Pure Folly Books

Some shops do everything right. When Edward Uvanni opened Pure Folly Books in 2021, it was a propitious time for the comic book business. That year, comic book sales in the US and Canada amounted to $2.075 billion in total, setting an all-time record for the industry. Partly this was a rebound effect from the early-pandemic shutdowns that had paralyzed comic distribution the year prior, but it was also part of a wider rebound from COVID-19 quarantines that led to a sudden boom in retail spending across any number of industries – even compared to 2019, comic sales in the year of Pure Folly’s birth were up 70%.

And Uvanni’s shop was ideally positioned to take advantage of it. Since the mid-1980s, Hudson’s primary industry has been tourism, and the town is among the most heavily foot-trafficked destination areas in New York state. As the municipality’s lone comic shop anywhere in sight, that left Uvanni with something of an unchallenged field. Just as importantly, despite having come from more than a decade working in the mainstream end of periodical comics retail, Uvanni was determined not to make his new store the kind of traditional shop that lives in popular stereotype. Rather, Pure Folly placed its focus on the much larger, mostly younger, and potentially much more lucrative markets that had come to represent the majority of comic sales: YA works, manga, and original graphic novels of the D&Q or Fantagraphics ilk. If ever there was a shop determined to make a go of carving out a new model of retail apart from the old-school, dimly-lit cavern of superhero floppies, this was it.

And sure enough, the Hudson Valley received them with open arms. Write-ups in the local newspaper followed, as did a flurry of affectionate followers on social media, where Uvanni (who, as the owner and only employee of the shop, has operated Pure Folly as a one-person band since the start) kept up an active presence. Only a few months after the store opened, there were even murmurs in the press of potential expansion down the line. Sales were strong, comics were booming, and the future looked bright.

And it wasn’t enough. In early May of this year, Pure Folly announced on its Facebook page that they would be closing down for good at the end of the month. “Well,” the post began, “I called it Pure Folly for a reason …” The reasons, dispiritingly, have become familiar: rising rents, consumer contractions brought about by skyrocketing increases in costs of living, and a concurrent drop in physical retail in general and the tourist trade in particular. The post left cryptic hints that Pure Folly might soldier on some form or another, but even so, it was impossible to disguise the wearying reality.

None of this is altogether surprising in a climate where the closing of even the most venerable comic retail institutions has become something of a morbid who’s-next guessing game among industry observers. What makes the case of Pure Folly particularly worrisome, however, is that none of the shops moves seemed on their face to be miscalculated. Pure Folly made a concerted effort not to pursue the direct market model of comic sales. They made a conscious choice to pursue the largest and fastest-growing segments of the comic market. They were outside the largest and most expensive urban areas, where real estate crunches tend to hit the hardest. And nevertheless, here we are.

To find out what happened to Pure Folly, what it might mean about the shape of retail, and where the shop itself is going now, I spoke with Uvanni at the beginning of May to ask the question: how did things go wrong for Pure Folly?

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ZACH RABINOFF: Tell me about how Pure Folly got started. How did you first get into comics retail?

EDWARD UVANNI: Back in 2006, there was a comic shop in my town named Coliseum of Comics. They're actually one of the largest comic retailers in the world. They cover pretty much all of Florida at this point. I was living in Lakeland, Florida, and there was a little shop they had, and they needed a manager. They hired me and I came on board. It was a small shop, about 600 square feet, and I was the only employee, so I managed myself, which was fine. That was how I got my start – running a really small shop in the middle of nowhere and selling comics.

That was down in Florida. When did you end up in Hudson?

My wife and I had wanted to get out of Florida for quite a while. It was time to not be there anymore. We decided to leave, and in 2019, we moved to very rural Minnesota. After two years there, my wife's job wasn't quite working the way we had hoped, and we were looking for someplace where I could theoretically open up a shop. We made a list of our priorities, and the Hudson Valley fit all of those.

That was 2021, when you wound up in Hudson?

Yep. 2021.

And you knew at that point that you were going to open up a shop?

I had the plan. At that point, I'd been in comics retail and with Colosseum of Comics for 15 or 16 years.

Was this your first time aspiring to open up your own shop?

Yeah, pretty much. I'd had the thought for years; If you're doing comics retail for long enough and you like it, I think eventually most people would want to open up their own shop at some point.

Hudson is not a big place: it has about 5,000 people. What made you feel like it had the potential to support a comic book shop?

A lot of things, actually. My wife moved up to Hudson about three months before I did.  She saw that Hudson was booming; on the weekends things were packed. There were so many people out and around. We looked at that, and at the wider area – Albany is not far. There are a lot of towns and villages in the area. So even though Hudson itself has a pretty small population, there are tons and tons and tons of people in the area, and tourists and travelers coming in all the time. It just seemed like something that would maybe work, especially given the fact that I was going to be doing something a little bit different and a little more progressive than a lot of comics retail.

Because real estate and rent play into what's going on now, tell me about what the real estate market in Hudson was like at the point when you started. How much were you paying in rent to set up in your location?

Actually, the whole reason we moved into it so quickly was that there were very few properties at the time. At the height of 2021, there was the giant real estate bubble where everything was crazy expensive. People were paying $50,000 over asking price, cash, for houses. It was nuts. There was literally nothing for rent in Hudson at that time. One day my dad happened to be up in the area, and we were meeting him for dinner on Warren Street, which is the main drag in Hudson. We literally happened to walk by the only place for rent on the street, and it was exactly the square footage we were looking for, and only two very visible blocks from the Amtrak station. My retail experience was telling me this is a solid spot. It was a little bit at the top of my budget range. We paid about $2,350 at the time.

You mentioned earlier doing something a little more progressive for comics retail. And you’ve always put a strong focus on graphic novels, alongside a smaller number of selected back issues, rather than going into the direct market for new periodical comics. What was your thinking behind that strategy?

So, the idea was to carry books that, for lack of a better term, real people might actually want to read, rather than part five of a seven-part crossover, at five bucks on flimsy toilet paper.

What sort of reception did you receive when you opened up? How was business?

Honestly, it was really positive. With any small business, especially a new one, it’s going to take time to build up a customer base. They say most small businesses don't even really begin to make a profit until after five years. So we were seeing very good reception. There were a lot of people who were really happy that we were there. Our approach –  literary graphic novels, kids and YA stuff – the approach was embraced. We got a lot of comments about how our shop felt different, that it felt open and welcoming to new people who weren't comic fans, necessarily.

The people who were coming in, was it largely tourists? Largely locals? 

A little bit from all over. We were attracting locals. We were getting a lot of traffic out of the Albany and Troy area where there's a hipper scene. Doing indie, alt, and underground stuff appealed to some people who were living up there. We were seeing a lot of people come down from up north. And then we were getting a lot of tourist traffic out of Brooklyn and the city.

I would think for any shop that gets a lot of its business from tourists, one difficulty might be that it makes it more difficult to build up a steady customer base, people coming in for repeat business. 

Oh, sure, but at the same time, I knew that we weren't pushing subscriptions. I'm happy to set up a subscription for anybody who wants to work with me, but it wasn't our focus. I actually find the way the comics industry relates to the consumer is pretty predatory.  I wanted to try and explore a healthier way for people to engage with the hobby. Did that make it more difficult? Sure.

When you say it's predatory, how do you mean?

I think that right about the time I was getting into the industry on a retail level, comics was really at a crossroads between having a choice to try and grow readership, or having a choice to try and just grow sales. The two aren't necessarily connected; there are different approaches if you want to build readers versus if you want to just sell books and make money. Spurred on, especially, by Marvel's Civil War at the time. That was really where we started to see the emergence of the modern variant culture, and the modern approach to quantity over quality. Comics have this necessity where you have to pay attention, you have to be involved in the hobby. It's not easy for new people to get into that.

I presume that you were seeing that more when you were working at a more superhero-centric shop, like Coliseum of Comics. But it would seem to me that catering to a more mainstream market is a blessing and a curse at the same time. 

You're not wrong at all [laughs].

A blessing, in that you’re aiming at an ostensibly broader base of buyers than died-in-the-wool superhero fans. But a curse in that you have to compete with large-scale discounts of someone like Amazon or Barnes & Noble. How did you deal with that? 

Quality customer service, high knowledge, and an engaging and enthusiastic owner. People come to the shop because they're interested in the kind of books I'm selling, or they're browsing and they become interested in the kind of books I'm selling. A lot of superhero and mainstream DM content rides on inertia. You expect your weekly customers, you know what they're into. But after a time, a lot of customers end up just buying because they've been in the habit of buying. There's less enthusiasm, there's less energy, there's less excitement. So my idea was, let's create that energy, let's create that excitement by stocking books that I'm genuinely excited to carry and promote.

But on the other hand, if customers have those subscriptions, they're coming in every Wednesday. And if you're selling mostly graphic novels that have an irregular release schedule, you don't have that. People don't necessarily have a reason to come there each and every week. 

Sure. I definitely agree with that. But again, like I said, I was looking to do something different. I don't think people should be forced to come to the comic shop every week, even if that's a detriment to my wallet at the end of the day. That's what I mean by, “predatory.” Most publishers bank on their core customer base buying more. That's the point we're at, and not just in comics, but in civilization. Late-stage capitalism is about just draining as many pennies as you can out of your core customer because it's harder and more expensive to build new customers. But I think it's healthier to try and build new readers, and show off that there's more art out there than just superheroes, just DM stuff. There's a whole wide variety of comics for all kinds of readers.

I hope I could achieve some of that. I hope some of the artists that I've helped work with, some of the books I've promoted and creators that I've pushed into a slightly more public consciousness – I hope that's been good. That's the goal. 

Who have you seen – of the comic creators that you’ve been pushing in your shop –  making that connection with customers?

Oh man. A lot of cool people in the current underground scenes, which we have six of, I think. We started promoting Nate Garcia real early on with some of his stuff. And we've really seen him blow up a bit in the underground stuff over the last six months. Last year or so, we pushed a lot of Fantagraphics authors. Charles Glaubitz, his Starseed series was really successful for me. You show people his psychedelic artwork and if they're into that kind of thing, it connects with them.

Would some of the challenges that we've talked about here be easier for you if this sort of literary, broader-market comic published in a periodical format instead of a standalone graphic novel format, so that people would be coming in regularly every Wednesday? Or would it limit the customer base?

I think periodicals limit the customer base. Don't get me wrong, I love the periodical format. I grew up in comics; I've been reading comics since I was six. I'm inundated into that comics culture. I grew up in that culture. So for me, there is some level of that nostalgic fondness. I'm a big fan of Silver Age stuff and underground stuff. A lot of that underground stuff hasn't ever been collected. If you want to read it, you have to go back into that format. But in the modern day, the periodical is the worst format delivery for comics.

How so?

They're expensive. They're hard to find. Most people don't understand how the periodical format works, unless they grew up in comics or they're into it. They are usually printed on pretty poor quality material. All those reasons. And I don't want this to come off as hating. I think there are people doing interesting things in the periodical space as well. You can look at something like Santos Sisters, or some of the other guys who are coming out and doing periodical stuff like that. I think the format has its place, but I also think we're trying to sell a nearly a hundred-year-old format in an age that it might not be appropriate to sell it in.

Up to this point you've opted to be entirely a physical location. You don't have an online shop or anything like that. Is that just a matter of logistics?

Some of it was logistics. Some of it was the fact that when I first started, I didn't want to spend all my time in the store just boxing and shipping things. I enjoy the act of actually selling comics, actually talking comics and art and literature with people. So the idea of just sitting in a store that I'm paying a lot of money for, just boxing up orders, wasn't really appealing, necessarily. I wanted to try and see how far we could go promoting just [a] physical [location], but we were also selling through Instagram and other online options, just without a dedicated site. I was always happy to mail order. We saw a lot of people who were traveling. One of my constant things was, “Follow us on Insta. If you see a book you like, we're happy to ship.”

So it's sort of an unofficial online shop.

Yeah. A middle ground.

You were also starting  the year after the pandemic shutdown. I imagine in some ways that had a conducive effect on foot traffic.

When we first opened, yeah.

And then what?

Then there was February 2022, which was when the interest rates hit.

What started happening then? 

Obviously the cost of living for most people skyrocketed. Interest rates were through the roof. It's a tough time just being alive. We started to see a little bit of customer slowdown, which is not great three, four, five months after you open. But we were also still seeing a little bit of growth. There were still people coming in, so we were making it work, about to the point of breaking even. I saw that there was still potential there, even if we were starting to see the economic impact of the cost of living increases.

You obviously held on, if we're talking about February of 2022, but what has been the course of the business you were seeing since then?

Over the last, I would say, six to eight months, the actual foot traffic in Hudson has severely declined. People aren't coming up as much as they used to be. When I opened my shop, it was the only space available for rent on the street. And now, currently, I think there are half a dozen plus.

Is that just because people have less money to spend, or are rents also still going up?

Rents are too high;  businesses can't support it because of the downturn in customers, and they're leaving.

So rents aren't going down, even with the vacancies coming up.

No way. Because so many people bought buildings at the height of the pandemic bubble. And there's so much investment property – like, Hudson's half investment property from people who don't live here. So they have no interest in lowering the rents. They would rather let the building sit empty, it seems.

To what extent has your business declined since before February, maybe January of 2022?

I would say we were still in a slow growth mode, just very slow. I would say the real slowdown didn't come until last fall, 2023. That was when we really started to see a big slowdown. The summer had been fairly slow, less tourists, less visitors. Then in the fall when we get a lot of “LEAFers” coming up to view the scenery, there were way fewer people. The holiday season was kind of down, and then the winter, this winter, was brutal.

Can you quantify that at all?

For this year I'm down about 40%.

Wow. At what point did it dawn on you that what you have going now just isn't sustainable?

I was on the fence. My original lease ended six months ago, back in November. And I was on the fence then about continuing. But my wife, who is the most supportive and encouraging woman in the world, really encouraged me to keep going despite the hardship. So we signed for another six months.

At the same price?

Yes, at the same price. We asked for a rent reduction and they said, “Hey, if you sign for another six months, we can revisit in the spring.”

And then what happened in the spring?

They did not seem interested in any kind of rent reduction.

At the end of that six months, you realized that was going to be the end of the line?

Getting close. Obviously they need three months notice if we're going to leave. So, around March. January and February had just been so slow, we were back to having the occasional $0 day, which is not something we'd had in a long time. Things were clearly on the decline. The cost of living is still through the roof. Rents haven't even begun to come back down. It got to the point where it's just no longer feasible to do that in this location.

Do you feel like this combination of real estate prices not going down, but business declining as a result of high cost of living, is something that's unique to where you are in the Hudson Valley? Or is it something that you've heard from other comic shop owners that you've spoken to in other regions?

I hear it from comic shop owners all over. Long time retail guy Carr D’Angelo, his Earth-2 Comics is closing for basically the same reason. And it was a shock. The current retailer outlook overall is not good. It's not great.

What does that mean for comics retail? What are people saying about this when you talk to other folks in the industry?

We're in late-stage capitalism. Everything is being drained. It's tough, especially if you're a small business, because margins are going down, shipping is going up. Back-issue prices are on the decline. After a couple years of highs, foot traffic is down for a lot of folks. I know that some stores are seeing pretty serious declines in sales, even if they're not talking about it publicly. It's going on. I don't know what I see for the future of comics, retail-wise, but – not to be all doom and gloom – I don't know what I see the future of society as right now.

How many other people have been working at Pure Folly, besides yourself?

Oh, it's just me.

So you didn't have a staff that you had to break this news to.

No, no. It's just me. It's a one-man shop,

Which, I guess either makes things easier or harder for you right now.

I think it mostly makes it a little easier. I would hate to have to lay off employees or something. Honestly, that would kill me.

You’ve hinted that this isn't necessarily the complete end with what you're doing with Pure Folly, that you're going to do something in some other form. Can you talk at all about what that's going to be?

Yeah, sure. I didn't want to go into specifics on the [Facebook] post, because it's been a pretty hectic week with the announcement and everything. And honestly, after two cross-country moves in a global pandemic, and opening and closing a shop in the last five years, I needed a week off [laughs]. But yeah, the plan is to switch to an online/pop-up model.

Tell me about that. 

Rents are crushing everybody. Sales are down in a lot of shops. I've been doing comics for 20 years, and I like selling comics. So if I want to continue doing that, we have to find a new way forward. How do we continue to do that? Right now it seems like the option is online with pop-ups. It’s going back to the old school con days, where your primary object is doing the con circuit, but obviously a little bit different with pop-ups, flea markets, and things like that.

Albeit with the costs and complications that I presume would be associated with storing and shipping all of the books.

Sure. Storing and shipping is obviously a big issue. But I think that once you get that taken care of – and again, I'm a very curated shop, it's not like I'm going to have 10,000 items on a website that I'm trying to deal with. I'm going to retain the curation that's made us popular with our fans.

Have you thought about where those pop-up locations could conceivably happen?

I've actually already had a few folks reach out. We're looking at potentially doing a few pop-ups in June. I have not solidified any dates, but definitely going into the end of June and especially moving into the summer. I'm going to be looking at some cons for the fall, potentially. I want to work with local businesses if possible, something that would be symbiotic for both of us. There's a new magazine and community space that just opened up in Troy, called Paper Moon. I know the owner, and we've already talked about doing a popup there. He was a fan of what I was doing at Pure Folly. I think there are a lot of options. That was one of the reasons we actually liked the Hudson Valley area; there are a lot of options. Plus being only two hours from Manhattan and Brooklyn is great.

I think cutting out the massive overhead is really the only way forward right now, at least for me. Maybe I'm being optimistic; maybe this won't work. Maybe this isn't the way, maybe we have to try something else. I don't know what else at this point. But I just love comics and want to continue putting spotlights on some of those works.

I heard something quite similar when I spoke to the owner of Geoffrey's Comics and Hi-De-Ho Comics in Los Angeles, which was also shutting down. He also was talking about wanting to move to a different kind of variation of pop-up sites in place of a permanent storefront. I wonder if you've heard of other shop owners doing the same sort of thing.

I don't know anybody specifically off the top of my head. It's very possible I have, but over the last few years, especially once COVID hit and there was the shutdown, shops were looking for different ways to stay open. I think there's been a lot of innovation in those areas over the last few years. People are looking for ways to keep their business going or keep promoting comics. So it wouldn't surprise me.

What's your timeline for when this closure is  going to happen?

I have to be out by the end of [May]. So my plan is that on the 25th of May we will be open for customers and sales. I've been running a closeout sale just to reduce inventory, and we've had a lot of locals and other people coming in to take advantage of that, and say goodbye, which has been awesome. Seeing the outpouring of support over the last week has been amazing. But probably at the end of the month we’ll close. And then I will probably take a week or two off, and then move forward with phase two.

Do you still feel good about the decisions you made in going into this shop and the way you approached it? Is there anything that you think you'd do differently now if you could do it over?

When you're starting any business, you always make mistakes along the way. Nobody's perfect. But I do think that my approach of trying to be basically a literary graphic novel shop first and foremost – I still honestly think that's the future of comics. I wouldn't change my product selection. I wouldn't change any of that stuff. Honestly, the closure really comes down to just a situation of economics.

Given that situation of economics – given we're in “late-stage capitalism” – what is your overall thinking about the future of the comic book business? Where do you think we're headed with this?

Oh, man. I don't know. I honestly think we're just going to keep doing more of the same, but stores are going to keep closing, and fewer stores are going to open. And eventually, I don't think there will be enough stores to support the weight of the industry as it is now.

Does that mean it transforms into something else? Or are we all just waiting for the last days?

I'm not talking about the art form. I don't want this to turn into a “comics are dying” thing because so often when we see those headlines – people can talk about comics, but there's comics the art form, and comics the business. Comics the business is struggling right now. Comics the art form is in a golden age.

But somehow you've got to sell them if anybody's going to have the money to make comics at all. 

True. But the economics for comics all along the spectrum, basically for anyone under the publisher, is terrible. The margins for retailers is terrible. The creators are underpaid vastly for their work. If you look at the recent survey about pay stats in the industry, creators are massively underpaid. Nobody's making the amount of money they should be making; the economics are bad all around. I think things are going to have to change. I don't know what that's going to change into, but there is a concern that eventually we will lose the mass of comic shops. That is a real possibility.

So for now, we're all just kind of hanging on until someone can figure out how to turn the corner.

I think so. I think we're all really in a holding period. We've been watching major changes over the last few years. DC leaving Diamond, which was literally a catalyst for the new distribution of wars. We've gone through all these huge, big changes that have, for the most part, made things worse. I want to be optimistic, but I don't know that I am.

That’s a grim portrait of where we are as an industry right now.

It's the economics of opening a new comic shop in this  age. I hear there are retailers who are doing okay. Maybe seeing some sales increase, but that seems to be more the exception than the rule right now. Do I see the economy getting better if Trump's elected? Not at all. We have to think of these things beyond just the current comics market because the real world affects and influences us.

So it really has to begin with a turnaround in the economy for anything in the comic industry to change, you think?

I think so. Marvel and DC are still doing the same things that they've basically been doing for the past 20 years. Tons of variants, constant restarts and reboots. They're seeing their core customer base that they've been trying to appeal to; selling more to the same folks. Remember, those people are slowly leaving.

I'm not sure if you  saw the interview that Dan Buckley just did.

Yeah. I love it. It's basically that Tim Robinson meme; we're all trying to find the guy who did this. Marvel spent 20 years pulling all the nickels out of everybody's pockets they can. And now they're saying, “Oh, maybe we should change, maybe we shouldn't reboot as much…”  If they had listened to the scores of retailers telling them that for years! Marvel isn't Marvel anymore. It's just a sub-brand of Disney. 

I suppose the tangible takeaway from the interview is that Buckley is at least confirming that they are aiming not to do constant reboots as much.

I hop that’s the case, genuinely. Having shorter series kills back issue sales because every reboot essentially makes the reboot before it meaningless from a collector standpoint. It confuses readers and makes it vastly confusing for new people who might want to get into the hobby. There's six Deadpool #1’s in this box; which one is which, you know? It's easier to get your core customer base to buy a couple more comics or a variant cover than it is to find a new reader to read comics. Everybody's worried about quarterly sales and nobody's worried about long-term growth.

Well, I suppose to that end, it's nice for you not to have to report to any shareholders.

[Laughs] Yeah, for sure. But I would do the same things again. I would promote the same books. I wish I had known that the economy and cost of living was going to take a huge hit three months after I opened –  that might have changed my decision a little bit. But you can't know that three or four months before it happens.

Maybe it wouldn't change your decisions too much because, ultimately,  you're still staying in retail.

A hundred percent. I've done comics for 20 years, what else am I gonna do?

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