Raph—short for Raphael—reminds me of Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons, though they look nothing alike. Raph is considerably less portly so his red staff shirt fits fully over his stomach; and his short, balding black hair isn’t pulled back into an offensive ponytail. He’s clean-shaven and breaking out in some places, and his tired, thin eyes don’t stare with the judgment of comic book know-it-alls like Comic Book Guy. Maybe it’s in the way Raph walks, but more likely because he works in a comic book store.
He rolls past me with a cartful of comic books soon after I enter Midtown Comics at West 40th Street and 7th Avenue, a place that would have filled me with wonder and excitement as a child. I still feel a sense of awe at the sheer vastness of it all. Midtown Comics is home to two floors of comic books, the “youngest form” of expression, Raph later tells me. And each floor has high ceilings and plenty of large windows that look out onto the Garment District below, which seems a strange place for a comic book store, but Midtown Comics has occupied the second and third floors of this building since 1997, when I was nine.
Back then I would often visit Forbidden Planet—a similar shop for comic enthusiasts, thirty blocks south on Broadway—with my grandmother who still lives in the West Village. I remember feeling at home surrounded by cartoons—muscular superheroes in tight colorful suits, grotesque villains that sent chills down my spine, buxom heroines that I felt guilty for staring at—and at Midtown Comics thirteen years later, similar emotions come back. For a while I wander around, browse through graphic novels and Japanese manga on the first floor, and thumb through vintage issues of Superman and the Green Lantern on the second. Walking upstairs, a life-sized effigy of Spider-Man is posed, ready to shoot webs at unsuspecting customers.
Midtown Comics sits above a Maoz Vegetarian chain, and the entrance to the two-story comic-book megastore is difficult to find at first, which makes it feel exclusive, even understated—a haven for comic-book lovers hidden in plain sight between advertisements and souvenir shops in the Garment District. The single flight of stairs is light blue and narrow as fuck. There is hardly any indication of exactly where you’re heading. If entrances are any indicator of a place itself, Midtown Comics does not brag of its presence. Even the figurines and posters in the second and third floor windows don’t overshadow the neon that permeates Midtown West, or the haute Modern design of the Parsons Fashion Design building across the street.
But inside, it’s hard to look outside the gigantic windows in Midtown Comics and onto the street below because everything inside is pure imagination. Colorful rows of figurines from series and sagas I can’t place line the dark gap between the hardwood floor and the windows. Some are strangely attractive while others are silly and whimsical; a large-breasted sorceress in a tight leather one-piece riding on a silver tiger, a lime-green demon with horns that look like my bike’s handlebars bares its teeth, an overcooked meatball with legs and eyes. The figurines are all for sale but there are so many it appears few people actually buy them. These aren’t toys: they’re collectors’ items, at least in a world where a small plastic statue of the X-Men’s Gambit in a menacing pose sells for $75.
Eventually I find the section labeled “Independent Comics” and an adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 catches my eye. I skim through it and realize I’ve never read the novel. I decide to take it to the register to check the price. It’s not busy; the checkout line has one person in it, so I take my place. A man named Andre calls me over. He’s wearing a dark blue Midtown Comics T-shirt and has been working here since April, but shopping here for much longer. “I used to shop here a lot when I was younger, and I needed a job so I came in and I started on like, the same day,” he said. “I read a lot of comics, but not that punchy cape-y bullshit all the time. It gets boring. That copy of Fahrenheit 451 is supposed to be awesome. Tim Hamilton is a great illustrator.” I don’t know who Tim Hamilton is, and as much as I appreciate the graphic art inside, I still don’t care. I was initially more excited that Bradbury had written an introduction to the graphic adaptation.
I ask him how much Fahrenheit 451 is. He looks on the back. “$30,” he replies casually. I tell him I may be back to buy it. I walk back to the independent section and spot Raph hunched over, pushing a cart of comic books and filing them. The look on his face is tired, as though he doesn’t want to be there.
“Excuse me,” I say to him.
“Yeah?” He answers.
“Do you have anything, like, in terms of experimental comics? You know, stuff that…I guess pushes the boundary of the form?” Raph rolls his eyes as though he’s mocking me, but after a moment I realize he’s thinking.
“Umm…” He says, “Have you read The Invisibles?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“You might want to check that out, it’s really good. It’s like, something that really bombards you as a reader.” No eye-rolling or condescending tone. Raph is nothing like Comic Book Nerd from The Simpsons. I ask him what type of comics he likes.
“Well you really should check out Animal Man, I love that. I mean, it’s a superhero comic, but it’s super experimental and weird. Grant Morrison is totally one of those guys that really push the boundaries. I mean I like being bombarded as a reader, and Grant Morrison always does. I mean, as far as total ‘mindfuck’ goes, Grant Morrison takes the cake.” I don’t know anything about Grant Morrison, but I play along. I’m new to comics, I tell him, and that I’m reading things like Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.
“Yeah, that stuff’s good. But I like being bombarded. I mean, I like superhero stuff, and that’s the bread and butter of the industry, but I can’t always eat bread and butter.”
“True,” I say, “but I like literary comics. I read a lot of adaptations, like a comic of Kafka’s The Trial. Do you carry that kind of stuff?”
“You might want to try the independent section.”
I hold up the copy of Fahrenheit 451.
“Yeah,” he says, “that’s where you’ll find that stuff.” I thank him and walk around a bit, with several more books in my hand. I count five. In addition to my $30 copy of Fahrenheit 451, I have Animal Man and The Invisibles, and another two that Raph suggested: The Unwritten by Mike Carey and Peter Gross, and Walking Dead, a zombie comic. Animal Man is a “comic that tries to break down the barrier between the character and the reader. There’s a scene where the main character is in the desert and he suddenly sees the reader in a mirage.” Trippy shit. Cool.
Manga, graphic novels, figurines, apparel galore. I feel a sense of peace here, perhaps a tinge of nostalgia despite the chaos of colors and shapes inside. I turn up my nose at Midtown, wondering why so many people visit Times Square where advertisements meet. While Midtown induces anxiety, Midtown Comics is filled with natural light and is more like a quiet bookstore than a fan-boy comic-book shop out of a Kevin Smith movie.
I walk out of Midtown Comics having spent almost $90. My excuse is research for my senior thesis next semester, and that I really, really wanted to start a decent comic book collection. The staff was more than helpful; they love talking about comics, especially Raph. The people I met at Midtown Comics were like record store employees, minus the pretention. My bag is a little bit heavier, making the already frenzied bike ride back down to 12th street all the more difficult, but I’m so excited to get back to school. I want to show my friends my brand-new comic books.
