One of the many things I miss about Alameda is my beloved Alameda Sports Cards & Comics: the place was within walking distance of both my house and my laundromat (important for getting my weekly fix), and staffed by the awesome Patty, who apparently read every issue of every comic in the place and made recommendations accordingly. I am not sure whether to thank Patty for setting aside titles for me to try, or to kill her for getting me hooked on ten different books.
Anyway, procuring my Y: The Last Man, The Authority, New X-Men, X-Treme X-Men and Supreme Power titles (among others) hasn't been as easy as I'd like since moving here, since a) this is L.A. and the concept of "stores within walking distance" is an alien one, and b) I really haven't made the effort to accost people in Sandman t-shirts and ask them how they get their Gaiman fixes.
A coworker goes to Comic Ink in Culver City occasionally, and I'll tag along for the ride, but I haven't really warmed to the store yet. My experiences going in there are a lot like the times I've gone into Amazing Fantasy, down in the Inner Sunset in San Francisco: I walk in, every guy's head in the place swivels around as they realize a real live girl has walked in, every set of eyes drops down to chest level to see if I'm carting around a pair of cartoonishly-proportioned funbags (answer: no), and then one of two things happens. Either I cease to exist -- like, to the point where if I directly ask a question ("Do you have back issues of Animal Man from the end of the Grant Morrison run?"), I would be more likely to get an answer from the wall. Or someone in the store decides the wedding ring is a prop and follows me from shelf to shelf dropping pickup lines like " You like Elfquest?" While I might have swooned at age 15 over that treatment -- because at 15, I did like Elfquest -- it's kind of off-putting now.
So I'm looking for other stores. I'm also a big believer in knowing where multiple comic stores are because different stores have different inventory: Patty was great for all my current titles, but when I wanted to dig up the Vertigo run of Children's Crusade from 1993, I went to Dr. Comics and Mr. Games over in Piedmont (and no, it was never revealed what the former is a Doctor of) or over to Comix Experience on Divis in SF. If I wanted Phoebe Glockner, I went to Powell's Books in Berkeley. You get the point. Many stores = many chances to buy comics.
And then I found The Master List of U.S. Comic Book and Trading Card Stores, so now I can make it a mission to check out the store in Manhattan Beach, visit either Another World Comics or Ambrosia Cards and Collectables in L.A. proper or maybe even Earth-2 Comics in Sherman Oaks, although that last one makes me think of the failed TV series Earth 2. My point is, I may soon have choices again. Thank you, Internet.
Guess where the best comic store is?
Posted by: g30fish | 2004.02.20 at 18:11
Well, there, sure.
Posted by: Lisa | 2004.02.20 at 22:35