Could comic stores, in
fact, be the “last bookstores”? That is the concept behind
a would-be documentary Eric Davies and I have fantasized
about making (and one we will never get around to making
because it would be so much work). Like it or not, traditional print is
all-but-dead. Mine is already a two-kindle family; our
newspapers are consumed on our laptops; and the print books
we do
buy (because for some things
books do remain the most efficient storage and retrieval
device) we buy online. And we are a family of nerds and
English professors. But the one book that will never become
extinct in paper form is the comic book in all its forms.
And the one bookstore we set foot in, as a family,
religiously every week, is the Laughing Ogre. So, Eric (a
kick-ass film editor, by the way) has launched us into a
comic documentary of these marvelous “last bookstores”
with an entry about his recent visit to Collect-o-rama
in Alexandria, Virgina. Look for more entries to follow,
and we hope others will join us in compiling this
documentary-comic tribute to this invaluable and bizarre
institution we all love so dearly.
