Shops
The shops and distributors that decided what readers could actually find.
Part of Underground Comics
45 moments in this segment.
- - Inside Lambiek. Lambiek opened in Amsterdam in 1968 and was the first shop in Europe to sell comics as its whole trade rather than as a sideline.
- - Racks and customers. A second frame from the same newspaper assignment, showing how the stock was shelved for browsing.
- - Launch at the shop. Theo van den Boogaard presenting a Sjef van Oekel album, the strip he drew with Wim T. Schippers out of Dutch television's absurdist wing.
- - The shop figure returns. The advertising figure that stood on the pavement outside Lambiek, back in place after the police had impounded it for eight months.
- - Carol Kalish. Kalish ran Marvel's direct sales operation and pushed the company to supply specialist shops properly. She died in 1991.
- - Bud Plant. The distributor at his own table, still selling the material he had carried since the underground years.
- - Bud Plant's booth. Plant distributed underground comix from the late 1960s and became one of the routes by which that work reached shops after the head-shop network failed.
- - Dealer aisles. Long tables of boxed back issues, the retail machinery the direct market had built through the 1970s.
- - Trade floor. A crowded aisle of sellers, the commercial half of the convention that funded the rest.
- - Browsing the boxes. Buyers working along the tables, the bagged and boarded stock stacked upright for flicking through.
- - Among the tables. The room at working pace, dealers behind their stock and buyers in front of it.
- - Stock on display. Wall-hung key issues above the browsing boxes, priced for the collector trade.
- - An exhibitor's table. A single seller's pitch, stock arranged for reach across the table.
- - Room in full. A wide view down the length of the hall with the tables running to the far wall.
- - Schanes at the table. Steve Schanes seated at left; with his brother Bill he founded Pacific Comics, which sold through shops and paid royalties.
- - 1989 Comics Etc store Mira Mesa, San Diego CA footage. Inside Comics Etc in the Mira Mesa Mall, north San Diego, with racks, back-issue boxes and the counter staff who ran the shop under Carl Kramer.
- - 1990 Comics Etc comic shop San Diego footage shot by employee. An employee walks a camera through the Comics Etc store on Mira Mesa Boulevard, then occupying the rear of a Newberry department store, showing the fixtures and stock layout.
- - Profile: Jim Cavanaugh, owner of Clint's Comics. Clint's Comics in midtown Kansas City has been run by the Cavanaugh family since 1975, and the owner and his regulars describe how the shop has held on.
- - The Midwest in Panels (Comic Shop Documentary 2015). A documentary road trip through ten Midwestern comic shops, with owners and customers talking about stock, distribution, rent and the state of independent retail.
- - Reid and Imbach at the gallery. Larry Reid, who curates the Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery, with Martin Imbach, a part owner of the Georgetown premises.
- - The Copacetic Bill Boichel Shoot Interview. Bill Boichel gives a long career interview about running Copacetic Comics in Pittsburgh and, before it, the shop, distributor and publisher BEM. He covers decades of selling and championing comics from behind a counter.
- - Bill Boichel's Archives and Ephemera. Bill Boichel runs Copacetic Comics in Pittsburgh and ran the earlier BEM shop, and here he opens the archives and ephemera those decades of retailing accumulated.
- - Inside Drawn and Quarterly. The publisher's own bookshop in Mile End, Montreal, which stocks general literature alongside its comics list.
- - Diamond CEO Steve Geppi Q&A on comics distribution shakeup. Diamond Comic Distributors chief executive Steve Geppi answers live questions from retailers and industry commentators about the halt in comics distribution, how the supply chain reached that point, and what he expects for shipping and store orders afterwards.
- - Tour of Quimby's Bookstore for Chicago Zine Fest #CZF2020. Liz Mason walks the aisles of Quimby's Bookstore in Chicago with the shop closed to customers, pointing out the zine racks, small press comics and other sections, filmed as a stand-in for the store's usual presence at the city's zine fair.
- - A Behind-the-Scenes Tour of Quimby’s with Liz Mason. Quimby's manager Liz Mason walks the Chicago shop's shelves, showing how a store built around zines and small-press comics is actually stocked and organised.
- - Desert Island Comics - Charlie Adlard. Charlie Adlard, who drew The Walking Dead, names the five comics he would take to a desert island, and the picks are not the ones the interviewer expects.
- - Desert Island Comics - Eric Reynolds. Fantagraphics associate publisher Eric Reynolds picks five comics and a luxury item he would take to a desert island, talking through each choice and, along the way, his work acquiring and editing graphic novels for the house.
- - COMIC BOOK HAUL | Copacetic Comics | Graphic Novels | Indie | Love and Rockets | Peter Bagge. A run through a stack of books bought at Copacetic Comics in Pittsburgh, page by page, with Love and Rockets by the Hernandez brothers and work by Peter Bagge among the graphic novels pulled out.
- - HUGE COMIC BOOK HAUL | NYC & PA | Forbidden Planet | Midtown Comics | Desert Island | Kinokuniya. A haul from a run of shops across New York City and Pennsylvania, with books picked up at Desert Island in Brooklyn, Forbidden Planet, Midtown Comics, Kinokuniya and Comic Swap in State College.
- - panellogy 447 - austin english & domino books. Austin English runs Domino Books and draws in a smeared, redrawn line that Gary Panter has praised, and his book Meskin and Umezo is discussed here.
- - The Montreal shop front. Drawn and Quarterly's bookshop on rue Bernard, opened in 2007 and expanded with a second location nearby.
- - SF Zine Fest 2022: Thinking Captions at Silver Sprocket. A zine reading staged at the Silver Sprocket storefront in San Francisco, with Avy Jetter as guest of honour reading her work aloud alongside Ajuan Mance, Robert Liu-Trujillo and Malcolm Johnson.
- - Reid at a signing. The manager of the Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery in Georgetown, Seattle, during a book launch.
- - Desert Island, Brooklyn. The Williamsburg shop, opened in a former bakery, stocks minicomics and risograph editions alongside trade books.
- - Cosey at Papiers Gras. The Swiss author at the opening of the exhibition Panorama in the Geneva bookshop and gallery, on 29 February 2024.
- - Corman reading in Seattle. The author reads and signs at the Fantagraphics Bookstore, the kind of event the shop runs several times a month.
- - ARTIST TALK with Friends at SILVER SPROCKET COMIX SF. Part One. An artist talk at the Silver Sprocket shop in San Francisco with Ajuan Mance and Tyler Cohen, on a chapter contributed to the anthology Box of Bones.
- - ARTIST TALK with Friends at Silver Sprocket Comix SF. Part Two. Cartoonists Ajuan Mance and Tyler Cohen talk about their comics and their working processes at the Silver Sprocket shop in San Francisco, in the second part of a recorded artist talk.
- - More Fun Comix corner. A New Orleans shop whose name keeps the underground spelling of comix, photographed in May 2024.
- - TCAF 2024: Silver Sprocket Spotlight. Silver Sprocket editors Ari Yarwood and Carina Taylor talk with artists Kimberly Wang and Cam Marshall at Toronto Comic Arts Festival about how the press puts books together.
- - Fantagraphics' Seattle store. The publisher's retail frontage in Georgetown, Seattle, a space it shares with the Georgetown Records shop.
- - SANTOS SISTERS by Greg & Fake | Fantagraphics | Floating World Comics |. A read-through and review of Santos Sisters by Greg and Fake, published by Fantagraphics, describing the book's art and its play on older romance and superhero formats.
- - Omnibus, Hardcover, & Graphic Novel Collection 2025 Tour!!! The Comic Collected Editions Library!. A shelf-by-shelf walkthrough of a personal collected-editions library, running through omnibuses, Absolute editions, hardcovers, trade paperbacks, custom-bound volumes and graphic novels accumulated over decades, with the manga shelves held over.
- - ABC7: Queer Comic Festival Makes Debut. The Silver Sprocket crew go on morning television to introduce Pride In Panels, a queer comics festival making its first appearance.