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There’s a reason, you know, why they call it The City of Dreams.

The Minister of Propaganda January 31, 2001 One of the most recurring bits of feedback on the first column I did was a veritable ocean of requests for me to define what I do as the wise and ter rible “Minister of Propaganda” at Brian Hibbs’ shop Comix Experience in San Francisco. At its most basic, I’m a comic shop clerk for a few hours each Friday after noon, keeping my writer-publisher self abreast of the retailing trends cus tomers embody with their each and every purchase. At its most grand, I’m the charismatic leader of a small band of brainy hipsters who convene at the end of the week like the Impossible Missions Force to hoist a few pints and discuss-with-an-eye-towards-remedying the perceived ills of the comic book industry. When I first started writing, editing, and producing Comix Experience’s in store newsletter, Onomatopoeia , which I did every four weeks for two months shy of five years straight, I took Brian’s mandate to promote the store perhaps a little too seriously. I was so relentless and omnipresent online about extolling the many virtues of CE that my good pal Matt Lehman, owner of the excellent Boston store Comicopia, tried to take the stuffing out of me by derisively but good-naturedly referring to me as Hibbs’ “minister of propaganda.” So.

“Well, that’s a perfect job title if I’ve ever heard one,” I thought. And so it stuck.

Last Friday, I came home from CE and checked my email, and was sur prised to find that one of my old college buddies was thinking about open ing his own shop. He asked me what I thought would be the Very Most Important Thing he could do or say or offer in his store to guarantee suc cess. This is a cleaned-up version of what I wrote to him:

So, you want to open a comic shop.

The best guesses show that there are about 3000 specialty retail stores in the country that sell comic books and related merchandise. And you want to jump into the fray... Oh, sure, you can go to the library and check out some dry business tome for advice, but chances are those books will not

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