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Comics Store, Parklane: 1980s   4 comments

Posted at 3:35 am in Uncategorized

This currently vacant storefront on Parklane in between Sounds Familiar and Monterrey has been a number of things over the years including a military recruitment office, but I recall it most as a comic book store. This would have been at the height of the comics boom of the 1980s where there were actually two comic shops on this side of town: This one and one (whose name I also can't recall) over on Forest Drive near Percival.

Really neither one was my cup of tea. I was pretty much a Silver City regular (when it was in its original location). I thought the one on Forest Drive catered too much to second and third tier publishers (like AC and Pacific), and I thought this one was lacking in selection, and a bit inept.

Comic stores are notorious for being run by fans who have an in-depth knowledge of comics but little retailing sense. I never really talked comics to the staff here, so I don't know if the first part is true, but there were various things that made me think the second part was. The one I remember in particular was that, at a time when comic book shops across the country were getting busted on obscenity charges (due mainly to prosecutors and bluenoses who operated on the theory: Comic boooks are only for kids. Your comic books have nudity, therefore you must be selling comic books with nudity to kids), they had comics with nudity shelved at kid eye-level. When I pointed out that this might not be a great idea, they immediately saw my point, but it was something which had apparently never occured to them..

I'm pretty sure they never had any legal trouble, but like most of the stores in town, they ended up not surviving the comic book bust that followed the black-and-white glut and the variant cover speculation boom.

Written by ted on January 17th, 2009

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4 Responses to 'Comics Store, Parklane: 1980s'

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  1. this was heroes and dragons. Can't say when it closed but I remember going there in the mid 90s.

    Mr Bill

    21 Jan 09 at 12:10 pm

  2. Hmm. Are you sure? I know Heroes & Dragons had a store in Boozer Shooping Center by Manifest which later moved down Bush River Road to more or less across from Ruby Tuesday, but I don't recall them having a second store..

    ted

    21 Jan 09 at 12:23 pm

  3. I'm positive it was heroes and dragons in the 90s. It could have been something else in the 80s.

    Mr Bill

    21 Jan 09 at 1:20 pm

  4. Yeah. Heroes expanded during the comic boom of the early 90's with the Death of Superman and other media events. They also had a shop on St. Andrews that even though closed for years, only had its sign taken down a few years ago. There was also a 4th store down Garner's Ferry, but I think they opened it for special occasions. Anywho, this was a Heroes and Dragons managed by a spindly character named Tom, I believe. And it, like the Silver City that was on the other side of the mall, shut down a few years after it opened due to the fall that follows a meteoric boom, and thefts cutting into their profit margins.

    Nobody

    24 Jan 09 at 1:50 am

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