Dr No's Comics and Games SuperStore — Local services in Woodstock

Dr. No's is my go to place when I don't know exactly what I'm looking for and just want to see what grabs my eye. They have a wide selection that's well organized and very helpful staff that are great at answering your questions or giving recommendations.

I really wish they would change how they do pull lists, though. This is my main concern. Currently, you have to fill out the order form every month through their (frankly very outdated) website then pay for that month's orders in store so they then finalize the order. There isn't any sort of account creation on their site, so this means that you have to keep track of what you ordered and remember to order again every month. I get why they do it the way they do; you order by the month so if you decide you want to drop a book, you can just do that right away. Paying in advance prevents people from leaving them with excess inventory. Still, having no way to keep track of this or automate it makes it more difficult than it should be from my perspective as a customer.

I found Dr. No's on Previewsworld and added them as my store, and sent an email to the manager asking if there was any way I could do a pull list this way, by subscribing to a series / ordering items through Previewsworld, and I could still pay in advance or keep my card on file. The manager never answered me, but I got a separate email (from Dr. No's) saying that some (not all) books I had ordered through Previewsworld were ready to be paid for. So this has me feeling like I'm sort of in limbo about how I can actually order my books. I wish the manager would have actually responded to my email, maybe that would have cleared things up.

I also wanted to order a book that's coming out soon. I missed the FOC, that's on me. But they're getting some copies anyway. They said I can't pre pay for one, and it will have a mark up on release day. To prepare a mark up on a book that's not even out yet when I'm ready and willing to pay for it now seems like a bad practice to me. I called Titan in Smyrna and asked about the same book, and they reserved it for me at SRP without any problems.

It also really rubs me the wrong way that after FCBD, they charge a dollar for FCBD issues. I know that they don't get those issues for free, but they're a yearly marketing cost and should just be left at that.

I hope these things change so that I can more easily recommend Dr. No's in the future. They do a lot of things really well but there's definitely room for improvement.

Update: I picked up some books that I preordered and they don’t even come with a bag and board! I seriously had to pull out a dollar to give them 52 cents for it. Compared to other stores, they have ridiculously high requirements for discounts, but the least they could do is bag and board your books. There’s really no reason to preorder here besides the occasional book that will be a hot commodity on release day.

Another update: just tried to pick up Ultimate X-Men #1 since I was curious about it, and they wanted 3 times cover price for a single issue! If I was trying to buy several copies, okay sure that would be fair since I would obviously be reselling them in that instance. But I’m a regular here and I’m only trying to buy one copy for myself to read. I might have liked the book and decided to read it monthly, but they want to price gouge so instead I just won’t read it at all. They don’t even care if you’re a regular, they’ll upcharge all the same. Granted I wasn’t a huge spender, but I buy 5 books a month as well as TPBs here, but they don’t care and would rather get their extra $8.

Another another update: I was able to get Ultimate X-Men #1 first printing two weeks after release for cover price at Titan. I’m sensing a...

The Good First, the staff is really friendly and helpful, thank you staff. No issues with you guys.

WARNING: Notice in their response how they ignore the fact they repriced them Higher the next day and the fact these were not new comics, they were back issues

The Bad, i brought double copies of a few items to the counter to the older gentleman (Owner?) He said you can only purchase 1 issue per customer of the back issue titles i had in my hand. He let me keep one (Gee Thanks) then held the rest back. I assumed it was so others could have some of the comics that had been sitting in their boxes for 20 years without a bite. I left the store perplexed. I went back 2 days later and the EXACT issues that this guy held back are now repriced and on average 2-3 times higher. So basically i did the work finding out what issues are going to be decent investments and then when i get to the counter they decide "wait a minute, why is he buying multiples, lets hold them back and see if we can make some more money on them."

My advice to anyone shopping here:

Don't go to the counter with multiple issues of the same comic. Not because they want everyone to have a shot at getting them, because they will reprice them if they are hot issues. Im not talking about new issues, im talking about OLD stuff.

Some of the new variants are priced double from what other comic stores charge, so shop elsewhere. You can do better.

Most of the regular stock is a bit high. Even if you can manage to not get pulled over by the comic police you will still pay a heavy price.

My advice to the comic store...If you want to price them high, do it! Just don't do it after someone has brought them to the counter and come up with some lame excuse when you are really about to reprice them and put them back out for MUCH higher prices. That tells me you want your customers $ more than you want their business...

The past few visits have been pretty good. Staff have been friendly, store is stocked, can't complain. I avoided this store for about a year or so after coming in a few times and being told not to open the comics. Been going to comic shops for 25 years, and it was a first for me. I don't remember the employee, if they still work there, or if this is store policy or not (if it is, thats a shame). Luckily though, I haven't run into that problem with my recent visits. I understand if the owner doesn't want people hanging around and reading comics, but simply opening a comic to read check and see if the art/story is something you are interested in picking up....that's sort of something everyone does. That is my one and only complaint, besides that everything else is great

Edit 5/30/19: I've been coming here weekly now for the past 2 months or so with my son, and each experience has been nothing but pleasurable. Both my son and I enjoy the experience each time we come. We have started to make coming on Wednesday (new comic day) a ritual, lol. Both my son and I are able to browse, and check out comics without any problems. I wanted to provide this update to let people know that the experience I mentioned above about being told I couldn't open comics, has not happened at all since we've been coming back. I am glad I gave Dr. Nos...