I just love this place. Located a block off the BQE in Sunset Park, it is literally a warehouse. I walk up a flight of stairs and go past the sweatshop. Sometimes there are women working on machines, sometimes the doors are shut. I don't ask. I just head to the back of the building and down a short corridor to the large room containing rows and stacks of boxed comics.
I enjoy shaking hands with stout Peter and listening to him talk to another comic buff about how modern comics can't compete with the Silver and Bronze Ages. I know he likes Howard the Duck. I am amazed that Joe, with his unbrushed mane of white hair, has so much energy and never hesitates to seek out whatever comic someone asks of him. There are the $1 comics in the front and the "the good stuff" in the back. I would not be surprised to find the Ark of the Covenant lost somewhere here. Maybe it is under the "Archie" comics.
This is a dirty place. There is dust on everything I touch. No cleaning detergeant has ever touched any part of the concrete floor I imagine. The lighting is decent but there are some dark rows. I think I see their cat, Fuzzball, darting in and out from the corner of my eye. They give out free snacks on days that the warehouse to the public. I like eating the Dunkin' Donuts donut-holes. I am not as squeamish as I used to be.
Me, I like to lose myself for that hour of escape so that I can thumb through the $1 Marvel bins, my current interest. I am going through boxes of Spider-Man, a character I was never interested in when I was younger. Now I find several issues that I put aside to purchase: the Spider-Man clone stories including the issue where Mary Jane tells Peter Parker she is pregnant and some early Ultimate Spider-Man issues from the early 2000s featuring an alternate storyline where Peter is a teen-ager again and working as a web-master for the Daily Bugle. I find some defunct-Atlas comics from the mid-70s where Larry Lieber, Stan Lee's brother, worked as an editor (sort of like an alternate version of Marvel that failed in real life), like The Scorpion #1 (an early Howard Chaykin work of noir crime-fighting set in the 30s). I find Marvel Team-Up Annual #4, an awful story written and drawn by Frank Miller starring Spider-Man, Moon Knight and Daredevil fighting against some Purple Man with mind-control powers and the Kingpin. I guess even the best writers flop from time to time.
I sigh. My hour is up and I have to go back home to take care of the family. I pay the butcher's bill. I wish Peter well and tell him I'll see him again. He knows my name and wishes me likewise. I come here that often. I walk out and am amazed that the sun is still shining. After going through hundreds and hundreds of comics, my fingers are black. I wonder if this is how my lungs would look if I smoked. Still, I have my comics. They're not in perfect condition but they're cheap. And I get to enjoy reading them and knowing that if this be my one and only vice, then I'm gonna live a long time reading comics.
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