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Comics shops I’ve known
Jul. 30th, 2005 04:04 pmThis is one of those times I wish I’d been keeping a journal all my life.
I dreamed about a comic books store. A tiny one, one I’m pretty sure used to actually exist, though eventually went out of business, somewhere in Manhattan, somewhere I used to get to occasionally but not too often, though I can’t remember the name of the store or what neighborhood it was in. Near Canal St, maybe? A store with a small selection, where I found one or two weird alternative titles I never saw anywhere else, which I can’t remember the titles of either. This has all the hallmarks of a dream, but dammit, I’m sure it used to really exist.
I’ve been going through all the comics shops I’ve frequented through my life, trying to track it down. Not any of the three locations of Village Comics (the first actual dedicated comics store in my life, and what a discovery that was, I can remember buying Thriller there), not any of the locations of Forbidden Planet (I was a regular customer for years, especially when a friend of mine worked at the 59th St location), not St Marks Comics, not any of the varying locations of Jim Hanley’s (which I discovered when it was in A&S Plaza and I worked at Sir Speedy’s a couple blocks away), not either of the shops I used to frequent during those three years in Rochester (the large one I used to take the bus to from RIT, the small one in the mall I could walk to from my apartment junior year where I first belatedly got into Zot! with the black-and-white issues and picked up most of the color back issues for cover price), not that one on W 23rd that the Malibu group frequents (never really liked that one), not Cosmic Comics (regular stop for years now), or Midtown Comics near Times Square.
Not any of those. Damn, maybe it was a dream. Maybe it’s the archetype of my experience reading comics during the ’80s: I go into a store, and I find a weird little first or second issue I really like, and then never see that title again.
I think I know what started this. One of my co-workers had the last name Nguyen. The first place I encountered that was as the title of a comic: Billy Nguyen. Never saw more than the first issue; picked it up in Rochester, I think.
I dreamed about a comic books store. A tiny one, one I’m pretty sure used to actually exist, though eventually went out of business, somewhere in Manhattan, somewhere I used to get to occasionally but not too often, though I can’t remember the name of the store or what neighborhood it was in. Near Canal St, maybe? A store with a small selection, where I found one or two weird alternative titles I never saw anywhere else, which I can’t remember the titles of either. This has all the hallmarks of a dream, but dammit, I’m sure it used to really exist.
I’ve been going through all the comics shops I’ve frequented through my life, trying to track it down. Not any of the three locations of Village Comics (the first actual dedicated comics store in my life, and what a discovery that was, I can remember buying Thriller there), not any of the locations of Forbidden Planet (I was a regular customer for years, especially when a friend of mine worked at the 59th St location), not St Marks Comics, not any of the varying locations of Jim Hanley’s (which I discovered when it was in A&S Plaza and I worked at Sir Speedy’s a couple blocks away), not either of the shops I used to frequent during those three years in Rochester (the large one I used to take the bus to from RIT, the small one in the mall I could walk to from my apartment junior year where I first belatedly got into Zot! with the black-and-white issues and picked up most of the color back issues for cover price), not that one on W 23rd that the Malibu group frequents (never really liked that one), not Cosmic Comics (regular stop for years now), or Midtown Comics near Times Square.
Not any of those. Damn, maybe it was a dream. Maybe it’s the archetype of my experience reading comics during the ’80s: I go into a store, and I find a weird little first or second issue I really like, and then never see that title again.
I think I know what started this. One of my co-workers had the last name Nguyen. The first place I encountered that was as the title of a comic: Billy Nguyen. Never saw more than the first issue; picked it up in Rochester, I think.