Newbury Comics

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 29 stores in five New England states: four in New Hampshire, two in Rhode Island, one in Maine, one in Connecticut, and twenty-one 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. Some locations also sell punk-style clothing.

The chain also has a sister store called Hootenanny which mostly sells punk-style clothing, located one floor below the Newbury Comics in Harvard Square. Hootenanny will close 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.