Wednesday’s Hero

Comics North was a refuge for me in a small northern Michigan town that did not always know what to do with someone who looked like me. On Wednesdays I would slip out on my lunch break, cross the street from the Kingston Theater, and step into a narrow shop that smelled like a worn library and felt like a spaceship.

Years later, after the store burned and I had moved across the world, I kept thinking about Dave on his vintage bike, the red carpets, the variant covers, and how that little comic shop made me feel less alone in a place that often treated people like me as a threat.