[...] Tom Spurgeon contemplates the migration of comics from print to Web. For further commentary on the subject, here’s Jennifer De Guzman and Johanna Draper Carlson. [...]

I got back into comics around 1994 after a 14-year absence, got a part time job in a shop 5-years later. Within 4 years I progressed to manager, then part-owner, and then (resulting from butting heads too often with my gaming-oriented majority owners) bought-out exile. Now, I make the majority of my purchases from an online discounter as my lifestyle is no longer conducive to the weekly Wednesday pilgramage.

I feel like Tony Soprano: “I came in at the end of something….”

I mean, yes, the economics mean that comic shops are not what they once were. And there were – and still are – some really great shops that carried everything from Batman to Optic Nerve to Hot Gimmick to XXXenophile (OK, not all at once) on organized shelves in well lit environs staffed by friendly and knowledgable staff of both sexes. But were there ever so many as to consitute an “Age”?

I mean, I have had some great shops, but they were book stores that kept a rack next to the SciFi, or game stores that used comics as a loss leader for Yu-Gi-Oh cards, or vanity shops that had Diamond accounts to buy toys at wholesale for the owner’s personal collection. I have patronized a few of the apochryphal “If we don’t have it, it doesn’t exist” comics super stores. (And not all of them were plesant, either.) But they have always been the exception, never the rule. And from the way other people talk, even having a crummy little shop was something to aspire to in many parts of the country, even during the 90′s “boom”.

So does anyone else remember a time when comic shops were plentiful, the shelves were lined with product as high as a Sentinel’s eye, and anyone would gladly sell it all for a nickel? Or is it just me?