve discovered that the Cuda Mundra Waddle is not your friend, but you mentioned a couple of other tree, you know, tree varieties that are, which I forgive me, but I can’t remember their name. <laugh>

Mal Briggs (02:15:49):
<laugh>.

Leigh Chalker (02:15:50):
Um, and uh, so then, then we’ve, we’ve moved into, uh, Canberra to go to university. And you discovered that, um, accounting wasn’t your thing because people weren’t doodling enough. So then you went into, um, the graphic designs and the industrial designs because people were doodle more and you’re still kicking yourself to this day that you didn’t finish that. But it finds out that your dairy issues led you to Phantom, which led you strangely enough to accounting, which further on down the track, after you went to some Australian comic book conventions, after coming across Issue one and Agent Zero, it led you to what could have possibly diverted you from comics into a life of crime about stalking Gently, as we said, as you said, um, some of the local comic book creators, which, uh, made you think to yourself, this is really cool. What would I like to do with the rest of my life?

(02:16:52)
I would like to hang out in a comic book shop. So you went to Impact Records who had a comic book shop out the back of that, and you met your mate Cam, who you’re still buddies with and running the shop right now. You two work together then with seven days notice, you find out you boys, ha ha, someone’s bought, you know, your gonski. You know, like we’re outta here couple of days later, you know, like while you’re trying to sort things out, dude comes do, says, I got half a shop. You wanna have, you wanna have a crack at things and see how you’re going. You gotta register a business name and you are like, impact Records. I’m going with Impact Comics. ’cause everyone knows that which you’ve come to regret from time to time,

Mal Briggs (02:17:33):
<laugh>

Leigh Chalker (02:17:34):
In your period there. And then man, you have gone from an upstairs place with staircases in the middle, with one of the happiest moments being a 6-year-old kid, nearly being adopted into Mel’s family, <laugh> because he couldn’t let his parents walk out into the street without him. ’cause Impact Comics was so cool. And then to where you are now in a super hip place with a gaming shop, uh, um, the, the War Hammer sort of crew down here, a bookshop. You humming in there with Cam and your crew there at Impact comic books, you know, with people growing up. You’re seeing babies go to adults. You help creating the new generation of comic book readers in Australia and supporting people and that you’ve been at it for 20 years successfully. So you’ve touched on a few, uh, ways you think about what you’re looking for and how your business has developed. And you’ve turned out to be a bloody decent dude, man. And I have enjoyed this conversation immensely. So was that a reasonable roundup? Uh,

Mal Briggs (02:18:42):
Pretty good <laugh>. Yeah. You make me sound interesting.

Leigh Chalker (02:18:45):
Yeah, well you’re <laugh> you’re very

Mal Briggs (02:18:47):
<laugh>.

Leigh Chalker (02:18:48):
I think you’re very interesting mate. So, you know, like, um, yeah, no, it’s cool. Um, uh, now, well, as we wind down our show, the one thing that I do like to, um, uh, you know, ask everyone, and it’s just one of those things sometimes like it can be two things. And you know what, because you’re a shop owner, we’ll go with the one because I think that’s the most important. Actually, you know what, Mel? No, I’m, I’m gonna throw you to the wolves, man. <laugh>, I’m gonna throw you to the wolves. Alright. Okay. So here’s two coming, but we’ll ask you the one first. If Little Mel walked up to Big Mel now and said Big Mel, you know, why, what would Big Mel say to little Mel?

Mal Briggs (02:19:40):
Why

Leigh Chalker (02:19:42):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>,

Mal Briggs (02:19:44):
That’s a good Hmm. Because the best things aren’t always the easy things.

Leigh Chalker (02:20:02):
I like it. I like it. Short, concise, poignant. And you know what, not just for business people but creators out there as well. It’s got a really nice round off to it that mate, you’re a hundred percent correct ’cause um, you’re right. And, um, perfect. I think that’s perfect, man. Nicely done. Um, I was expecting a little bit longer there, but you know, you, you rounded it out really, really sweetly. So it’s, uh, there we have it <laugh> and concisely and I like it. I liked it. Yeah. Um, alright, so Mel, um, for anyone that’s going to be listening and or watching this past, present future in 2D, 3D, four D, five D, whatever, DS you’re talking about, where whatever parallel universe you are in, mate, where is Impact comics for people? Where can they come and see you? Can they bring you a, a coffee with soy milk from time to time, you know, like, um, and drop things off to you? You know, like, uh, you know, where, where you at in that city there in Canberra? A

Mal Briggs (02:21:06):
So, so yeah, we’re in, we’re on, we’re on Nawal country in Canberra. Um, we’re in Garima place, like right in the city, right in the middle of the city. Uh, at the moment you just sort of follow the jackhammer noise where they’ve knocked a building down near nearby pretty recently, and they’re trying to build a hotel. But yeah, so, uh, yeah, so Guru Place is where, where you’ll find us, uh, if you, if you see, see the, see see the gaming shop or you see yeah, good, good games or, uh, land Speed records, you’re probably in, in the right area. Um, yeah, and we’re open seven days and we’re online as well. We mail Order Anywhere. Um, and like I say, I reckon at the moment we’ve got Grayson, Grayson, Katie working the counters most of the time. Um, I’m usually on the counter cam’s, cam’s sometimes on the counter cam cam’s, the True Alchemist who works out the numbers to order stuff. And then I, I work out how to pay for it. <laugh> <laugh>. So, uh, well, um, so yeah, Cam’s, cam’s honestly, uh, smashing the really hard work secretly out from the cave out the back. Um, work at work in magic with the numbers on ordering and quantities and stuff for most stuff. Um, but yeah, you can come and find us. Uh, we’re, we’re there seven days a week. Um, and uh, yeah, I

Leigh Chalker (02:22:42):
That’s

Mal Briggs (02:22:42):
Beautiful. And bring me a coffee. Yeah, I’m usually in, in the afternoon <laugh>. Yeah, yeah,

Leigh Chalker (02:22:48):
Yeah, yeah. Now, um, you know, like soy milk, we did say Yeah, like you, it’s not

Mal Briggs (02:22:53):
Gonna be, not gonna, it doesn’t matter either way. I’ll, I’ll drink either, you know. Okay.

Leigh Chalker (02:22:59):
Alright. No. And maybe a fandom comic, you know, like just to take you back,

Mal Briggs (02:23:03):
I’ll hook you up with a phantom comic. Yeah, yeah. <laugh> full circle now <laugh>

Leigh Chalker (02:23:10):
Sounds pretty good to me, you know? Um, yeah, that’s beautiful. Alright, well Mel, um, mate, thank you for, um, being part of Chin Pleasure and, um, yeah, it was really awesome to meet you and have a chat to you tonight, man. I’ve enjoyed

Mal Briggs (02:23:23):
That. It’s been great.

Leigh Chalker (02:23:25):
Yeah, I’ve enjoyed it immensely. I’m glad you did as well. So, um, mate, um, hang around after the credits go up and, and, um, we’ll, um, have a little, you know, like quick chat at the end of the debrief. Yeah. But, um, just one thing, everyone that’s watched this show, uh, knows that I always like to say at the end is, um, mental health is a really important thing in Com X uh, there’s a lot of people suffer difficulties with it. I am one of those people that’s gone through, uh, my own difficulties of it, uh, in the past and very recently and, uh, continue to battle on, but, uh, do the best I can, uh, meeting, uh, awesome people like Mel and, uh, with community, uh, members and stuff that I enjoy, um, being friends with and knowing. So if you, um, haven’t heard from someone in a while, you’re thinking about ’em, don’t delay.

(02:24:16)
Just send them a text, say, good day, just check up on ’em. And, uh, you know, like put a smile on their dial. They’re probably okay, but it doesn’t hurt just to, you know, reach out and say good day to someone that you know every now and then. And, uh, keep an eye on your, your brothers and your sisters out there and look after each other. So, um, uh, as I always say, it’s, uh, chinwag is and always will be made with love and, uh, community is unity. And thank you for watching and all the support, and we will see you again next Tuesday night. So thank you very much. Take care.

Voice Over (02:24:49):
This show is sponsored by the Comex Shop. Check out comex.cx for all things Comex and find out what Comex is all about. We hope you enjoyed the show.