King Features Syndicate comics
| Retail | |
|---|---|
| File:RetailComicstripLogo.gif Retail | |
| Author(s) | Norm Feuti |
| Website | Cooper's Retail Blog |
| Current status/schedule | Running |
| Launch date | 2006-01-01 |
| Syndicate(s) | King Features Syndicate |
| Publisher(s) | Hyperion |
Retail is a syndicated comic strip distributed by King Features Syndicate. It is authored and illustrated by Norm Feuti. It made its newspaper debut on January 1 2006, and then gained quickly in popularity following articles in The New York Times[1] and TIME Magazine [2]
The strip is set in a fictional department store called "Grumbel's." Grumbel's provides a wide array of goods; customers have been shown shopping for anything from garden equipment and electronics to clothing and housewares. Given the wide variety of products available through Grumbel's it more closely resembles a Sears than other types of retail stores.
Besides being in a generic, suburban mall the location of Grumbel's is kept ambiguous.
Marla Masters
Marla is Grumbel's assistant manager. She is good at her job, but is often discouraged when the bureaucratic rules set by the corporate office work against the store's stated goal of customer service. While the daily strip's plots often deal with her discouragement, Marla maintains an optimistic attitude and often mentions a dream of opening her own small store or boutique.
Cooper Costello
Cooper works in Grumbel's stockroom and is the store's clown. He relishes in sticking it to management and corporate, and gets his revenge against what he perceives as bad policies by goofing off on store time. He has built a small lounge on the roof of the store out of old patio furniture dubbed "Cooper's Lounge" and also spends time constructing "Box Art" out of empty cardboard boxes. Some examples of his art include robots, castles, and even a "Great Wall of Boxes."
Val
Val is a department supervisor and good friend of Marla. She is also a published creative writer and would eventually like to quit working at Grumbel's and write full-time.
Stuart Suchet
Stuart is the store manager. Often viewed by his employees as incompetent, he is a "corporate yes man" who implements any instructions sent from the corporate office without question. He has a working relationship with Marla and relies heavily on her to complete his work and keep the employees' morale up. He has a more strained relationship with Cooper and can't understand why Cooper won't follow corporate policy without question.
Alan
Alan manages the shoe department and is good friends with Cooper.
Courtney
Courtney works as a cashier. She is lazy, incompetent, and constantly rude to customers. She is one of Marla's sources of frustration (besides Stuart).
Keith Sanzen
Keith was added to the line up in October of 2007. He got his job in the shoe department by contacting Cooper through Cooper's Blog. After starting work at Grumbel's Cooper discovered that Keith had made a blog that copies his format exactly, hence driving a wedge between these two former friends. Keith is the only character known to be based solely on a real person. The real Keith Sanzen is a fan of the strip who won a contest on Coooper's Retail Blog.
Lunker
Lunker is Cooper's coworker in the Grumbel's stockroom. His real name is Mel and, according to Cooper, he is "bald, about 7 feet tall, all around huge and only slightly more articulate than the Hulk." Cooper took immediate liking to Lunker, as he has "chaos potential."
Jerry
Jerry is the regional manager. He is even more obsessed with rules and is a source of great frustration for Marla, whose name he never remembers.
The strip is drawn in great detail and appears in colour. The characters lives revolves in and outside the mall, with items like computers, sales registers, vehicles and other items drawn and presented as close to reality as possible.
While the strips generally are daily and stand alone, on occasions it is serialised or sometimes themed with the story running for a week.
The daily strip usually runs to four panels but on occasions there are three panels. The Sunday strip is in a two tiered format with a large logo panel appearing on the left of the strip.
In early 2007 the strip followed a short plot line where Cooper won $5000 in a scratch off lottery. While initially excited by his luck, he became despondent when he realized that $5000 was not enough money to have a significant effect on his quality of life. He cheered up though when he realized that he could use the money to purchase a laptop and air his grievances through a personal blog. Once the strip was published Norm Feuti published the blog and wrote it from the perspective of the fictional Cooper. The blog is used with his own personal blog to communicate with his fans and keep them updated with news on the strip.
