THE GREAT ESCAPE
For every longtime comicbook reader, there may be no more cherished memories -- aside from the comicbooks themselves -- than those of the store where you regularly bought your books when you were young. Especially if, like me, you’re a proudly disaffected, disenfranchised and generally disinterested member of Gen X. We were the generation of young readers that came of age during the rise of the Direct Market, the first generation of young readers to transition from the convenience store/newsstand/spinner racks to the dedicated comicbook retailer store -- now known colloquially as your LCS -- because they came into existence at that moment. Now, look, I’m just gonna assume that most of you reading this newsletter have at least a cursory awareness of what the Direct Market is, its history and what it means to our industry. If you don’t… then do yourself a favor and Google it.
I honestly can’t think of a better name for a comicbook store than my store -- the store I grew up loyally shopping at for all of my teenage years -- The Great Escape. Because, let’s be honest, it was my great escape. From life. From school. From the ever-percolating nuclear fear of the early 1980’s. From everything (hell, I could use an escape right about now…!).
Originally located at 1925 Broadway in downtown Nashville, it opened as a used record store in 1977 but very quickly “expanded” its scope to become the premier Direct Market and back issue retailer in the city.
An aside: to be fair, the Great Escape wasn’t the first Direct Market store I ever shopped at. That honor goes to Walt’s Paperback Books, once located on Franklin Road in the Melrose area of south Nashville. Owned by the late Walt Groom from 1975 to 1995, it was the first place I ever saw bagged “wall books” and back issue bins.
Anyway… one of the first back issues I remember getting at the Great Escape was NEW TEEN TITANS #4 (“Against All Friends!” by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez. A bona fide classic.), which I cherished from the moment by Dad was momentarily tolerant enough to buy for me. For the next five years… my life seemed to consist of a constant negotiation with one or both parents to drive me from the suburbs into the city to hit the Great Escape. I must’ve succeeded a fair amount of the time, because my ever-growing comicbook habit remained fed on a continual basis.
Until I hit the ripe old age of sixteen and got my driver’s license. Then, to evoke a reference of that era… it was on like Donkey Kong!
Of course, the moment I procured my license, the Great Escape was the very first place I drove to, solo. And I continued to drive myself there every goddamn week without fail until I moved away to Memphis two and a half years later. I even managed to successfully skip out on my sixth period class each and every Friday of my junior year in high school to make it down early for my weekly pilgrimage. It became absolutely ritualistic for me.
The Great Escape was the first place I ever saw “25-cent boxes” -- rows of long boxes stuffed with what I assumed were used comicbooks that were priced across the board at, you guessed it, twenty-five cents apiece. Many a long afternoon was spent picking through those boxes, looking for forgotten gems and oftentimes finding them.
Some of the first small press comicbooks I created with my friends (including future STUMPTOWN co-creator, Matthew Southworth, and Devil’s Cape author, Rob Rogers) were sold -- on consignment, of course -- at the Great Escape. Any seminal comicbook you can possibly think of that was published in the 1980’s -- itself one of the most seminal decades in the medium’s history -- I bought at the Great Escape. Quite honestly, its importance in my life cannot be measured.
One of the last times I can clearly remember being in that Broadway location, during a visit back east, I received a call from Marvel editor, Tom Brevoort, about getting the official greenlight for the 2005 mini-series, IRON MAN: THE INEVITABLE. The delightful irony of getting that particular phone call -- while I was actually inside the store where I had cultivated my love and, quite frankly, my determination to become a professional comicbook writer -- was not lost on me.
In 2010, almost two decades after I’d put down permanent roots in Los Angeles, the Broadway location closed down and the then-recently acquired location on Charlotte Avenue became the main store. It’s still a fantastic LCS that I try to visit whenever I’m in town, but it’s just not my Great Escape. I mean, there’s nothing quite like the original, is there…?
The pure sense memories of that Broadway store still exist somewhere deep inside my soul. And I suspect they always will. Without getting too inappropriately sentimental, I really cherish those memories. They can be extremely powerful and transporting, often at times where I really need to go there. Thankfully, I imagine they always will be.
Joe Casey
USA