Wednesday’s Heroes
A small comic shop in northern Michigan that became a refuge for me long before I understood why. The red carpet, the shelves wrapping around the room, Dave’s bike outside the window, and the feeling of stepping into a place that made me feel less alone.
Wednesday’s Heroes
A small comic shop in northern Michigan that became a refuge for me long before I understood why. The red carpet, the shelves wrapping around the room, Dave’s bike outside the window, and the feeling of stepping into a place that made me feel less alone.
A frequent haunt of mine during high school was a small local comic store called Comics North. It was run by a man named Dave, who was usually behind the counter when I came in. According to the store’s long defunct Facebook page, Comics North had been around for nearly three decades.
The shop sat downtown near an old movie theater where Dave also worked during the pre-digital era.
My immersion in superhero comic books began after falling in love with Batman Begins, the first film in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy. My brother and I saw it at the theater near Comics North.
Not long afterward, we walked past the comic shop and saw mannequins dressed in superhero uniforms and a huge display for All Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder. The artwork was crisp, detailed, and hyper-realistic. Jim Lee instantly became my favorite comic book artist, especially with his portrayal of an ultra-masculine, herculean Batman leaping through the sky with his grapple gun and his young sidekick in red, yellow, and green at his side.
Frank Miller, the writer of All Star Batman, has long been a controversial figure, both for his politics and his interpretation of familiar characters. The series itself was widely criticized for portraying an unhinged Batman who cackled while proclaiming, “I’m the goddamn Batman,” racing through Gotham in a massive Batmobile and repeatedly putting Robin in situations no responsible adult should place a child in.
Still, I understood what Miller was trying to do. If Batman actually existed, someone who dressed like a giant bat every night and declared war on violent criminals would probably have to be at least a little insane.
Wednesdays quickly became my favorite day of the week because Wednesday was new comic book day.
That was when Comics North received its weekly shipment of titles from DC, Marvel, Image, Dark Horse, and other publishers. Dave eventually nicknamed me his “Wednesday guy” because I was so consistent about showing up around the same time every week.
If I saw his old bicycle with its rear pannier outside the shop, I knew Comics North was open.
I would arrive excited to get my hands on the latest issues of The Amazing Spider-Man, DC’s The Brave and the Bold, Marvel’s Civil War, and whatever other series had captured my attention that month.
The covers were bombastic and colorful. Superheroes flew through the air with enormous arms outstretched, buildings exploded behind them, and entire universes seemed to hang in the balance.
Entering Comics North felt like stepping onto a spaceship speeding through parallel worlds. These stories assured me that no matter how chaotic things became, the good guys and girls would eventually prevail.
Sometimes I would sleep with my favorite comics, including Wanted, Kick-Ass, and Criminal, spread around me on my bed, careful not to damage them while I slept.
Everything was meticulously bagged and boarded, as comic collectors call it, with each issue sealed in a plastic sleeve alongside a piece of cardboard to protect its condition. I stored them in long cardboard boxes with dividers arranged alphabetically.
Over the years I accumulated hundreds of comics and read many of them multiple times.
One advantage of being among the first people in the store every Wednesday was getting first dibs on variant covers, alternate editions featuring different artwork that sometimes became collectible.
Comics North is long gone now.
By the time the store burned down, I was no longer living in northern Michigan. Someone I knew from the area shared photographs of the fire online, and I eventually contacted Dave to find out what had happened.
He told me there had been a large blaze and that much of the store’s inventory had been destroyed by smoke damage. The business was insured, but he had decided not to reopen.
Dave had always seemed like an unusual fixture in town. He rode around on an old bicycle, worked at the local theater, ran a comic shop, and drew comics of his own. At the time, though, I did not think very deeply about any of that. To me, he was mostly the guy behind the counter who knew I would show up every Wednesday.
I still vividly remember the inside of Comics North.
The floor seemed to be covered in red carpet, and the place had the smell of an old library. Shelves along one side held comics from previous months, arranged alphabetically. The shelves wrapped around the room, while the new releases were displayed near the front.
In the middle of the store were collectibles and older issues, including comics from classic series like The Incredible Hulk. Graphic novels lined other shelves, and superhero mannequins stood near the windows.
Dave also penciled and inked his own locally made comics, although I was so consumed with Spider-Man, the New Avengers, Planet Hulk, and crossover events like Civil War and Infinite Crisis that I barely asked him about his own work.
I regret that a little now.
Not because I imagine Dave as some undiscovered genius or mentor I failed to appreciate, but because I was so absorbed in the enormous fictional universes created by Marvel and DC that I barely noticed someone in front of me trying to create something of his own.
Dave once told me that a significant portion of the store’s income actually came from tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons. Comics North was not simply a place to buy comics. It was a small gathering point for people interested in stories, games, art, fantasy, and imagination.
I do not read comics with the same intensity anymore, and that creates a strange sense of distance from the person I was then.
But I still think about Comics North.
Growing up in a small rural town, I sometimes felt conspicuous and out of place. During those years, American media was saturated with images of terrorism and war, and people with names or backgrounds like mine were frequently reduced to stereotypes.
The comic shop offered something completely different.
Inside Comics North, none of that mattered.
I could disappear into Gotham City, swing through Manhattan with Spider-Man, travel across galaxies, watch heroes fight impossible battles, and spend an afternoon thinking about fictional worlds instead of worrying about how the real one saw me.
That is why the title feels different to me now.
There was never just one hero.
There were the superheroes arriving every Wednesday in cardboard boxes. There was the little shop itself, giving me somewhere to go. There was Dave behind the counter, not as some larger-than-life figure, but as the familiar person who kept the place running. And there was a younger version of me who kept returning every week because he had found somewhere that made the world feel bigger.
I remember the red carpet.
The shelves wrapping around the room.
The new issues waiting near the front.
Dave’s bicycle outside.
At the time, I thought I was simply going there every Wednesday to buy comic books.
Looking back, I think I was also looking for a place where I could belong.
For a while, Comics North was that place.
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