• magine.ifyou will, a snotty
little kid standing in front of the
corner store counter, rolled up
comic book in one hand and
greasy quarter in the palm of the
other.
Or how about a surly teenager
draped like a coat over a study hall
chair, engrossed in a beaten-up
sd fi paperback?
They are both classic scenarios
in American culture, representing
our fascination as youths for fan
tasy and myth. Indeed, the images
are easy to pull from most of our
memories, because the majority
of us were there at one time.
But move on a step, through
high school and college, and the
images begin to get foggy.
Somewhere along the line, we are
left on the borders of the plains of
reality, and conceptions of the
mind change. Life becomes seri
ous Dusiness; the comics are
handed down to siblings and the
sd fi books are turned in for ma
ture fiction.
After all, no one wants to be a
snotty or surly adult.
All that is changing, though.
Children no longer have the
corner on the fantasy market. Sd
ence fiction stores are springing
up .like proverbial mushrooms,
and are doing well. And they are
gearing themselves increasingly
toward the older reader.
T
« he Fantasy Shop, at
667 E. 13th Street, is a prime ex
ample. When the comic book
store opened in 1974, says owner
Darrell Grimes, patrons were
mostly younger. Now, he says, at
least 40 percent of his dientele
are collectors. At least half of his
customers are over 21.
“When most people were in
junior high and high school, there
was heavy pressure from parents
and peers that comics were for
kids,” he says. “And if you read
comics you were considered
weak and pansy. People couldn’t
relate anything serious to fun
nies.”
Things started to change in the
sixties with the rise of Marvel com
ics characters such as Spider
man.
“They left the characters with
the personalities they had before
they got their powers,” Grimes
says. “They also put more realism
in the thing. In one Spiderman, for
instance, he was shooting his web
to another building and nothing
happened — he had run out of the
stuff.
“Marvel still had the kids, but
they had sophistication.”
Marvel certainly knew what it
was doing. Begun in 1961 with
Stan Lee at the fore, it overtook
D C. for the leadership in the
comic book world by 1965. Now,
Marvel sells three times as many
comics as its nearest competitor.
Grimes says his biggest seller is
Howard the Duck, a relative new
comer to the field. Howard sells
about 100 a month, edging out
Spiderman and the Fantastic
Four.
For comparative purposes,
Superman, the former champ,
sells about 20.
Grimes hedges on judging
whether comics are better or
worse than ten years ago.
“Today, kids think that the new
comics are better than the old
ones. It’s their time. It all depends
on what your time is.”
ichae! Coan doesn’t
think that age makes any differ
ence when it comes to appreciat
ing science fiction.
“I think it’s your mental space,’’
he says. “It depends a lot on how
open-minded you are.’’
Coan has been running
Gandalf’s Den in the Atrium Build
ing for about a year and a half. The
store handles science fiction, fan
tasy, classic mysteries, and vari
ous related paraphenalia —
T-shirts, jewelry, games.
“We opened to fill a gap that
was here," he says. “There were
no science fiction stores. So peo
ple would end up going into a
store, and they’d tell you some
thing was good, and it'd turn out to
be garbage."
The store, he says, was de
signed for the hard cores, the
people who have been into sci
ence fiction and needed a place
for good books and good advice.
The response has been so good
that Coan is thinking of expanding
later in the year.
Coan feels secure about the
store’s future because he doesn’t
think it needs sci fi fads to survive.
Star Wars and Close Encounters
of the Third Kind, he says, have
not changed trends as much as
one would think, other than to give
it increased respectability. Par
ents, he says, are no longer as
reluctant to buy their children sci
ence fiction.
The biggest effect the two
movies have had, outside of
paraphenalia related directly to
them, has been in the area of
games and toys. TSR has put out
several games that have broken
many of the conventions of games
heretofore popular.
The new games, such as
Dungeons and Dragons, center
not so much on winning as on
players assuming the roles of var
ious characters in the game. The
situations and characters can
change continually, and the game
can run as long as the players like.
Still, 80 percent of Coan’s sales
are from books. Sci fi sells more
than fantasy, Coan says, but adds
that true light fantasy — Lord of
the Rings, Watership Down — is
not as plentiful. He also sells
sword and sorcery literature,
which he says is much more tech
nical.
Coan says that the biggest
charge he gets out of the store is
“dealing with people.” He admits
that he loves to talk, and a half
hour in the store bears it out — a
one sentence question is greeted
with a 10-minute answer.
The worst part of it?
“When some ass comes in and
says, ‘oh, a comic book store’ or ‘a
science fiction store.’ I suppose
people have to deal with it some
how.”
?
eralandra’s, 790 E.
11th Street, is the youngest of the .
three, opening last September. It
also has the distinction of selling
both science fiction and
metaphysical literature.
Unlike Coan, who finds it “too
dry,” owner Marva Van Natta likes
“hard core" science fiction —that
which deals extensively with
technology of the future.
“I don’t like living right now and I
look in the past and don’t like that
either, so I like the future,” she
says.
She pauses, then adds, “Al
though if I were bom 2000 years
from now, I would probably still
bitch."
Van Natta, who has a degree in
English, has tead science fiction
most of her life. The metaphysical
literature, on the other hand, is a
more recent addition to her read
ing lists. She sees a relationship
between the two, pointing out that
science fiction often manifests
powers discussed in occult books.
Furthermore, science fiction has
the potential of becoming cultish,
such as have Stranger in a
Strange Land, Dune, and Lord of
the Rings.
However, Van Natta will not call
science fiction a religion.
“There's too many different
opinions,” she says.
Different opinions? It may pre
vent science fiction from becom
ing religion, a total indulgence in a
fantasy world. But it also gives
science fiction its appeal. One can
pick and choose how one wishes
to push back reality for a few
hours.
Most people who scorn science
fiction do not despise the litera
ture, but the freedom which it im
plies.
Why should anyone have the
right to avoid the realities which
we must all face?
Perhaps the answer lies back
there somewhere with the snotty
kid and the surly teenager. That’s
where the whole thing started.
By Eric Maloney
Photos by Erich Boekelheide
Michael Coan, owner of Gandalfs Den, got into the fantasy business a
year and a half ago. And it’s beginning to be profitable, as Coan looks
to expanding his store later this year.
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