This week in Interviews From The Crypt we jump in the way back machine and rerun a piece that was originally on From Dusk Till Con in 2016.
Check out our chat with Gib and Mike of Laughing Ogre, one of Columbus, Ohio’s premiere comic shops.
By Adam Holtzapfel
Adam Holtzapfel–With Laughing Ogre being a mainstay in Columbus since 1994, what do you attribute your longevity to?
Gib-Adam, we have the best customers in the nation. They buy a wide variety of genres, and they come in on a regular basis and have for years. Any business is only as strong as their customer base.
AH–You have been there for 19 years, you’ve survived the kind of industry crash that the 90’s brought, do you see older collectors that have left comics getting back into them, or is it more younger readers?
G-We have lost a lot of the core superhero customers, mostly due to the corporate companies continuing to reset their universes. But, they do wander back now and again. We have seen a lot of new customers looking to enter the hobby, replacing those that leave. Social media, movies and TV shows have enlightened the masses to the wonder of comic books.
AH–Mentioning movies and TV as well as the big companies reseting every 5 years or so do you find more folks getting drawn to the independents (Image, Dynamite, Boom, etc)?
G-We have always done well with indies, and Image has stepped up big time with their wealth of creativity.
AH-Also with the resets the majors are doing that kind of gets into characters being changed (Thor, Iron Man, etc), do you feel it’s kind of a sign of the times, that readership is more diverse than say 10 years ago?
G-The corporate companies are trying to reach out to the new readers, and diversifying their characters and
creators. Everyone likes to see themselves in the characters they love, and now they finally can.
AH–You had sold the shop in 2006, what led to that decision?
G-The future looked pretty dire at the time. We took the safe option, and the new owners put quite a bit of cash into the business, and the store has prospered well since.
AH–What 5 books would you recommend to readers right now?
G-Some of my favorite books are Lazarus: A book about a woman who has been genetically engineered to heal from damage up to and including death. It’s set in the future and corporations/families run the world. She’s the family general, ninja and assassin. Action, adventure and political intrigue in heaping doses. Bunker: A book about a group of college friends that decide to bury a time capsule, and in digging to bury it, they find a bunker. The bunker is from the future, it was sent back in time from their future selves to warn them to change their own future. If they don’t, they wipe out 95% of the human race. Rat Queens: A Book about a female fantasy adventuring group that is equal parts adventure and humor. No book handles those two elements like Rat Queens!
Mike-Two of my favorites are The Walking Dead and Saga, but everybody knows about those. For more under the radar stuff, I’d go with Unfollow. The premise is a tech mogul that is the founder of a massively popular social network, ala Twitter, is dying. He decides, as a grand experiment, that he’s going to give away his massive fortune to 140 users of said network (140 characters, get it?). The catch is that if any of the people die, the amount of money the other recipients receive goes up. The character work is excellent and there may or may not be a hint of the supernatural at play. Southern Bastards is another great ensemble crime piece written by Jason Aaron. As with Scalped, it does a fantastic job at creating not entirely unsympathetic villains. Coach Boss is a fascinating and complex crime lord/head football coach.
AH–Last but not least, what’s your top 5 movies of all time?
G–Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Ghostbusters, The Outlaw Josie Wales, Aliens, and Gran Torino.
M-The original Night of the Living Dead, John Carpenter’s The Thing, The Empire Strikes Back, Suspiria, and The Maltese Falcon.
You can keep up with Laughing Ogre on Facebook and Instagram.
Adam Holtzapfel is the face behind Reviews From The Crypt and Interviews From The Crypt. Growing up in the 80s on a steady diet of VHS horror, he has maintained a love of the genre since. Loving almost everything from the good, the bad, and the weird he now searches the deepest realm of the Roku to press play on any film he hasn’t watched a million times.