I won’t go into details here (though I hope to in the future on this site) but suffice it to say that it is every bit as good as everyone has been saying it is. In fact, the only problem with starting my comic reading life with Alan Moore’s iconic masterpiece is that I may have set my expectations a little too high. Watchmen is widely praised as the best comic book of all time and with good reason, it is absolutely brilliant. And it was with that affirmation ringing in my ears that I emerged into the light a changed man, a man who had bought a comic book. “Good choice.” The man said as he slid the book into a carrier bag. “We keep the Alan Moore section up here so nobody can find it.” he joked. “Ah,” replied the ponytail sporting cashier. After some time I plucked up the courage and asked where Watchmen would be. I browsed briefly, trying to look like I knew what I was doing but hopelessly out of my depth. And so I ventured in, descending a metal staircase passed the collectable action figures and Jedi dressing gowns into the bowels of the shop: the comic section. In my naïveté I did not even consider online retailers, the only place that I knew would stock it was Forbidden Planet, a comic book shop in the centre of Manchester’s vibrant (dodgy) Northern Quarter. I cannot tell you which chain of clicks eventually lead me to the Wikipedia article about legendary Alan Moore graphic novel Watchmen but something about the article had me intrigued I wanted to read Watchmen. While there was a great deal of information about Batman it turns out that there were no free Batman comics that I could find. Much of this noodling was in the form of web comics ( Penny Arcade, Dork Tower, Starslip, PvP and Three Panel Soul) but there was only so much time that one can spend reading web comics and, remembering my love of Batman, I started to see what was available on-line in the way of free Batman. This left the afternoon as a very pleasant empty time with little to do but noodle about on the Internet. My earliest memory of anything comic book related was, like many people my age I suspect, the Adam West Batman TV show and I subsequently enjoyed many things superhero related on the big and small screen but it was not until my late twenties that I discovered these superheroes in their original form: on the printed page.Īt the time I was working as graphic designer/photocopier operator for a secondary school and, due to the structure of the school day, my work tended to be concentrated into an insane first two hours of jobs ranging from rush-jobs to complete panic jobs. Then I’ll tell you the story of how I discovered the amazing world of comics, how I learned to stop worrying and love comic book shops. But where is the fun in that? And, perhaps more importantly, if we do not support our local comic book shop we will loose them and then who will recommend that new comic Batman book you have never heard of to you?Īre you sitting comfortably? Good. Comics can be little paper portals into wonderful worlds of adventure, excitement and (most importantly of all) Batman! In these modern technologically advanced times of course, if you want to buy comics you can avoid comic book shops entirely and buy Batman comics on the internet. If you are the sort of person who has no idea what is meant by terms such as TPBs, pull lists, arcs, variant covers, retcon or one-shot then comic book shops are alien places inexplicably full of action figures and very explicably empty of people like you.īut comics! Ah, comics can be great. Comic book shops can be strange, scary and foreboding places full of worrying looking books, posters, games, t-shirts, miscellaneous fluffy things and occasionally even peculiar looking people.
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