I can still picture the tiled floor of the pharmacy. I can remember the squeal as I turned the spinner rack, the dizzying number of choices. I don’t know why I selected the comic I did (it certainly didn’t have the most captivating cover) and over the years I picked up a lot of comics from there. I don’t remember each and every one, but I remember quite a few of them.
When I was seven, a comic book store opened up in my hometown. It was about a mile from my house, and I would walk there every week, I would spend hours looking through the back issue bins, trying to figure the exact perfect comic to bring home. I often made horrible choices.
Today I live in my grandparents’ old house. That pharmacy is now an abandoned storefront. The comic shop in my old hometown in now an abandoned storefront (although that’s because the owner moved to another location six years ago--it’s still my preferred comic shop). I drive by these abandoned storefronts nearly every day.
