Appreciation post: That worn-out comic shop in Portland where I spent my teenage summers

I drove by Atomic Comics on Hawthorne last weekend and noticed they finally replaced that old faded X-Men sign out front that's been hanging there since the 90s. It got me thinking about how the place used to smell like old paper and dust, and how the owner would let me dig through long boxes for hours without buying a thing. Does anyone else have a shop that feels more like a time capsule than a business?

2 comments

2 Comments

ericschmidt1mo ago

Respectfully, I see it a little differently. Those places always felt kinda musty and cramped to me, like they were holding onto stock nobody wanted. I preferred the shops that actually rotated their inventory and kept things tidy.

tessa_kelly1mo ago

Those musty long boxes are where you find the real gold though (like a sealed copy of X-Force #1 with a trading card still attached). The chain stores might rotate inventory, but they lose that buried treasure feeling.