Nostalgia Thread: Dopers Who Bought Comics at Convenient Stores

Cafe Society
1

In another thread, I pointed out one of the hazards of buying comics at convenient stores.

Basically, I had to wait ten years to read the second installment of the two part Alan Moore story, Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?.

But I really look back at my convenient store phase as the happiest time in my comic collecting.

I figure mostly it is nostalgia for a time before I became old, fat and cynical, but I really loved going into a gas station with a mission.

Back then, everywhere you went was a comic store. If a gas station didn’t have a good selection of comics, it probably didn’t even have soda pop.

Growing up, I lived in rural Alabama. It was a long way to the nearest comic shop. So if there were titles I HAD to have, I either bought a mail order subscription (remember the crappy brown envelopes they came in?) or I made sure I was at the big convenient store the day the comics came.

Sure, the condition was pretty crappy sitting in metal racks, but we didn’t care. That was back before we had to read comics with surgical gloves and salad tongs to keep them pristine. (insert “fanboys today!” complaint).

It was always fun going into a store with a friend, racing to the magazine section because the first one there may get the last copy of West Coast Avengers!

This period of collecting also makes me think about my mom. Surprisingly, she encouraged my comic habit and would make multiple stops at gas stations to let me make a quick check for issues I missed. I think it just represents a lot of happy childhood memories. Simpler times…

Sure, when I moved to Houston and could make weekly trips to my LCS, I realized direct sales was a more practical way to buy comics. And I can’t say there aren’t numerous happy memories there.

But when I was 12 years old, and I was buying Justice League, GI Joe, and the new Flash, I was buying them at the convenient store.

Now my three year old is a superhero junky. This gives me unimaginable joy. I hope he feels that special magic I felt when I flipped open a book. But with today’s on demand culture, I wonder if it can ever be that way again.

Has anyone else mythologized this inefficient way of buying comics as I have?

2

Well, my town had no ‘convenience’ stores, but they had the miscellaneous sort of mom’n’pop grocery/drug stores that often had newsstands, and I bought from them for many years. I don’t look back with nostalgia, but with annoyance because of the resultant holes in what would otherwise be nice runs of a lot of books.

3

I used to buy a ton of comics from newsstands, back in the '80s when there were still more small newsstands in shopping centers. Most had those metal spinner-racks with the “Hey kids, comics!” sign on top, although some devoted several wall-mounted shelves to comics, along with the magazines. I got my first “grown-up” comic, Transformers #5, at the Front Page newsstand in suburban Miami, a place run by a friendly French-Canadian transplant named Pierre. My parents were also cool about taking me to comic shops and even small local conventions at hotels, but up through about 1993, the year of the Death of Superman, it was still possible to buy many comics at the newsstand. I never had as much luck at convenience stores, but at least around Miami, they would have used the extra space for Spanish-language periodicals instead of comics.

4

I used to buy most of my comics in the '60s at the Topper liquor store on Mission Gorge Road in San Diego. That was the Kwik-E-Mart of my youth.

5

We had a few newsstands in my home town that in the 1960s-1970s kept a huge array of comics. I bought them there, month after month (nobody subscribed) without missing an issue.
Now only one is left, still in the same place, but they no longer put out a huge array of comics as in the old days. They’re all in a single rotating rack. Easily worse than the Good Old Days. If I want anything loike that, I have to go to a comics specialty store. And I don’t think there are any in my old Home Town.

6

Now that you mention it, I did have two subscriptions for a year or two, to Strange Adventures and Tales of the Unexpected.

7

I remember in the summers biking around to every pharmacy, gas station, and book store in West Akron looking for comics. The Sand Run Pharmacy had a lot of comics but they didn’t seem to arrive on any particular day, so I had to zip by at least twice a week. Then I’d go next door to the ice cream window at Vaccaro’s Pizza, get myself a Flurry (a DQ Blizzard knock-off) and try to ride home while holding my comics and eating the Flurry.

–Cliffy

8

My first two comics (not counting my numerous Uncle Scrooge, Little Lulu, and Richie Rich mags) were bought at Acme Drugs. My family was going somewhere on a car trip so we swung by there for some provisions. For me, that meant something to read. I got Marvel Team Up #148 with Nomad (who briefly recapped his origin, confusing the heck out of me since I knew Captain America’s origin and I didn’t remember him) and and Amazing Spider-Man from the same month starring Red Ghost and the Super Apes. The whole black costume thing also confused me and prompted me to find back issues, thus leading me down the long dark addiction of comics collecting.

9

When we lived in NJ briefly, every couple of weeks my folks would bring me to the Englishtown flea market to stock up on comics. There was a stall that sold books, magazines and comic books, and I remember walking out with quite the pile on those trips. Being a “fan” rather than a “collector”, as long as they were legible, that was OK with me. Related MST quote: “Shouldn’t these (comics) be in plastic covers?” “Uh, no, we have lives!” :stuck_out_tongue:

10

When I wa a li’l scraper, I used to buy my comics (Superman and Archie, mostly . . . Those were two separate comics, not “Superman and Archie”) at Pop’s Candy Shop. Actually run by a an old “Pop,” and he used to carry old-fashioned candy along with the comics.

Of course, the candy wasn’t old-fashioned at the time . . .

11

I grew up near there, and used to go to Englishtown all the time. (Englishtown Auction Sales is the largest constantly ongoing Flea Market that I know of, anywhere). At furst that stand used to be obnly used books, with a comics rack out front, but you could find amazing things there. Pretty soonm they wised up and noticed the kids looking for valuable back issues, and they started a collector’s section in the back (Englishtown was unfettered capitalism at its rawest.) It was annoying that you now had to pay more for them. On the other hand, the condition was better and they were organized. I have a nearly complete run of Fantastic Four for the first 200 or so issues, lacking only a couple of the very first.
The main auction sales building burned to the ground many years ago, taking that used book/comic stall with it. Sniff. In commemoration of the loss, Englishtown Auction sales was open the very next day, operating out of the parking lot. The buildings have since been rebuilt, but without their spontaneous charm.

12

I grew up in Yonkers, NY with amny Mom & Pop places close by on foot or within bicycle range. I got to be know by the people who clerked in these stores as i made sure to be there on the day the comics came in. Since these items were not high ticket, the clerks/owners were never in a hurry to put them out. I annoyed a lot of people who would’ve preferred to be doing something else but I always got them to open the bundles for me.

One consequence of my forraging from store to store is that many of my comics have big creases in them from being folded in half and stuck in my back pocket, this being long before the days of children wearing backpacks and the roads were too rough for the books to stay in the basket of my bike. Who knew that some of those issues would command huge sums, at least according to the Overstreet Guide?

When I went to college, keeping caught up became harder. I had a friend back home that was pretty good about buying the them for me but I welcomed the onset of the Comic Book Store as one of the great things to occur in Western civilzation. I’ve kind of given up collecting because of cost and my inability to say “NO” to new titles but I do remember those bike forays around SW Yonkers and Northern Riverdale with great fondness. :slight_smile:

13

My main comic book shop was Staley’s, a local gas station/quick mart. For my more extensive needs, I usually hit Price Chopper, a supermarket that had a good comic book selection. I think I was around 17 before I ever went to an actual comic book store (Fantaco in Albany) which back then were rare.

Comic books now are virtually absent from any place except specialty shops. I realized how much this was true when the one comic book shop back in my old hometown closed and I realized there was no other place to buy comic books within fifty miles.

14

In my old neighborhood in New Jersey, the place I got my comics was an old-school newstand/luncheonette/sundries store a block or two away from my house. It’s the place where I first heard the phrase “Hey kid, this ain’t a liberry!”

However, the place was already an anachronism in late 70s suburban north Jersey (It would be replaced by a fried chicken joint by the mid-80s) with its art-deco sign and facade, lunch counter with stools, shelving that gave lots of display room to comics (more than actually was needed). However, except for a few regulars idling away at the lunch counter, I rarely remember seeing customers there and was off the beaten path for a newsstand.

15

I never bought comics when I was a kid. That’s because my uncle owned a neighborhood store. I got to read 'em for FREE!