Journey through Comics Metropolis

Walking into Comics Metropolis for the first time, I instinctively turned left and found myself surrounded by merchandise that didn’t exactly look like the expected comic books. So for my second visit I tried to recreate my first trip through the store, beginning again with that same left turn, hoping to see why I chose that path over any other considering most people turn dominantly toward the right when faced with a decision such as this one.

 

In knowing my own habits, I prefer to shop quietly, without disturbing anyone who may work in the place. Looking to the right to see the front counter and the owners, I would naturally turn left, aka. the opposite direction, just to remain undisturbed. Mozying along the very front of the store, I see a progression of figurines in a pattern. Starting off with a shelved selection of mid-size Marvel figurines, the bright daylight streaming through the window highlights an assortment of miniature figurines on glass shelves attached to the windows. The small details were fascinating, but to get out of the blinding Saturday morning sun, I moved on.

More figurines hung on a wooden box, with the largest ones on top. The figurines don’t seem to be organized in any particular way, but are definitely grouped according to size and even what general group they might fit in with. Some Marvel super villains are grouped in columns right next to the same sect of superheroes. As I keep moving through I pass another window with more miniature figurines and come to a tall corner bookcase stocked with Ghostbusters drawing me towards it. The ghastly green coloration of the packaging brought me towards the corner where I was able to look to my right and see a clear path in front of infinitely more figurines.

 

The largest in its own multitude of  the collections was the Pop! brand of vinyl miniature figurines. From Disney to Star Wars it looked like a character figure existed for it somewhere in the pile. There seemed to be no rationale behind their placement, but “For what else is a collection but a disorder in which habit has accommodated itself to such an extent that it can appear as order” (Benjamin, 60). Though it looked originally very disorganized, it was obvious it worked in the way it does as part of the natural flow of the store. The purposeful placement of the display gave its internal mess some value from a visual standpoint.

 

Moving right along, I gave the corner shelves a quick peek, but ultimately my eyes kept moving. This time, there was a new object in the store, a Warhammer Black Library. This new shelf space was simply a display carton specifically for its own Warhammer books and would be tossed out as soon as those were gone. It is a common type of display in chain or large retailers, but to have it in Comics Metropolis almost confused me. So being confused, I did the only natural thing for a confused person to do and I turned around.

 

Circling the center island I find more and more figurines, from Batman to Transformers, to numerous DC collectibles. Rounding back around to reach the final corner of the first room, there are still more, Game of Thrones (a personal favorite), Justice League, and Star Wars, drawing my eyes ever upward to Gotham. It can be a bit dizzying, but the sheer number of figurines they manage to fit so neatly is astonishing considering most of the available space is up.

Moving into the next room, I turn left yet again, into a small space without shelves where two posters hang. The adjacent door to the porch won’t allow space for merchandise, but the posters are a nice touch, framed and hanging neatly on the wall. Moving past the porch door is a large glass case. At my height are plenty of Star Wars X-Wing products, which are very popular right now according to Laura Payne. Above my height is a multitude of mini figure kits. While the theme of the last room may have been collectibles, these collectibles are a step above as they add a hands on component.

 

The entire room is about being interactive with materials, circling around the room there are quite a few board games, covering at least one wall and part of another, plus they have a section dedicated to younger people and children. Along with the mini figure kits, there are individuals hanging around the center island already primed for painting. For convenience, there is also a station with the paints used specifically for this purpose, which I mentioned in my second post, Comics at Home.

 

While I could get lost in the stacks of board games and mini figure painting supplies, I somehow manage to peel myself away, through the first room and back to the main foyer. There sits a hallway and staircase through the middle of the house, and a small carousel of HEY!! Comics waiting to be perused. Turning the corner into the main room, on my left are still more of the Pop! vinyl figurines in various characters. Moving right along, there are comics galore.

 

On the leftmost wall are high end comics, moving down into the shelves they turn into a menagerie of dollar comics and two dollar comics. Keeping along the outside edge of the room, a new case brings graphic novels and manga, a nice window into the game room I spoke about more in Comics at Home. Another shelf houses even more graphic novels until I reach the doorway to the game room, where Star Wars X-Wing seems to be a frequent flier.

 

Rounding the corner brings two racks of new releases, a fireplace with another set of figurines on it, and still another rack of new releases. I’m starting to think this shop has everything when I see the bargain bins ahead of the front desk. They are entertainingly placed not more than 5 feet away from the display of the most expensive highly rated and limited edition comics in the shop. But turning back around to the center island is the main feature of the store.

 

Comics plain and simple. In visible sight are comics from 2000 to the present in alphabetical order starting in the back corner next to the window of the game room and circling the island counter-clockwise. In the drawers of the island are comics printed in 1999 or earlier, still organized in the same alphabetical order.

 

Overall, my passage through the store was marked by astonishing feats of shelf height with purposeful groupings. I noticed most people when they first walked in did in fact turn right, especially regular customers, whether they had something on hold or not. My way might not be the most common way to go, but in the end I don’t think it really matters because “The critical history of collecting is concerned with what… individuals choose to preserve, value, and exchange,” and it is all grouped in a way that makes sense for the space of Comics Metropolis (Clifford 221).

 

 

Images:

Floor Plan Hand Drawn by Sydney Smith

All Images Courtesy of Sydney Smith

Text:

Benjamin, Walter. Unpacking My Library: A Talk About Book Collecting. Schocken Books, 1931.

Clifford, James. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1988.

Comics at Home

Change is not always welcome, but Comics Metropolis is a small business that has truly embraced the inevitable. Since he was 12, Albert Payne has been collecting comic books. Growing up, he frequented comic markets and grew his selection, especially from his time spent in London. Payne’s love of comic books ever growing, he eventually decided to open an online store selling old comics. The online store was successful and he wanted to begin selling new comics there as well, but Diamond Distributer, the only merchant to buy new comics from, requires a brick and mortar store to sell them.
Comics Metropolis Sign
At that point living in the US, Payne started looking for a place to set up a shop and add new comics to his selection. In the little town of Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, this white house on the corner went on the market. Payne visited and told his mother Laura Asherman Payne, still living in London at the time, that the house had potential. It didn’t take much convincing on Payne’s part to bring his mother on board. She made her first large online purchase to secure the house and get one step closer to making Payne’s dream come true. However, there were plenty of renovations to be done to turn the old house into a comic shop. Besides shelving and displays, they also had to have air conditioning installed.

Despite all the changes to the interior of the building, the exterior remained virtually the same excepting one minor detail. Of course a business must advertise its presence where it stands, otherwise it may as well not be there. Comics Metropolis put up the sign on the front of the building approximately six months before the store opened to the public. It was done by Middle Creek Signs, a little bigger than the one by two feet the township said was acceptable, so Albert and Laura had to fight for the larger size. It reminds me of the Sunwise Turn and its owner, Madge Jenison, who fought about hanging a sign on her shop. She was told the traffic cop on the corner would arrest the man she hired if he hung the sign (Jenison 25). It was unknown whether she ended up winning the battle or not, but the Payne’s and Comics Metropolis were a different case.

Comics on display
Going to the township board, they used a business on 4th street, the Tawsty Flower Bed and Breakfast, to argue in favor of a larger sign for Comics Metropolis because the Tawsty Flower had a sign larger than one by two. It was an easy decision seeing how both Lewisburg businesses reside in an old, two-story, white house.

Jumping forward past the renovations, Comics Metropolis had its grand opening on Labor Day of 2016, the fifth day of September that year. Not long after opening, they found that not many people knew the store was there, regardless of the sign having been up for six months already. So Payne put a couple advertisements out on the radio to boost awareness and gain more potential customers. Later on, the store decided to dip its toe into a vast event called Free Comic Book Day, always hosted on the first Saturday in the month of May. They did this to promote the store, and as they were still young in the business, only offered a few comic books for free. It is a fairly well-known event in the comic book world, so coming back to Free Comic Book Day the next year, Payne decided to go all out and dive headfirst into all the promotion.

On Free Comic Book Day of May 2018, Comics Metropolis had its best day thus far in sales. The record still holds true as of today, the first of March in 2019. However, the store is looking forward to 2019’s Saturday, May the Fourth (be with you) for the next go around. The day is already being promoted by word of mouth, so it is possible this year might produce another great day of sales for the store.

Just a few Graphic Novels

However, Comics Metropolis does not only sell comics. Besides the large variety of comics, old and new, they have over a thousand graphic novels in stock, 150 tabletop games, and twenty paints, although they will soon expand that number to 150. This may sound like a lot of product for a store set in the first floor of an old home, and it is. The shelves are full and L. Payne spoke of their plans to have a custom shelf made for the entrance hallway so they can fit even more of the products their customers are asking for. Living upstairs, she is very proud of all the change and modifications the store has gone through, much like Roger Milton in the tale of his Parnassus on Wheels.

The Parnassus, his traveling bookstore, had an enticing selection, because if “he released a hook somewhere, and raised the whole side of his wagon like a flap. … displaying nothing but books–rows and rows of them. … Shelves stood above shelves, all of them full of books” (Morley 5). The shelves full of graphic novels stand the same way in Comics Metropolis, towering up high and stuffed with such a variety. It is wonderfully pleasing to the eye, as it all wraps up to feel like a home. Aside from just selling books, Roger Mifflin also lived in his Parnassus, which lends to the homey similarity I see between the two with so much passion put into what they sell.

Laura Payne mentioned that customers will come in to ask if they have something fairly often. Another part of the homey experience one might have at Comics Metropolis is the fact that everyone is made to feel welcome and included. Even though the median customer age is 35, so many customers have come in wondering about children’s games that now they have a sizable shelf dedicated to Haba games. The Payne’s really try to expand wherever they see a need their customers have, which sums up all of the changes they have planned for the near future.

Due to the large demand for tabletop games, Comics Metropolis not only stocks

Susquehanna Valley Squadron at play

the very popular Magic the Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons, Star Wars, and Gurps, but they stock the lesser-known as well, not to mention all the figurines plus the soon to be expanding selection of paint. With many of their customers

turning away from their phones to play their favorites of these games, the back rear of the store hosts a separate room with a large table and vending machine solely for the purpose of customers dedicating their time to playing. And the room gets plenty of use.

Each Saturday morning, not long after the store opens, a group of people known as the Susquehanna Valley Squadron will file into the back room to play their choice of tabletop games with each other. This week it was Star Wars X-Wing, and they had two mats set up for gameplay. Members of the Squadron were just as welcoming to us as the Payne’s were and were glad to give us a brief synopsis of how the game is played, the very short version comparing it to Battleship.

Overall the atmosphere of Comics Metropolis couldn’t get any closer to a feeling of home and welcome. There have been plenty of changes with plenty more to come, but everyone who walks into the store is treated like family, and I couldn’t imagine a nicer place to peruse and spend time in.

Photos:
“Susquehanna Valley Squadron at play” courtesy of Chris Naiman
“Comics on display” courtesy of Chris Naiman
All other photos courtesy of Sydney Smith
Texts:
Jenison, Madge. Sunwise Turn: A Human Comedy of Bookselling. London; Printed in U.S.A., 1924.
Morley, Christopher Darlington. Parnassus on Wheels. Avon, 1983.