Marvel.com has a congratulatory post up for Lone Star Comics, the Dallas/Fort Worth area comic book chain that’s celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.
Wow, 30 years … seeing that makes me feel both homesick for Texas, as well as kind of old. Lone Star was the first comic shop I ever visited, way back at the end of fourth grade. I remember the date, May 5, because it was my brother’s birthday, and he had a load of birthday-card cash to spend on that rainy Saturday. Both my brother and I were huge comic fans, but we never knew (or even dreamed) that a place like Lone Star could exist. Before that, our comic-collecting lives had revolved around spinner racks at 7-Eleven, Mr. M and the local drug store. Back issues? What the heck were back issues?
Up until that point, if we missed an issue of our favorite comic (which I had a few months before — Uncanny X-Men #137), we were hosed. Pretty much you missed out and had to gleam from the next issue what had happened in the previous one. And I was really upset that I had never seen the double-sized Death of Phoenix issue after all the build-up from previous issues, so the fact that I could pull that issue out of a box at Lone Star — along with a lot of other Claremont/Byrne issues that I had missed — was golden.
I didn’t have much to spend on that first trip to Lone Star, certainly not enough for everything I wanted. My brother brought home quite a haul, though, as he bought up their stock of Avengers back issues, from issue 100 to the Korvac Saga. The only two comics I remember bringing home were Uncanny X-Men #137 and an issue of Captain Canuck … my first “independent” comic purchase.
That was our first, but definitley not our last, trip to Lone Star, and from there we discovered other comic shops in our area. But you never forget your first, do you?
Related: Lone Star’s press release on their anniversary
July 17th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
Man… I feel old, too. Lone Star was my “first” as well.
Remember that old store on the back-side of that ragged strip center? On the east side of Collins Street on Abrams? You had to know it was there to find it. But oh… what wonders it opened up for me…
I used to go to Lone Star on Sunday’s after church. Mom would give me my allowance ($3) and I’d run inside and buy comics (35 cents a piece at the time) and thumb through the ten cent boxes.
Those were great and wonderful Sunday afternoons spent reading the funny books.
Thirty years? Yeah… I guess that’s about right. What old bastard we are!
July 17th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
Yeah, that one on Abrams (across from Medical City, right?) was the first one I went to. There was some shop close by that my mom liked to go to, and she’d drop us off there while she went shopping.