Newbury Comics

Newbury Comics
Private
Industry Music
Comics
DVDs
Pop Culture
Founded Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., 1978
Founder John Brusger
Mike Dreese[1]
Headquarters Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Number of locations
28
Area served
New England
Subsidiaries Hootenanny
Website www.NewburyComics.com
Newbury Comics' flagship store on Newbury Street in Boston, Massachusetts
Newbury Comics in North Dartmouth
Newbury Comics van outside the Newbury Comics store in Harvard Square

Newbury Comics is a New England–based music retailer. Newbury Comics began as a comic book vendor on Newbury Street in Boston. The company was founded in 1978 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology students John Brusger and Mike Dreese. Over the next few years, the focus of the company changed from comics to music, although comic books are still sold at stores in limited amounts. Dreese also published Boston Rock, a music tabloid which was active from 1980 to 1987 that focused on Punk, New Wave and Indie bands. There are now 28 stores in five New England states: four in New Hampshire, two in Rhode Island, one in Maine, one in Connecticut, and twenty in Massachusetts.

Since the late 1980s Newbury Comics has been a vendor of new and used CDs, LPs and DVDs, and other pop culture-related goods. Newbury Comics sells LPs, CDs, singles, and DVDs. It also offers comics, posters, T-shirts, trading cards, action figures, buttons, sports merchandise, jewelry, cosmetics, novelties and more. Many locations also sell high end and/or punk-style clothing.

The chain also had a sister store called Hootenanny which mostly sold punk-style clothing, located one floor below the Newbury Comics in Harvard Square. Hootenanny closed in May 2012, while the flagship Newbury Comics banner is altering its product mix to include more fashion. Newbury Comics stores are also gradually shifting from strip centers to mall locations.[2]

Notable employees

Company logo in popular culture

In the movie Hatchet (2007), star Joel Moore spends much of the film in a blood-spattered Newbury Comics T-shirt. In reaction to this Newbury Comics started selling special Hatchet T-shirts like the one in the movie. The "Tooth Face" Logo T-shirt is featured in the second issue of The Bulletproof Coffin comics from Image Comics.

In the fifth and sixth season opening credits for Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, Sabrina, portrayed by Melissa Joan Hart, is seen walking out of the store on Newbury Street.

References

  1. http://www.cmw.net/cmw2004/spmike_dreese.htm
  2. Newbury Comics: ‘It’s Always Morph or Die’ Publishers Weekly, April 6, 2012
  3. 1 2 Dreese seriously enjoys comics biz, Michael Saunders and Jim Sullivan, Boston Globe, D4, December 5, 2000.

External links

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