I used to go down to the post exchange and they’d usually have model kits. They also had comic books. Once I moved to Dallas I used to love going to Lone Star Comics for all my war game miniatures, comics, and role playing needs. Unfortunately, Lone Star Comics decided to close their doors in 2013 and switched over to an online only shop.
In the 50’s it was Kirks Hobby Hut in Alameda California
I started buying comics on a regular basis in 1971, when I was ten. I lived in Hendersonville, Tennessee and got mine at the local drugstore. When I was sixteen (1977), we moved to Nashville, and I discovered the Great Escape. I was in seventh heaven! An actual comic book store! I spent a lot of my money there. I didn’t stop collecting until 2007. Fun memories!
when I started buying comic books seriously as a kid (around age 9 or 10) the local used bookstore had a decent selection of new and back issue comics, as well as a habit of posting hand-written signs all over the shop with homilies like “others may sell for less but I know what MY merchandise is WORTH!”
Occasionally we’d haunt the local drugstore spinner racks for current “hot” books (this is the early 1980s, so, X-Men). If we were lucky we’d get the folks to drive us across town to other, larger used bookstore/comic shops, like Decatur’s Book Nook. When I was in high school, the comics-only chain Titan’s opened up and that got a lot of my comic book business, and then Oxford Books opened a comics-only shop, and then I started buying comics at Bizarro Wuxtry in Athens GA because I was spending a lot of time in Athens, and whenever I’m back in Athens I visit the shop because it’s still in business and is a wonderland of fun nonsense, new and old.
I was never into comics, but I used to by my model rocket kits at Hobbies and Arts in Wheaton Plaza, MD.
I was a fiend, when I was 12, for Marvel comics, I bought every single one I could, even lame ones like Ant Man. (and Millie the Model :), and The Rawhide kid with his flaming red hair, who I knew even then was gay as Galliano spring frock). Drugstores, any drugstores. Rexall Drugs, I could walk to and peruse the spinning rack, though this was the kind of place that actually was run by an old guy who said, ‘are you going to buy that? this ain’t a library.’
This! BIG TIME!!
I remember that smell. It was distinctive and wonderful.
I grew up in West Bend, Wisconsin in the 60’s and 70’s. There were 3 places I bought comic books: Steins Drug Store on Main Street (right next to the Kohl’s grocery store with the weird arched building), Open Pantry Market on south Main Street, and Tri-County Bookstore in the Downtown area. There was a tan and white UPS type truck that would deliver new issues every 10 days. They would bring different comics to each store so I had to hit every store to see everything available.
Then there were rummage sales. In the summer I would happily go “rummaging” with my Ma (my brother freaking hated it and whined the entire day) because I’d get older comics at them for like a nickel. At the end of the day I’d have a huge stack of vintage comic books I’d only paid a buck or two for.
And those were great times, my friends. 
Valdosta GA had a small chain of convenience stores, “Minit Food Shops”, hours 7-11 (but not the modern chain called 7-11), that kind of place. Two of those comic book racks towards the front of the store, quite close to the freezer containing ice cream sandwiches and dreamsicles and fudgsicles and next to that was the horizontal cooler with the soda bottles.
Proprietor’s mood and attitude ranged at times from “three kids in the store at a time, get away from the rack unless you’re buying” to “I know you, you’ll buy a soda and an ice cream, I’ll look the other way while you read comics but after awhile either buy one or quit reading them for free”.
When I first started dropping in on my way home from school, regular comics were 12¢, and the big ones they billed as “80 page GIANT” were 25¢. The 12 oz sodas were 10¢ with a 3¢ bottle deposit. Ice cream sandwiches were 15¢, as were the other ice creams except Fudgsicles which were cheaper for some reason, 10¢. I’d scavenge the drainage ditches and parking lots on the way home for discarded deposit bottles and bring them in with me, often having enough to pay for at least a ginger ale, sometimes also an ice cream.
Hi-Way Hobby House, Ramsey NJ.
Still there I understand.
Regarding comics and model kits (and other toys), I was in heaven in my childhood in the 70s. I was living with my extended family in a multi-generational household, and my grandmother had a combined book/newspaper/tobacco/ stationary store and carried all the major comics which I was allowed to “borrow”, that means I could read them very carefully without damaging them in any way and put back in the shelf to be sold. And our very next neighbor had a toy store, where I ran to every time one of my grandparents or aunts or uncles gave me a little money to buy some stuff, especially model kits of planes and cars, which was my big hobby as a kid. It was awesome.
Mostly got my kits at the local supermarket. Every now and then we’d make a trip to ‘The Big City’ that had an actual toy/hobby place.
When I worked downtown (North 5th Street) I would go to Twice Read Books at lunch at least once a week…they had a great selection of Science Fiction paperbacks.
1940s.
Comics, 10c, Bluebird Newsstand, smoke shop, barber shop.
Models, Buteyn Hardware.
Born in 1977 so grew up in the 80s
I got my Comics at a few different places. Here in our little town it was “The Stationary Store”. Old and dusty, smelled of pipe tobacco. Mr Mercury wouldn’t be bothered by a kid reading the funny books but his Momma sure was!
Back then you could also get your comics off those spinner racks in almost every drug store, grocery, or convenience store.
In later years it was THE BOOK KNOOK for comics and Wrestling magazines!
Models always came from HILLS. Honestly most all my toys did.
Comic books: At this dime store that had one of those spinning racks.
Girlie magazines: At a drugstore in the same strip mall. Their magazine section was hidden from the cash register, making it easy for us kids to slip them under our shirts and sneak them out.
Models: I was never good with models. Glue went everywhere, and the finished product looked nothing like the picture on the box. I was always jealous of my friends who were expert at putting them together.
In the early to mid 1960s, we got our comics at the Ben Franklin five-and-dime in the Belle View shopping center just south of Alexandria. The shopping center also had a People’s Drug, but the Ben Franklin had a lot more kid-oriented stuff generally, so we were more likely to spend our allowances there.
Oh, and before we moved to northern Virginia, we lived in Bethesda, and the Wildwood shopping center was where we shopped. I was just 6 years old when we moved from Bethesda in 1960, so I don’t remember much detail about the shopping center.
It’s funny, when I was in my teens in the 70s I put together a ton of model kits, but I’ll be damned if I can remember now where I bought my models and supplies. I think there was a hobby shop within walking distance from our house, but I couldn’t swear to it. I seem to remember that stores like Target and K-Mart used to have a hobby/crafts aisle with plastic model kits back in those days, but again the memory is fuzzy.
Comics: The drug store first, the grocery store second. Usually off those tall, spinning racks. 12 cent era, 25 cents for “annuals”. DC Silver Age stuff.
Model kits: the local five-and-dime type place. Could buy all the huffable glue you wanted but I didn’t know about that sort of thing back then.
Both withing walking distance. (Actually, bike riding their a lot.) In the age when parents didn’t care that their kids were roaming around a mile from home.
We moved to PA in 1969 so it’s been a long time for me too. I remember the Grand Union was there too, but the rest of the stores are just blurry. The People’s had the comic books, Mad, stuff like that. The 5 and 10 was great, just tons of toys, the balsa gliders, squirt guns, plastic models, army men and plastic dinosaurs.
I didn’t realize until later on that People’s wasn’t just a DC area thing. They all were absorbed by other chains over time but wiki says they eventually had over 500 stores by that time. I only remember seeing one outside MD and VA, but don’t recall where.
There was a hobby store in Madison Heights, Michigan where I’d go model shopping I believe was called The Squadron Shop. The place had glass cases featuring dioramas of WWII scenes with beat-up looking tanks with crumpled fenders, simulated mud and dust carefully spray-painted on, breaking through crumbling brick walls. I was amazed at the realism and jealous that I couldn’t make anything nearly so realistic. Still, I tried, buying tubes of plastic model putty and carefully melting plastic edges with a lighter to get a crumpled metal look on my model tanks. The holy grail would have been an airbrush for the best realistic weathered look, but I wanted to reserve my hard-earned allowance for more plastic models.