You know, seeing the date made me realize how close this strip came to running into the pandemic. The whole mask/social distancing thing may have lead to a few storylines.
Unlike how it’s usually portrayed in fiction*, comic strips aren’t written a day at a time, being completed and sent to the printing presses just in time for tomorrow’s edition of the newspaper. They’re weeks if not months in advance. I imagine COVID was just some global news blurb about a flu strain China when Norm was inking this.
That’s not to say that you’re wrong… a ton of what happened and how daily life changed during the pandemic with masks, social distancing, entire states closing down, as well as abusive conspiracy theorists, could have filled another two years’ worth of story arcs at least. Ah, what could have been…
This is what I posted over at the original Retail site as the strip sailed off into the sunset:
Nothing is constant but change; beloved real-life friends and relations grow old and die, or move away, and often we have no idea what becomes of them. Our lives are much like small rivulets through time, crossing and uncrossing – sometimes joining into mighty torrents of association, others re-branching into periods of near-solitude. I, for one, am grateful that I was permitted to sojourn for a spell with the characters in this saga, fictitious as it was. I laughed with them – and sometimes at them; I agonized with them; I empathized with them; I shared their resentment at corporate folly and their frustration with every type of entitled, ignorant customer; and rejoiced with them in their successes. In the end, Marla and her family are blessed with an improved situation where they will see more of each other; Cooper and Val get a significant pay raise and no longer have to deal with custys; Lunker goes back to his former life as an Aldebaranian socialite, and I can imagine good futures for all of the other characters except the ones I loved to despise – Stuart, Mina, and the Sanzen, all of whom end up dying poor, sick, bitter, and alone. All is well, and I have my memories.
Thank you, Norm, for the ride, and may your books be a source of great joy, success, and the occasional Caldecott Medal.
Yeah. If I remember, Norm had a bookstore in the mall close. If I remember correctly, they had a decent “liquidation” story line over several days. It would have been nice to see the gang one last time as they went their separate ways.
The day after the store closed Warren brings the mythical Scarecrow Skirmishers to their next game of Steampunk Zombie Skirmish. But thanks to the Oracles Warning, Donnie was prepared with the Flamio Nation Warriors. After that, everything changed.
Norm, thank you so much for publishing this archive. I have so many fond memories going through months worth of strips in a single night, then rereading the whole thing again. I love the characters, the wit, and all of the hijinks. Now that this is hear I will definitely recommend it to anyone who will listen and needs a little laughter. Something that is in short supply nowadays.
Thank you, Norm. I am so glad you posted this so I could do another archive binge. This strip is truly exquisite and I miss checking it every day. But it was a great trip down memory lane, and I plan to do it again in the near future.
This final strip is so meaningful too – it shows the impermanence of retail so well.
I kind of understand Norm not wanting to rehash a “liquidation sale” storyline since he did that with Booker’s Bookstore and the South Heights store, but a few strips of Stuart struggling to do the jobs that everyone else had to over the years would have been fun. Maybe I’m overly sentimental but I would have liked to see a “goodbye” scene with all the characters. Even if they were just gathered watching the Grumbel’s signage come down.
And I’d have like to find out if Amber ever finished college. Poor thing has been working and going to school for years. Donnie, Heather, Crystal, and Lunker deserved closure too.
Norm, I have been looking for a place to reread retail for a long time. When I found out you published the entire archive I was so excited. I, like many here, worked retail and this strip always gave me the laughs I needed at my current job. It was a great story with memorable characters. The fact there are so many people already here commenting and sharing is proof that the Retail community is still very invested. Looking forward to your work in the future.
Retail is a gem. I wish very much it was still with us. For those of us (and there are a LOT of us) who work, or have worked, in retail, it was likely the best comic strip ever. For the rest, it was a lovely, rewarding strip that offered deep and eternal insights into the human condition. If there were to be a hardcopy edition (hello, Fantagraphics!) of all the strips (in color, please!), I’d be “Johnny at the Rat-hole,” as my mother-in-law used to say.
For the record, I think Retail is in the top dozen comix ever. In fact, I rank it as number two, right behind Peanuts, before even Calvin and Hobbes, Cul-de-sac or Doonesbury. It’s a stellar effort and a remarkable literary work.
I applaud you, Norm. Creating an enduring legacy can’t be easy, but you done good.
I remember the first time I saw this I teared up a bit. I’ve been checking Google for the archive on and off since then. Thank you, Norm, for creating one, so that I can revisit this strip again.
I’m going to save the link so I can re-read every now and then. I just finished reading in sequence and now will read random strips. I’m so happy for this archive!
It was fun to read through this again. I found this strip cathartic. I just hit 15 years in retail and it is nice to know someone else suffers the non-stop daily ineptitude.
Thanks again Norm for making this comic strip. I’m so glad i was finally able to read the rest of it. Also thanks again for reading my email with concerns on where to read them a few months ago.
Even the last strip manages to accurately portray what a useless, life-sucking hell American retail work is. I think this is actually a more fitting ending to Retail than a nice neat “where are they now?”
All your desperate efforts to get to work on time, successfully fighting urges of suicide on your miserly breaks or in the parking lot, the endless rounds of ass-kissing, the higher education you never get to use, the scrimping and do-withouting on a payscale 20 years out of date with inflation…
It all ends “not with a bang, but a whimper.” A new flavor of hell occupying the old one’s empty corpse and the sum total of your experience being reduced to a few lines on a resume that a computer will reject for not containing the right corporate buzzwords.
It’s a special kind of bitter melancholy I’ve tasted more than a few times. And it befits the spirit of the strip that this is the last we see of Grumbel’s.
This is the “where are they now” that I imagine for every character in the strip.
MARLA more than rises to being office manager at Myers-Peterson- even through the pandemic she keeps up both worker morale and overall profits. 2022 sees her given the opportunity to be a multi-unit manager with M-P.
SCOTT starts an Upwork profile to bring in extra money through the lockdown and by 2022 is actually bringing in an impressive haul, enough to make him consider making it his full-time deal.
The younger FIONA makes it through hybrid first grade okay and is doing very well in second grade- she’s on a reading level two grades up.
DONNIE and HEATHER move in together and both get jobs at Luxury Grocery (yes, this is a canon parody of Whole Foods) and despite both working clerk positions bring in $18/hour. Their newfound disposable income means they greatly expand their Steampunk Zombie Skirmish set. During their off-days (and off Heather’s idea), they’re working on putting together a companion video game and TV series (Cooper helps out where he can).
COOPER, speaking of, moves up to IPS Warehouse Foreman by 2022 but doesn’t lose his nerd cred. He’s quick to get a Disney+ account and work through the MCU films he’s missed.
VAL gets her first manuscript accepted by a publisher. Her first book is released in December of 2021 and she’s currently working on the sequel. In addition, she’s also working on the miniseries adaptation of Hattie Big Sky and a mock textbook The Animated History of the World.
LANA uses her PR consultant experience to work for the New York Liberty, first with the social media team through 2020 and then as one of the PA announcers. She’s brought on part-time in 2022 with the Yankees as a PA announcer.
AMBER takes some classes at Bryant University in Smithfield while waiting tables. She’s looking at Education but during online classes in 2020 starts helping out the athletic department. She’s offered a job in January 2021.
ALAN stays through the store liquidation but afterwards heads over to Delman’s, more to stick it to Stuart than anything else. Based on his experience alone, he’s named department supervisor.
MINA is offered a job with Delman’s corporate office and gladly accepts.
BRAD is promoted to Delman’s regional director.
JOY goes back to school with her mind set on being a teacher.
CRYSTAL is offered a job at Delman’s as store manager due to Mina leaving (and the Delman’s staff rejoicing) and accepts.
LUNKER works part-time as a bouncer before starting his own pet-sitting and dog-walking business, which is doing incredibly well in 2022.
DONNIE works his way up to stockroom supervisor at Delman’s and in his spare time writes very popular Star Wars fanfic.
The older FIONA, now a sophomore/rising junior, will be interning at Myers-Peterson over the summer.
KEITH SANZEN is now the E.G.R.G.I.S. CEO
GUS moves up to being the Gas-We-Got district manager
And STUART now works four jobs in addition to driving for Uber- grocery delivery, two dishwasher jobs and grocery store clerk. As an older comment says, he’s now in an apartment.
I started reading this comic in 2013. Time marched on, and lost track, but once I heard the comic had finished I came back to slowly read the whole thing over again. Thanks so much for all the laughs over the years. Through dark times, through breakthroughs and through the pandemic. The bittersweet ending is fitting. There are no easy answers to the problems we face. Who knows what’s on the horizon. All I know is, from working in grocery stores for over 10 years, I have a whole lot of stories of my own to tell…
I just finished binge reading (or rereading) all of Retail and it was as much fun as binge watching TV shows I like. Thank you Norm for a great comic and for this site where we can reread it. I loved everyone’s updates for the characters having happy endings (except the jerks like Stuart). I still read Gil every Sunday at Gocomics. Good luck in your future with all your endeavors Norm.
Has anyone else noticed that the workman took the G down, lowered it to the ground, moved to the right, and the raised the G back up?
Scissor lifts aren’t safe to move while raised, and as such would probably not have drive controls at the top either. Since the workman is there alone, the G must have been raised.
Such a good run! Thank you for this comic, Norm! I only discovered it a couple years before it ended (and had a terrible time reading the archives on King Comics because they limited the amount of comics you could read for free in a month) but it was great to read the first time, and greater to read again a handfull of years later.
I also enjoyed all the fanfiction endings. I absolutely love all the ideas folks had for the characters!
You know, seeing the date made me realize how close this strip came to running into the pandemic. The whole mask/social distancing thing may have lead to a few storylines.
Unlike how it’s usually portrayed in fiction*, comic strips aren’t written a day at a time, being completed and sent to the printing presses just in time for tomorrow’s edition of the newspaper. They’re weeks if not months in advance. I imagine COVID was just some global news blurb about a flu strain China when Norm was inking this.
That’s not to say that you’re wrong… a ton of what happened and how daily life changed during the pandemic with masks, social distancing, entire states closing down, as well as abusive conspiracy theorists, could have filled another two years’ worth of story arcs at least. Ah, what could have been…
*I’m looking at you, LI’L ABNER and Lester Gooch!
This is what I posted over at the original Retail site as the strip sailed off into the sunset:
Nothing is constant but change; beloved real-life friends and relations grow old and die, or move away, and often we have no idea what becomes of them. Our lives are much like small rivulets through time, crossing and uncrossing – sometimes joining into mighty torrents of association, others re-branching into periods of near-solitude. I, for one, am grateful that I was permitted to sojourn for a spell with the characters in this saga, fictitious as it was. I laughed with them – and sometimes at them; I agonized with them; I empathized with them; I shared their resentment at corporate folly and their frustration with every type of entitled, ignorant customer; and rejoiced with them in their successes. In the end, Marla and her family are blessed with an improved situation where they will see more of each other; Cooper and Val get a significant pay raise and no longer have to deal with custys; Lunker goes back to his former life as an Aldebaranian socialite, and I can imagine good futures for all of the other characters except the ones I loved to despise – Stuart, Mina, and the Sanzen, all of whom end up dying poor, sick, bitter, and alone. All is well, and I have my memories.
Thank you, Norm, for the ride, and may your books be a source of great joy, success, and the occasional Caldecott Medal.
Kind of an unceremonious final strip, but I still have one thing to say:
Thank you, Norm, for 14 years of an awesome comic strip.
Yeah. If I remember, Norm had a bookstore in the mall close. If I remember correctly, they had a decent “liquidation” story line over several days. It would have been nice to see the gang one last time as they went their separate ways.
Soooooo…. Donnie never met The Man in The Black Hat?
I think that would have been Warren the security guy.
The day after the store closed Warren brings the mythical Scarecrow Skirmishers to their next game of Steampunk Zombie Skirmish. But thanks to the Oracles Warning, Donnie was prepared with the Flamio Nation Warriors. After that, everything changed.
Good luck in your future endeavors Mr. Feuti, Thank you for the ride❣️
Norm, thank you so much for publishing this archive. I have so many fond memories going through months worth of strips in a single night, then rereading the whole thing again. I love the characters, the wit, and all of the hijinks. Now that this is hear I will definitely recommend it to anyone who will listen and needs a little laughter. Something that is in short supply nowadays.
Thanks for the fantastic story.
Also, 22 days apparently.
Another day, another Dollar Admiral.
The message “Coming Soon Dollar Admiral” has another meaning now that it exists as a least one comic strip. I hope there are more!
I remember how sad this day made me. Thank you for publishing the archive Mr. Feuti!
Cold. Brutal. Necessary.
Just in time, too, given what’s followed in the real worlds since that day. Or so it seems.
Thanks Norm, it’s been a wild ride, and I’m glad to have had a chance to experience it all again in this archive.
Thank you, Norm. I am so glad you posted this so I could do another archive binge. This strip is truly exquisite and I miss checking it every day. But it was a great trip down memory lane, and I plan to do it again in the near future.
This final strip is so meaningful too – it shows the impermanence of retail so well.
I kind of understand Norm not wanting to rehash a “liquidation sale” storyline since he did that with Booker’s Bookstore and the South Heights store, but a few strips of Stuart struggling to do the jobs that everyone else had to over the years would have been fun. Maybe I’m overly sentimental but I would have liked to see a “goodbye” scene with all the characters. Even if they were just gathered watching the Grumbel’s signage come down.
And I’d have like to find out if Amber ever finished college. Poor thing has been working and going to school for years. Donnie, Heather, Crystal, and Lunker deserved closure too.
Thank you for making this available again Norm.
Not with a bang, but with a whimper. Very fitting.
Norm, I have been looking for a place to reread retail for a long time. When I found out you published the entire archive I was so excited. I, like many here, worked retail and this strip always gave me the laughs I needed at my current job. It was a great story with memorable characters. The fact there are so many people already here commenting and sharing is proof that the Retail community is still very invested. Looking forward to your work in the future.
Retail is a gem. I wish very much it was still with us. For those of us (and there are a LOT of us) who work, or have worked, in retail, it was likely the best comic strip ever. For the rest, it was a lovely, rewarding strip that offered deep and eternal insights into the human condition. If there were to be a hardcopy edition (hello, Fantagraphics!) of all the strips (in color, please!), I’d be “Johnny at the Rat-hole,” as my mother-in-law used to say.
For the record, I think Retail is in the top dozen comix ever. In fact, I rank it as number two, right behind Peanuts, before even Calvin and Hobbes, Cul-de-sac or Doonesbury. It’s a stellar effort and a remarkable literary work.
I applaud you, Norm. Creating an enduring legacy can’t be easy, but you done good.
Thank you for posting the archives of your excellent comic. As long as retail work is insane, your comic will be needed.
Well said by everyone. This is an underrated but brilliant strip.
I remember the first time I saw this I teared up a bit. I’ve been checking Google for the archive on and off since then. Thank you, Norm, for creating one, so that I can revisit this strip again.
I’m going to save the link so I can re-read every now and then. I just finished reading in sequence and now will read random strips. I’m so happy for this archive!
It was fun to read through this again. I found this strip cathartic. I just hit 15 years in retail and it is nice to know someone else suffers the non-stop daily ineptitude.
Thanks again Norm for making this comic strip. I’m so glad i was finally able to read the rest of it. Also thanks again for reading my email with concerns on where to read them a few months ago.
What a ride! Thank you, Norm.
I just finished binge reading Retail.
Even the last strip manages to accurately portray what a useless, life-sucking hell American retail work is. I think this is actually a more fitting ending to Retail than a nice neat “where are they now?”
All your desperate efforts to get to work on time, successfully fighting urges of suicide on your miserly breaks or in the parking lot, the endless rounds of ass-kissing, the higher education you never get to use, the scrimping and do-withouting on a payscale 20 years out of date with inflation…
It all ends “not with a bang, but a whimper.” A new flavor of hell occupying the old one’s empty corpse and the sum total of your experience being reduced to a few lines on a resume that a computer will reject for not containing the right corporate buzzwords.
It’s a special kind of bitter melancholy I’ve tasted more than a few times. And it befits the spirit of the strip that this is the last we see of Grumbel’s.
This is the “where are they now” that I imagine for every character in the strip.
MARLA more than rises to being office manager at Myers-Peterson- even through the pandemic she keeps up both worker morale and overall profits. 2022 sees her given the opportunity to be a multi-unit manager with M-P.
SCOTT starts an Upwork profile to bring in extra money through the lockdown and by 2022 is actually bringing in an impressive haul, enough to make him consider making it his full-time deal.
The younger FIONA makes it through hybrid first grade okay and is doing very well in second grade- she’s on a reading level two grades up.
DONNIE and HEATHER move in together and both get jobs at Luxury Grocery (yes, this is a canon parody of Whole Foods) and despite both working clerk positions bring in $18/hour. Their newfound disposable income means they greatly expand their Steampunk Zombie Skirmish set. During their off-days (and off Heather’s idea), they’re working on putting together a companion video game and TV series (Cooper helps out where he can).
COOPER, speaking of, moves up to IPS Warehouse Foreman by 2022 but doesn’t lose his nerd cred. He’s quick to get a Disney+ account and work through the MCU films he’s missed.
VAL gets her first manuscript accepted by a publisher. Her first book is released in December of 2021 and she’s currently working on the sequel. In addition, she’s also working on the miniseries adaptation of Hattie Big Sky and a mock textbook The Animated History of the World.
LANA uses her PR consultant experience to work for the New York Liberty, first with the social media team through 2020 and then as one of the PA announcers. She’s brought on part-time in 2022 with the Yankees as a PA announcer.
AMBER takes some classes at Bryant University in Smithfield while waiting tables. She’s looking at Education but during online classes in 2020 starts helping out the athletic department. She’s offered a job in January 2021.
ALAN stays through the store liquidation but afterwards heads over to Delman’s, more to stick it to Stuart than anything else. Based on his experience alone, he’s named department supervisor.
MINA is offered a job with Delman’s corporate office and gladly accepts.
BRAD is promoted to Delman’s regional director.
JOY goes back to school with her mind set on being a teacher.
CRYSTAL is offered a job at Delman’s as store manager due to Mina leaving (and the Delman’s staff rejoicing) and accepts.
LUNKER works part-time as a bouncer before starting his own pet-sitting and dog-walking business, which is doing incredibly well in 2022.
DONNIE works his way up to stockroom supervisor at Delman’s and in his spare time writes very popular Star Wars fanfic.
The older FIONA, now a sophomore/rising junior, will be interning at Myers-Peterson over the summer.
KEITH SANZEN is now the E.G.R.G.I.S. CEO
GUS moves up to being the Gas-We-Got district manager
And STUART now works four jobs in addition to driving for Uber- grocery delivery, two dishwasher jobs and grocery store clerk. As an older comment says, he’s now in an apartment.
“The older FIONA, now a sophomore/rising junior, will be interning at Myers-Peterson over the summer.”
Oh, did you see my comment about headcanoning this in the previous strip? Thank you for using it!!!
Now kind of regret leaving out my idea that also she’s mildly into the Goth scene these days.
I started reading this comic in 2013. Time marched on, and lost track, but once I heard the comic had finished I came back to slowly read the whole thing over again. Thanks so much for all the laughs over the years. Through dark times, through breakthroughs and through the pandemic. The bittersweet ending is fitting. There are no easy answers to the problems we face. Who knows what’s on the horizon. All I know is, from working in grocery stores for over 10 years, I have a whole lot of stories of my own to tell…
Thank you so much for posting the archive! I have very much enjoyed reading all the way through it. 8 – )
(And I also enjoyed the where-are-they-now speculations posted above!)
I reread this often I miss it was hoping for dollar admiral. Gil is ok but not as fun but thanks for the fun
I just finished binge reading (or rereading) all of Retail and it was as much fun as binge watching TV shows I like. Thank you Norm for a great comic and for this site where we can reread it. I loved everyone’s updates for the characters having happy endings (except the jerks like Stuart). I still read Gil every Sunday at Gocomics. Good luck in your future with all your endeavors Norm.
I kind of wish we could have more of a where are now conclusion so they could meet up again and see how their lives have gotten since it closed.
Has anyone else noticed that the workman took the G down, lowered it to the ground, moved to the right, and the raised the G back up?
Scissor lifts aren’t safe to move while raised, and as such would probably not have drive controls at the top either. Since the workman is there alone, the G must have been raised.
Sorry. That should be “B”, not “G”, that was raised back up.
Such a good run! Thank you for this comic, Norm! I only discovered it a couple years before it ended (and had a terrible time reading the archives on King Comics because they limited the amount of comics you could read for free in a month) but it was great to read the first time, and greater to read again a handfull of years later.
I also enjoyed all the fanfiction endings. I absolutely love all the ideas folks had for the characters!
Thank you Norm. Very amusing and unfortunately relatable comic. I bought your Pretending You Care handbook and have enjoyed reading that as well.