My first visit to a comic bookstore

It took a long-haul flight from Mumbai to Vancouver for me to finally experience a comic bookstore I’d only read about online and watched with envy on The Big Bang Theory.

The comic bookstore I went to was on Vancouver Island, in a small, charming place called Coombs, within the district of Nanaimo. Coombs, as many would already know, is famous for its Old Country Market—more popularly known as Goats on the Roof—where a family of goats lives on a low sodded roof. The place is said to attract over a million tourists every year.

The comic bookstore, as it was simply called, was a single room. Its walls were lined with storage racks holding dozens of white boxes filled with comics in polyethylene bags, each neatly labelled with the names of superheroes on the side.

When I went in, the place was almost empty. A young man, presumably the owner, sat at a counter watching something on his phone, while a couple of kids were noisily sifting through stacks of trading cards. I wandered through the shelves, looking for my favourite characters from DC and Marvel, and other imprints. They were all there, and some unfamiliar ones too.

With help from my family—since the boxes were quite heavy—I went through hundreds of backdated comic-books, mostly Superman and Batman (my childhood heroes), along with the Hulk, Flash, Daredevil, Captain America, Punisher, Justice League, Fantastic Four and the Avengers. I picked out several, put them back and then took them out again. Being spoilt for choice wasn't easy. There were so many old titles, I wanted them all. I was like a kid in a candy store.

At one point, I decided to buy the multi-part Superman: Funeral for a Friend special series I had always wanted to own. I spent over an hour searching for all the parts but came up three short. In the end, I dropped the idea and settled instead for the equally prized Reign of the Supermen! (1993) series.

Some three hours later, as I was paying for my stack of comic books, I realised I hadn’t seen two other favourite characters from my teen years—Tarzan and his son, Korak. They were there, all right; I had somehow missed them..

After the owner pointed them out, I got down on my haunches and quickly went through a couple of boxes of early Tarzan issues with their vintage-smelling covers, my comic book antennae tingling with excitement for a second time that evening. Unfortunately, we were running late, and it was with much reluctance that I put the ape-man back in his box.

Comic-books have brought me endless joy since my school days, and visiting this little haven felt like a dream come true. I'll be going back to Coombs again, hopefully in the not-too-distant future—for the comic-books and, of course, the goats on the roof.

© Prashant C. Trikannad