If you’re ever in the Newport News area and need to keep up with your weekly comics, look no further than Amazing Fantasy Comics. Open since 1992, both of Amazing Fantasy Comics’ locations (located in Newport News and Yorktown, the latter of which opened in 2000) are great places to stop by for your weekly fix, and after a while you just might start showing up even more frequently. Follow the jump to find out more.
One of the best things about AF Comics is their availability of recent issues. Unlike some stores, who throw newer issues in the back issue section after only two months, Amazing Fantasy keeps their relatively recent singles behind the most recent in reverse-chronological order. This approach leaves the semi-recent issues available without causing clutter, and makes it easy for people to get into an ongoing series without digging through boxes of back issues. Indeed, if it weren’t for this I probably wouldn’t have gotten into Blackest Night (don’t ask me why I wasn’t reading it, I really don’t know). Once I got some sense into me and picked up the issues I had missed, I only had to flick back through the stack a little bit. Within a couple of minutes I had all the past three/four months worth of Green Lantern, Blackest Night, and Green Lantern Corps.
On the topic of back issues, Amazing Fantasy has a great selection of older comics and variants. The cardboard cabinets are arranged first by company and then alphabetically, making it rather simple to find what you are looking for. If you’re looking for an issue that you’re sure sold out everywhere due to being popular, flick through Amazing Fantasy’s back issue section and you may find things you’re sure you would never find (I salivated a bit when I found Sandman #50). Another one of their practices that I very much enjoy is how they collect miniseries in a single bag and offer them as a whole with a discount. I already have Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers in paperback, but when they had all the individual issues available at a discount I had to quickly duck out of the store before I spent more of my college student budget on something I already owned.
The one thing I have to dock a few points for is AF’s trade section. It’s not that the selection is terrible, it’s just not great. Most of what you find in their trade rack could also be found in a Borders or a Barnes and Noble, and while there are a few rarer goodies on the shelf you could find much more at a couple of local competitors. However, when you can find most of the issues that make up the trade you are looking for in the back issue section for about the same price, this isn’t too bad of a thing (unless you are a trade lover, of course).
Amazing Fantasy also has a good selection of other miscellaneous products, from action figures to trading cards/card games. The statues are kept in a glass display under the counter, while actual figures are on the walls in the back issue section. Normally I’m not to big on such things, but that Tim Sale designed Scarecrow keeps staring at me while I dig through the back issues, and it’s getting hard to resist. If you’re into card games, they appear to have a good selection of single cards as well as booster packs (though I’m not the best authority on this, since it has been a long time since I played), as well as a weekly Magic: The Gathering night.
In terms of service, you will find few places that compare to AF Comics. The employees make a great effort to get to know their customers, and are more than willing to converse about the current events in the comic industry. It might just be a small gesture, but I love how if you have a pull list with them then they will supply you with bags and boards for every single issue you buy from them, not just those on your pull. Speaking of pull lists, if you pick up your weekly comics every Wednesday of the month, you get 10% off anything you might purchase the last Wednesday of that month. Unfortunately Wednesdays have become my busiest day for classes, but hopefully I can take advantage of this again next semester.
All in all, Amazing Fantasy Comics deserves a good, thorough perusal. You’ll be amazed with what you find, and even more with how much you end up buying when you have one of the world’s cutest dogs staring at you while you make your purchase. I would say this is an evil sales tactic, but the dog is simply too adorable to say anything negative about. Give them a look if you’re in the area, and I’m sure they will become a regular stop whenever you are in town.
Special thanks to owner Gary Driver and his wife Sandy Driver for answering a few of my questions.
