Your first LCS and your hobby roots

[FlamingCarrot]

If this subject has been broached before, I apologize. If not, then it's long overdue!

 

We all have our first comic book stores. A place where our eyes were first opened as to how large the hobby was. The step you took from local mom and pop corner store where you bought comics off the rack to a place where they had actual back issues! Where you had walls of comic titles you never had access to before.

 

For me, it was Forbidden Planet in lower Manhattan. I was around 9-10 years old and my good friend who was 15 took my brother and myself there on a saturday and I was forever changed. It was like Macys, but only for comic books and sci-fi related material! They had huge window displays that took up an entire corner of the street. Aisles and aisles of toys, books, comics, portofolios and a lower level devoted to back issues! I was in heaven. To stare at their wall of back issue X-men, Avengers, Hulk, FF and other titles, I could've stayed there all day. It was sensory overload and I enraptured.

 

For the next few years, my brother, my friend and myself would venture to Forbidden Planet every saturday morning. It was like a ritual. We'd watch Spiderman and His Amazing friends on tv and then we'd take the train to Union Square and I would literally SPRINT to the store when we stepped foot on the street Forbidden Planet was on. There was one saturday when Frank Miller was there signing. I bought a copy of the newly released Ronin and had him autograph it for me. I had that book for almost 20 years but lost track of it when I stopped following comics. After buying what we needed, we'd walk back home and talk comics, compare what we bought and always stop off at a Burger King or Arbys.

 

Now I find myself buying the comics I purchased but lost/sold/misplaced and picking up issues I covetted as a child. I'm not too worried about crashes, outrageous prices paid for CGC slabs or modern issues. I buy the comics because I want to relive those innocent days of my youth, when I had no worries in the world. For me, looking at the cover of a Byrne X-men can bring me back in time, if for only a few seconds a day that nobody else can understand. Not the wife or girlfriend, not my non comic book collecting friends and not my co-workers. Nobody else gets is but the nuts who post here.

[delekkerste]

For me, it was Hidden Comics in Arvada, Colorado. Think they went bust long ago, though. Used to ride my Huffy dirt bike to classes at Cho's Tae Kwon Do and afterwards would cross the street to Hidden to pick up the comics in my hold box. Used to also marvel at their Byrne X-Men books on the wall, which to me were as good as it gets back then. I remember trading in a copy of X-Men #64 for store credit so I could buy some newer X-Men books. Back then, the X-Men without Wolverine weren't really the X-Men at all to me!

 

I occasionally would shop, when I could get a ride, at Mile High Comics at the Westminster Mall in Colorado and also used to buy comics at my local 7-11, local supermarket and local gas station as well (my, how times have changed). Those were indeed the days...

[Fan4Fan]

My first comic shop was Capital City Comics in Madison, WI. Then (mid-1970's) it was in a little cramped store piled pretty much to the roof with comics. Digging through the Fantastic Four back issues I could get back to the teens. The owner, Bruce, would like to show off some of his latest buys and I remember one time a friend and I were in and he held up 3 FF #1 in one hand and 3 AF #15 in the other and asked us if we'd like to buy them.

 

Thanks,

Fan4Fan

[DiceX]

My first LCS was the local drug store.

They had boxes of back issues from the 40's, 50's, and 60's.

I remember looking through some of them and prices were upwards of $10 to $20 on some of them.

 

The pharmacist was a nice old man.

He said he had tons of comics at his house that were not for sale.

 

I hardly ever bought any of the old comics because they were too expensive.

A couple of dollars for a single comic from the '60's? HA!

I could get my comics for a quarter each.

And they were NEW comics! WOOT!

[rob_react]

My first LCS, if you can call it that, was the shop I eventually worked at, Superhero Universe III in Downtown Boston. I really didn't regularly, but it was downtown so I would go whenever I got the chance.

 

I was mostly a subscriber with the occasional drugstore or supermarket visit when I was a little kid.

[goldust40]

Ironically enough one of the earliest (and it's still with us, although it's moved twice since) specialty comic stores in London was Forbidden Planet. After a while the area it was in (the Charing Cross Road, in the West End) became the focal point for all comic shops in central London.

 

Anyway, my first, pre-direct distribution LCS was a seedy, nasty, tiny little enclave called Reedmore Books, in North London near where I lived. In those carefree halcyon days said shop carried a reasonable stock of old comics - none bagged and mostly covered in dirt. All the comics were at least three months out of date, although they did have air-freghted imports available at triple the price, if you really wanted the new books that badly.

 

Most of the back issues were dog-eared, and few were pre-1966 - although in those days all I wanted to do was read any DC and Marvel item between '71 and '75. I wasn't too bothered about condition, or aware of such terms as Silver Age or Golden Age - however I was reading, and enjoying, the '40s and '50s stories that featured as back-ups in DC's 100 pagers.

 

Far more bothersome were the surly, misshapen staff, and the general, pervasive air of sleaze in the place. The stash of used porn in one section of the shop (behind a plastic curtain to deter browsers) can't have helped, either.

 

And no, the staff wouldn't let me into the porno section!

 

Eventually decent, professionally run specialty stores like FP and Comic Showcase arrived, and Reedmore and its' ilk died a death. Not the most auspicious start to a hobby.

[FFB]

My first LCS was the Stater Bros. supermarket in Chino, CA. I used to get all of my new Marvel issues off the spinner rack in those three-packs that they used to sell. There was also a newsstand near my dad's office where I would get new issues as they came out.

 

I can't remember the names of the first two LCSs that I used to go to (one in Pomona, CA and one in Ontario CA), as both of them are gone now. I bought my first copy of Amazing Spider-Man #14 VG from the store in Pomona, and some NM late silver age issues from the one in Ontario when they found a local collection of high grade late silver Marvels, including a NM+ Hulk 102. The comic store that I went to the most, however, starting in my senior year of high school (the year it opened) was Paper Hero Comics in Chino, CA. It was a great store. The owner was a younger guy (probably 30-35) who was totally cool. Not at all like most surly comic store owners you read about. He loved comics and he'd sit there and talk to you about them all day if you wanted to. That guy turned me on to more new comic series than any other person in all my years of collecting.

 

There is a somewhat happy ending to the story, too. He sold Paper Hero Comics in early 1994 to some new guy who just got into the comics market as a speculator/dealer a year before. The guy was a jerk. Also, he didn't read comics, just read Wizard so that he'd know what was "hot." My buddy made a nice profit off the sale of his store, got out before the crash, and the store didn't last a year after he left.

[drice6900]

Classic Movie & Comic Center, back in the 1970s when it was in the basement of a storefront in downtown Farmington, Michigan. My grandfather used to take me there all the time, and bought me an Avengers #2 from there when I was a 10 yr old laid up in the hospital with a broken arm. He was a commercial graphic artist, and appreciated the genre - which he passed on to me.

 

The store is in a new storefront now and is only a shadow of what it used to be for backissues.

 

Ahh, those were the days

[Timely]

My first LCS is Continental Comics on Balboa and Devonshire. They are still down the street from me. I used to ride my bike there from age 12-16 and then drove there from 16-25. Lots of memories there!

 

Timely

[ArAich]

I'd have to say my first comic shop was The Bookie run by Hal Kinney in East Hartford, CT. When I first walked into his store I was wide eyed at the GA books on display and how expensive they were. I loved looking at them, (since I could not afford them at the time), and attribute the walk through his store as the catalyst for my venture into GA books.

I started buying books from The buyers Guide for Comic Fandom and from Collectors Showcase auctions....all due to that one sunday afternoon stroll throught his shop...

 

BTW...as far as I know his shop is still their although I have never returned...and he also sponsers a local convention that I only recently started to attend...

 

Thanks Hal...

[Henson-migration]

My first LCS was John's Real Pit Bar-B-Que in Dalton GA. There was a small room setup in the back with boxes of comics. All the comics were "GASP" bagged and boarded (no sauce on those books!).

[PovertyRow]

Million Year Picnic in Cambridge, MA was my first. Was fortunate to hve shopped there for a good while when they had thweir amazing back issue room intact! Quite an experience.

[Paul_Maul]

Two LCS's for me: Bill and Bob's comic store on 95th and 4th in Bay Ridge Brooklyn.....and

Pinochio Discounts on Avenue P and McDonald in Bensonhurst, if I felt like taking a bus ride.

Pinochio was a classic comic store of the 1970's, where you had to work on the guy just to get him

to sell you anything. Also cut my teeth on the Phil Seuling monthly shows in Manhattan in the early

1980's and the Creation Cons.

[FlyingDonut]

Joe Sarno's Nostalgia Shop in Chicago was the first comic book store I ever visited, probably early winter of 1976. It was very close to my father's office on Belmont. I remember distinctly the VAST AMOUNT of comics that were there! Wow! Comics!

 

Then, of course, Moondog's Comics in Mt. Prospect was my LCS all through high school and beyond. I was probably one of the first 10 customers in the little storefront on Busse Avenue, taking the train in from Barrington. I still have the Amazing Spider-Man 3 I bought from Gary in 1979, the night before the massive 1979 blizzard.

 

FWIW, the Chicago area is a very fertile and rich ground for comic stores, I don't know why more there than other places. There are lots and lots, all over the place.

[Fan4Fan]

FWIW, the Chicago area is a very fertile and rich ground for comic stores, I don't know why more there than other places. There are lots and lots, all over the place.

 

What else would a kid do during a midwestern blizzard or mosquito infested muggy summer...

 

 

Thanks,

Fan4Fan

[r100comics]

My LCS when I was around 8 or 9 years old was Weird Fantasy (later Quality Comics) in New Cross, S.E. London. The owner would let me pick books I wanted from collections that had just come in and pay a 50 pence deposit to secure my stash. I would then have to go home and beg my mum and dad to give me my pocket money early and go back a few days later with £2 or £3. My books were always kept safely under the till in a brown paper bag !

 

I remember the first time I went to Forbidden Planet in Denmark Street, London's West End. They actually had books 3 months ahead of the newstand copies I had been buying (as they imported from the U.S. in the week of release). I felt like I was in a time machine. I remember seeing a run of early Marvel Silver Age on the walls (all low grade probably), and was awestruck.

[Smokinghawk]

Tattooed Lady Comics in Huntsville, Alabama.

 

[goldust40]

I remember seeing a run of early Marvel Silver Age on the walls (all low grade probably), and was awestruck.

 

Were you also awestruck by their absurdly high back issue prices? I was buying Marvel Silver Age in the early '80s, but don't recall ever buying a back issue from FP. In those days, my only real source for S.A. was FP's solitary competition - Paul Hudson at Comic Showcase.

[s-man]

My first comic shop was Treasure Island in downtown Spfld, MA (and they actually had a life sized cut out from the Treasure Island movie with the pirate on it!) Back when I was a kid there were two magical places for me that really felt like a home away from home...Wilbraham Ten Pin (where I learned how to bowl ) and Treasure Island. I loved spending Saturdays going through their 50 cent bin or the bundle-for-a-buck bin...picked up a lot of nice comics that way that I still have. I remember picking up the first limited Wolverine Series there and back issues of the Uncanny X-Men (when there was only one title for them!) They had a copy of X-Men #1 in the front case and a guy came in and bought it one day right in front of me...he paid $500 for it and I remember it was in decent shape!

 

Those were the days!

[Jayman]

My first comicbook shop was the Passaic Book Store right on Main Ave. in Passaic New Jersey.

It was a short bus ride away to an old building but once you entered...WOW! No bags or boards on 90% of all the boxes and boxes of the comic books and magazines that were all over the store. The only bagged items were pinned to the walls that streched to a 12 foot high ceiling. There were even books "clothespinned" to lines that strung across from one side of the room to the other. At the age of 12 or 13 this was a wonderland to me! This shop also had its section for adult books sectioned off by two swinging boards reminisent of saloon doors (you had to pay a dollar to get in there). But the best memory of this shop was an old basement trap door that was held open by an old rusty chain where they kept even more back issues. If for some reason I could not find what I was looking for upstairs, one of the staff would ask what title I was looking for and ALWAYS found what was on my want list in that magical cellar! Before the shop closed for good I got to go down in there once and it was just like I imagined it would be...a dark comic catacomb filled with books, I remember looking at the dirt floor and seeing it covered with loose covers and pages from old books!

 

Thanks for this thread to make me remember that great old place again.