Retail Death: For Those Who Live the Retail Life

January 19, 2010

Such fantasy fulfilment!

I suppose it feels good to get this out, and took me a while to finally do, because not only did I need to take a stab at management and loss prevention -- as those of you who have followed my blog posts no doubt understand -- but really wanted to just see the whole thing burn. Though my little cartoon drawings may be crude, I think they did the job. I wouldn’t want to commit actual arson, of course, and I think this felt better than the real act would!

My apologies to Grocery Girl for letting her store survive. I drew it in brick, modeled after the store she works in, and then began drawing the fire on it in that next to last panel, and realized...wait, brick wouldn’t burn fast enough. The fire fighters would stop that if they got there reasonably quick, and I had no intention of insulting the noble firefighter in my comic. So I determined that Grocery Town must live! Sorry, love...no days off on account of the Store Mart fire!

There should be two more comics after this one. Just in case I forget to do it in the end, I wanted to take a moment to thank my good friend Rebecca Norton. She has been a big supporter of Retail Death since the beginning, and is in fact it’s spiritual mother. We got back in touch on Facebook, bonding over the fact that fate had screwed us both into being college grads working in retail. The message was titled “Retail=Death” which is where the title of the site came from. For those of you interested in such things, here’s a snippet from an early message I sent to her, inspired by our discussions:

I've started drawing comics about my adventures in retail. Just little one panel things, that might not even be funny to anyone who doesnt work in retail, but anyone who does/has will love them. Im working on a site to post them on, and I am going to try to build the theme around that idea, that if you get this, then you know. I even had the thought to name it Retail=Death. Though that's a working title, and may change. The slogan should be something like "If you don't get it, you're one of THEM."

She’s presently mourning the loss of the comic, and tells me she’ll be wearing black for the rest of the week. I am sure she will follow and support my new comic, but before Retail Death is over, I thought I should give her an official shout-out.

Thanks, Rebecca.

I want to have the next comic out by tomorrow night, but no promises. It might be Thursday. Check back in tomorrow just in case.