Yesterday, my wife told me there was a comic shop opening up in the area. I was honestly surprised. Usually you hear about these places closing down, hardly ever about any popping up. We were out and about anyway and it was nearby, so we took a family trip over to the shop to check it out for it’s opening day.

10 years or so ago, I responded to a Reddit post on a whim. The poster was looking for people to write reviews for a comic book website. At the time, I was just getting into comics and access to advanced copies to review every week was amazing. That site has long been defunct, but my love of comics has remained.

I’ve never lived close enough to a comic book shop to be able to make the trek every week to get physical comics. That was a real bummer back when I was really into it. I got all of my comics digitally and try as I might, I could never find a cheap enough tablet that would display comic books well.

So I would mainly read them on my computer, sometimes I turn on pane by pane mode and would read them on a phone. Neither were a great experience, but it’s what I had at the time. I also took advantage of my libraries extensive trade paperback and graphic novel collection, so it’s not like I was completely out on physical comics. But new single issues were strictly digital.

We got to the shop around 6pm and the place was crawling with people. It wasn’t a large shop but big enough to have a front room with comics and trading cards and a back room with tables (presumably for people to play TCGs) and an arcade cabinet. They had face painting for the kids, and my four year old daughter, whose super hero knowledge starts and ends Spidey and His Amazing Friends ala Disney+, was absolutely only interested in the face painting.

Since they had just opened, they didn’t have any new comics but the place was packed with back issues. I was talking with the owner, who said he said he bought everything for the store in the last five months.

I spent a good hour looking through boxes, I’ve been out of comics for so long I didn’t even know what I was looking for but it was cool just to paw through, what seemed like, endless boxes. My wife had a good time looking through it all too. She even found some 90s Disney comics for our daughter.

I’m all for supporting our local businesses and they people I talked to were all super friendly and welcoming. I wanted to buy something to support them. I ended up leaving with a few things.

First up, two issues of Locke & Key. My wife and I are huge Joe Hill fans and we both read this series years ago. We both waited eagerly for the next graphic novel to be available from our library. I’m not really sure where these fall in the story, but I liked the covers on both of them.

Next up, the first issue of Bedlam. I own the full run of Bedlam digitally so why not pick up a physical issue, right? Also, it was one of the only comics I recognized right away from back when I was really into them.

When I was talking with the owner, he mentioned he had a comic from a local area artist. I’ll admit, I’m a sucker for local stuff, local store, local artist, it wasn’t a hard sell. It was described as Ms. Marvel meets Megaman, how could I say no to that? That’s how I ended up leaving with three issues of Stealth Hammer. I haven’t read it yet but I’m excited too, plus I love the art!

So, now I finally have a local comic book shop nearby. I’m pretty excited about it. I haven’t been following comics in the last couple of years, but I feel that little spark reigniting. I will assuredly be stopping in there again. Who knows, I might even get some new stuff in the future!