The Comic Book Store Grows Up

Secret Headquarters looks more like the library in Gatsby’s mansion than your neighborhood comic book store: dark-wood shelves display a pristine, manageable collection, and leather chairs invite the visitor to consider before they purchase. This is light years from your stereotypical comic book store - the one with stained carpeting, labyrinthine rows, books on the floor, and a proprietor eating cold pizza hidden somewhere near the back.

“We like comics and we think they should be shown in a better light than they usually are,” explains David Ritchie, the store’s co-owner. He believes the high quality of the books he sells deserves such a setting. “The writing’s better than ever,” he says. “And more interesting.” He may be thinking of Alison Bechdel’s runaway bestseller Fun Home — a graphic memoir about a girl whose coming out inspires her father, long closeted, to come out too. Bechdel’s account is smart, moving, beautiful stuff — and, at times, incredibly raw. “Comics allow for people to be really honest,” Ritchie says, as opposed to other media, where creatives can feel stifled. Like television. “Whenever there’s advertising involved, it becomes difficult to be honest. In comics, the door’s wide open.”

That freedom may explain the current crop of super-real, uber-personal graphic novels, like Adrian Tomine’s Shortcomings, about a guy wrestling with his deep-seated negativity. Tomine is part of a group of comic book artists known as “alternative” — those who portray contemporary characters in realistic situations and leave the superhero stuff to mainstreamers. Ritchie calls the alternative scene “uncharted territory,” meaning these artists can invent their character’s worlds, making them as real and confessional as they want, while at the same time helping to define the emerging genre. Such is the case with the Peep Show series by Joe Matt. Explains Ritchie, “You’re reading it thinking, 'Can you believe he’s portraying himself like that? Is he really like that?'” Take, for example, a scene in which Matt’s hero imagines stalking and killing his ex-girlfriend. Later, he’s so starved for physical affection he tries to snuggle with his cat — and grows furious when it bolts. Equally honest and unglamorous are the stories that comprise Gabrielle Bell’s Lucky. We watch our heroine suffer through mind-numbing day jobs (like assembling trinkets), move into a leaky loft with seven roommates, walk across town when she can’t afford the subway, and lose a month’s worth of drawings at the airport. Bell’s work, with its wealth of detail and interest in the difficulties of city life, seems to have more in common with Dickens’ oeuvre than with mainstream comics. And like Oliver Twist, Bell’s victories are made more poignant by the struggles that precede them.

Many believe there is room for comics to be discussed in the classroom alongside literature. And reviewers of late have expressed that sentiment, too, as they’ve touted the work of Tomine, Bechdel, Daniel Clowes and others. Says Ritchie, “Sometimes some pretty interesting ideas pop up [in comics] that are worth discussion and when they do, it gets people thinking, it gets people talking, it gets the New York Times writing.”

These positive reviews bring people into the store — but nothing brings in more business than the popularity of comic-based television. “We have tons of people coming in here who maybe haven’t picked up a comic in thirty years, but loved a TV show, and now they’re loving the comic just as much,” says Ritchie. At the same time, Hollywood itself is turning to comics for source material. With mainstream comics, this is nothing new, as franchises like Superman and Spiderman can attest. But now, Hollywood is looking to comics for small, personal stories, like the one it found in Dan Clowes’ Ghost World. “We have so many writers and movie and TV people coming in here because that’s where new ideas are happening,” says Ritchie. “They’ve been happening for many, many years, but now people are sourcing out those ideas.”

Which makes now an exciting time for the medium. “It’s interesting to see what develops,” Ritchie says. “Comics… have always just done their own thing, and comic book shops were always that weird place at the back of the strip mall.” Which is why, today, Secret Headquarters makes sense. As a crop of artists breaks new ground in comics, perhaps the venues that sell them should be reinvented, too—until they’re as sharp and attractive as stores that sell art books. Which, of course, is what they are.

Secret Headquarters
3817 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90026


-Mandy Kahn