Diary of an up and coming sociopath

So, I mean, we haven’t really had the chance to talk recently. About stuff that isn’t boring, I mean. Yes, yes, dissertation this, mundanity that, but I think I know what you’ve been clamouring for. The question on the tip of all of your lips. Go on, spit it out:

“James,” (you’d say) “just what do you think of all the comic shops you’ve frequented over the last few years of our horrible geekdom?”

“Well,” (I’d reply) “that’s a deep and interesting question. You are indeed wise beyond your years and posessed of a thirst for knowledge that shames most others.”

And then the answer would go something like this:

Comic Legends (formerly Alien Enterprises) in Stratford, was where I cut my teeth as an aspiring geek. Before this I was a lone weirdo, adrift in a sea of normality. Then, one day, mum and Terry came back from Stratford with a Spider-Men wall decoration and a Star-Trek door hanger and they told me strange tales of a place nearby that was filled with comics and wonder, and I made it my business, nay, my destiny, to go there. And go there I did. Such moments in life you cannot create artificially. The crystalisation of all that I was and would be. The moment where I entered the shop and realised “Yes. I am home.” I remember the first comic I bought. X-Men #50. Up until then, I’d been buying UK comics, I’d bought the odd US one from some newsagents and my Nan on my mother’s side would send me some from a newsagents near where she lived (a story for another time) but this was my first proper comic shop experience. I also bought X-Men Firsts, a reprint comic that contained the first appearances of Gambit, Rogue, Wolverine and Sinister. A few weeks later, I went into Stratford with Josh’s family and took him to the shop too, and he saw that it was good.

And it continued to be good. We spent more and more money there, we blew months worth of pocket money buying up each and every Onslaught comic because we were terribly naive and dazzled by the idea of a shared superhero universe, and frankly I still think it’s a cool stroy even if the plot made zero fucking sense. Eventually, the shop moved, and still, we visit it. I still have a pull list there for many of my regular reads, out of loyalty as much as anything. It would seem wrong to just cut all ties with that shop. It’s my favourite in the country and the only criticism I can level against it is that it doens’t have a website, which I think is unforgivable for a comic shop, given the current market trends and huge potential audience.

and then there’s Forbidden Planet Coventry. What can I say? It’s a forbidden planet. It’s filled with overpriced toys, in a shit area of Coventry, the store was, for a long time, dark and dirty and by god, it felt like a the dark side of corporate comicana. But it was the closest we had besides the previous shop, so we went and we went often. I bought my first VHS copy of Clerks there. I remember we used to laugh at the Quake II figures going unsold for week upon week, month upon month, and watch the price drop and drop until one day they were all just gone. I first got wind of RiD Transformers in that Forbidden Planet. I bought “Onslaught: Epilogue” there. And more recently, I bought Public Domain and Jennie One from it. It might not have been the best comic shop around, but again, there’s a sentimentality there. I’ll always be 15 inside those walls. Back issues, Indie comics - Oni Press first became known to me in that Forbidden Planet. It’ll never be the best, but by god, it’ll be remembered.

Comic Showcase in Oxford is another venue that became local to me. I was glad to see there was a comic shop in the same city as me, for the first time ever I actually lived nearby and was educated close to a comic shop. A few times a term, I would walk there and back up Headington Hill, just to grab some extra reasing material. It was here that I really connected with the indie comics scene, because it was the first one I went to have a specifically indie section. This shop is, to me, all about Jhonen Vasquez. I remember buying my prized copies of Fillerbunny there. I bought the copies of “I Feel Sick” there, which I later gave to Rachel as a birthday present because they didn’t have any new ones in stock, and a few weeks later I bought my replacement copies of I Feel Sick there. But more: living in halls, I met Ian and Greg, who turned me on to Invader Zim. Nikki was reading Lenore, and suddenly I realised that all this pop culture was connected. I watched Zim, and I told Ian where to get Jhonen’s comics, and I bought Nikki the Lenore graphic novels, and later Josh and Rachel and Tom all turned out to be fans. However, I’ll always remember the friendly yet laconic employees. The general sense of utter geekdom that percolates the shop more so than almost any other I’ve been to. The annoying way in which new comics don’t get unpacked until the day after they’re delivered, occasionally leaving me cursing my fortune as I browse yeat another rack of comics I don’t want and deal with the only choice of action: To come back tomorrow. There, I bought my second ever issue of 2000AD, because of the Shaun of the Dead story. Most of all, I’ll miss the convenience of living so close. A comic shop little more than 5 minutes away, on foot. I doubt it’ll ever be that good again.

Next installment: Gosh!, Comicana, Forbidden Planet London, Forbidden Planet Birmingham, and the Online stores - Reed Comics, Comix-shop and Eclipse.