Newbury Comics
How has a relatively small independent chain in a relatively small section of the United States managed to thrive since the Carter administration while many of its biggest corporate competitors have gone the way of the dodo? The answer lies in what’s become a buzzword in the 21st century but was a novel concept for most of the 20th: diversity. And that’s demonstrated by the fact that comics have accounted for nearly as small a piece of Newbury Comics’ business as strawberries did for Strawberries Records & Tapes’.
Sales of vinyl, tapes, CDs have provided the lion’s share of the chain’s revenue for most of its existence, but Newbury Comics has always been more than just another acoustic alley where music junkies can score a fix. Other items that the chain offers or has offered include graphic novels, posters, t-shirts, buttons, trading cards, action figures, jewelry, cosmetics, hair dye, Buckyballs, Squirrel Underpants, Obey hats and sports merchandise, along with an eclectic range of other seriously geeky stuff that defunct chains like Strawberries, Tower, Virgin and HMV never dreamed of putting on their shelves. Above all, Newbury Comics stores are playgrounds of a sort for pop-culture aficionados of all ilks, delivering precisely what the company’s slogan promises in distinctly New England lingo: “Music, Pop Culture Merch, and a Wicked Good Time!”
Call that big-tent approach “bold, “unique,” “forward-thinking,” “leading-edge” or “revolutionary” if you like, but Mike Dreese, the chain’s co-founder, puts it down to something far less corporate and pretentious. “Newbury Comics is predicated on the Peter Pan principle; it’s for people who’ve never grown up,” he told Judith Rosen of Publisher’s Weekly in 2012. ”We’re very politically incorrect [and open to] any idea, whether it’s funny or obnoxious or banal. If we make a buying error, we just sell it down. We’ve always been a product-driven company, and a pig pile for three to nine months.”
OPENING, EXPANSION IN NEW ENGLAND, NEW YORK
Newbury Comics’ story begins in Boston in 1978, when MIT roommates Dreese and John Brusger opened the first store in a converted studio apartment at 334 Newbury Street. Over the next several years, using $2,000 in start-up capital and selling Brusger’s sizeable collection of comic books as the first products, the pair turned the store into one of the area’s go-to spots for underground media, especially vinyl and tapes, which by the end of 1980 were bringing in the bulk of the store’s revenue. “It’s always morph or die,” Dreese told Rosen. “The key is not seeing yourself as a music seller. You’re a merchant. Our name is Newbury Comics [but] comics are 2% of our sales. The first major morph happened in 1980. We went from 90% comics sales to 90% music sales in two years.” At the time, the shop focused on artists and bands from far outside the mainstream – mostly punk, postpunk, hardcore, new wave, indie-rock and alt-rock acts – and Dreese’s side job as publisher of the tabloid Boston Rock from 1980 to 1987 gave him insider access to the latest local, national and imported discs.
The co-founders opened their second store in 1982 in a part of Cambridge that fit their quirky business model to a tee: Harvard Square. In the ‘90s, they opened a sister store on the floor below that shop, Hootenanny, which sold mostly punk-style clothing and closed in May 2012. Newbury Comics’ business grew steadily in the ‘90s and ‘00s, including an outlet in Boston’s Faneuil Hall that opened in 2008 and, in an effort to establish a significant presence in the Massachusetts suburbs, locations at malls in Natick, Peabody, Kingston, Hyannis, Burlington, Norwood, North Dartmouth, North Attleboro and Northampton.
The chain’s outlets were in New England only – four in New Hampshire, two in Rhode Island, two in Connecticut, one in Maine and 13 in Massachusetts – until 2016, when a new one opened in Garden City, New York (inside Roosevelt Field, the biggest mall on Long Island). That location soon became the top-grossing of them all and six more have opened in New York since, bringing the total number of Newbury Comics stores to 29. The original space at 334 Newbury Street closed in 2018 but the chain opened a store at 348 Newbury Street in early 2019, staying true to its roots and namesake.
ONLINE PRESENCE, EXPANDED MUSIC OFFERINGS, SPECIAL EVENTS
As evidence of how dramatically the retail environment has changed since its first store opened in ’78, Newbury Comics has over 500,000 followers on social media and the majority of its business comes from online sales, not bricks-and-mortar ones. The company’s first foray into the e-conomy was between 1995 and 1999, when the owners collaborated with OpenMarket as that company’s first hard-goods customer, but they ditched the venture after losing over $1 million. “We were on the bleeding edge, and we bled,” Dreese told Rosen.
Discouraged by the expensive experiment, they waited some four years before wading back into the digital space with their own website, though most of the activity for the first decade was sourcing CDs, DVDs and other media for well-established online retailers. “The vast majority of our sales are through Amazon and eBay,” Dreese told Rosen. The chain launched a fashion website in 2010 that’s now part of its main site and it’s expanded its musical offerings in a big way over the past 20-odd years; these days, the stores stock everything from rock, pop, blues and country to jazz, country, reggae and hip hop. They also host special events on a regular basis including “Record Store Day,” “Free Comic Book Day,” listening parties and in-store appearances from artists, bands and other pop-culture figures.
NOTABLE STAFFERS, CULTURAL IMPACT, “NEWBURY COMICS DAY”
A number of notable musicians from New England’s rock scene have worked at Newbury Comics in the past, among them Aimee Mann of The Young Snakes and ‘Til Tuesday and Tanya Donelly of Throwing Muses, The Breeders and Belly. Former Mistle Thrush and current Lovina Falls vocalist-keyboardist-guitarist Valerie Forgione, who’s held a variety of jobs at the chain since 1989, is currently the company’s co-president.
Interestingly, given its pop-culture focus, Newbury Comics’ name and distinctive logo have become part of pop culture over the years, and not just in Boston or greater New England. Examples include the opening credits for the fifth and sixth seasons of the ABC series Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (2000 and 2001), in which the titular character walks out of the original store on Newbury Street, and the 2006 movie Hatchet, in which the main character spends most of his time wearing a blood-spattered Newbury Comics t-shirt. After the release of Hatchet (directed by Holliston, Massachusetts native Adam Green), the chain started selling Hatchet t-shirts like the one in the film. In an example of how successfully the company has cracked the New York market since opening its first location in the state in 2016, Staten Island-based singer-songwriter John Lipari included his song “Newbury Comics” on his 2024 album The Singer of Staten Island.
But the most significant tip of the hat to the tiny shop in Boston’s Back Bay that became a 29-store retail force came in the spring of 2019, when Boston Mayor Marty Walsh declared April 6th “Newbury Comics Day” in the city to celebrate the chain’s 41st birthday. “We’re very proud of our connection to Boston, so it’s an honor to be recognized in any way by the city that played a part in bringing the subway, Jefe Replay, Freezepop, marshmallow fluff, Mission of Burma and Donna Summer to the world. Bring on the 2020s!” said Carl Mello, the chain’s director of brand engagement, after the announcement.
(by D.S. Monahan)
