I’d like to welcome everyone to an exciting new feature here at Unleash The Fanboy: MY LOCAL COMIC SHOP. Every week we’ll place some much needed recognition on these venerated halls of the geek community, talking with the colorful cast of characters behind the counter, and discovering the unique history of “fandom” in YOUR city. Notice how I emphasized that last bit?

This about YOUR comic shops. YOUR comic guy. YOUR community.

We won’t stop covering YOUR shops until YOU’VE stopped chiming in. This series is YOURS. You guys love we few writers here at UTF for our no-nonsense, “smack you in the mouth” opinionated articles, but now it’s time for you to share your opinions. Does your town have the greatest comic shop in the world? Why? Tell us who, and we’ll feature them next. Who deserves a bit of recognition for bringing you the geeky goods every Wendesday, rain or shine, in sickness and in health, till… something or other?

Our first edition of MY LOCAL COMIC SHOP features a Columbia, Missouri classic: Rock Bottom Comics. Nestled in the heart of downtown, only a few blocks away from the the University of Missouri campus, Rock Bottom has been delivering piping hot comic books for 40 years (that means it started in the height of the Bronze Age, for you youngsters). For those four decades owner Glen Brewer has fed Mid-Missouri’s hunger for DC, Marvel, and every Indie title imaginable. Although they carry a few packs of Magic The Gathering (right behind the counter, if you’re looking), Glen’s never veered too far from their core mission: comic books. Lots and lots of comics.

Now, when you walk through the front doors of Rock Bottom, you’ll probably notice a friendly gentleman standing behind the counter, but if he’s not there, he’s probably filtering through the latest shipment from the Big 2 (or around the corner, at the local BBQ joint, chowing down on some pulled pork nachos). This dude’s James Cagle, and he’s been a fixture at the shop since 1979, when he first moseyed into the store as a customer. After spending a few years, and a few pockets-full of hard earned cash, on the other side of the cash register, he officially signed onto the staff of Rock Bottom in 1987, and he’s since become manager of the Columbia staple.

After a bit of begging, pleading, and a few well timed tears by yours truly, James graciously sat down for an interview with us. He was joined by a shop regular who requested that we not reveal his name (although I’ll label him as “Anonymous” below) and even Glen chimed in a time or two.

Have comic books always been a love of yours?

JAMES: Oh, yes, yes. Good friend of the family, when I was a little boy, he had a collection of the Avengers and the Avengers family of books. If I made it through the week without getting in trouble or doing my chores, he would bring me a stack of back issues. He had full runs from Silver to Bronze and I just holed in my room and read 30 issues of the Avengers.

That’s amazing. Do you still have any of those?

JAMES: No, they weren’t mine. Those were his. He introduced me to the store. The day we came in the store for the first time was the day the store had closed to move to the new location. This is our seventh location. We are maybe a mile from the original location. We’ve never been outside of downtown.

Do you know, has there been any other comic book shops around here during the time or have you guys been the mainstay for that 40-year period?

JAMES: There have been other stores. They have come and gone.

Any juicy feuds?

There was one particular store called Danger Room and they didn’t like us.

It’s not like a customer scorned, that vendetta?

JAMES: Yes, yes, it’s not. The thing is because the guy that started the store moved to Columbia. I don’t know why he had this attitude, and I heard several customers say this, he would say to somebody, “Oh, you’re one of them aren’t you?” in reference to Rock Bottom employees, customers, but yes, we were one of them. It was pretty nasty. That was back in the ‘90s.

That was your first great comic shop war?

JAMES: Yes, and we just ignored it. Because when you got … they were doing our work for us. They were chasing people back to us. They weren’t creating any kind of community. They were just creating hostility and people don’t want that.

How do you guys feel about the newer shops in town? I think there’s one that focuses on Warhammer and Magic Tournaments off the block. Valhalla maybe.

JAMES: Oh, Valhalla’s, we have a great relationship with Valhalla’s. They don’t do any comics. They did for a while out when they were out in the Green Meadows area. They did some out there. We don’t compete. We have some Magic, but they do what they do. We do what we do. Our customers travel back and forth. We have an almost sister store relationship with them even though there is no actual connection between us.

How about in the Missouri area? Do you stay in touch with any other comic stores or have any relationship with them?

JAMES: We have in the past, but so many of the people that we knew who’s been around for so long, they have sold the stores. Some of them passed. It just it never … it just fizzled out. The ‘90s really changed everything.

In what way?

JAMES: It was much more of a business in the acquiring of product and making of money, the and so it got very kind of closed off. People stopped really working together and it became kind of every man for himself. The speculation boom was a lot of that. When that bubble burst, the stores that survived, well, they either survived because they did what they did or they survived because they got lucky.

Which was it for you?

JAMES: We’re pretty good at what we do.

Yes, I’d have to agree.

JAMES: One of Glenn’s real gifts is knowing when to get into something new. Anybody can do that. But he also knows when to fold, when to just walk out. This thing makes a whole lot of money for a period of time. It’s dying. He can see the writing on the wall. Cut your losses.

Any particular anecdote from the 90’s regarding that?

JAMES: Yes. When X-Men #1 came out, and mind you, this right here in River City, we had 600 copies of X-Men #1 because there was the five covers, but after a while, we stopped chasing “There’s 15 covers on here! We got to have all 15 of them” Then we just started tracking which cover had the artist that would have the broadest appeal or the most immediate appeal. ANONYMOUS: Whenever people got into selling comics, if that wasn’t their business, they looked and said look, comics make money. These guys would sell to people who love comics. JAMES: There were stores that opened specifically to be a comics store. There was game stores that got into comic books. There were mom and pop ball card stores that got into the sideline of comics and they were a lot of what went in the boom.

How do you describe your customers? Without offending anybody.

ANONYMOUS: Eccletic. JAMES: There you go, eclectic. I was going to go with the basic 18 to 30. 60% male, 40% female.

Are you seeing a rise in female?

JAMES: Yes. One of the interesting things that I’ve seen is, and anybody that’s been in a comics store has seen the girl that gets dragged into the store because her boyfriend’s into this thing or her husband. What I’m seeing now is I’m seeing girls dragging their boyfriends into the store and the guy’s just like I hate this. (Laughs) That certainly is new.

Has the success of a series like My Little Pony changed your clientele at all? Do you see guys that usually wouldn’t read comic books that are usually into animation come into the store?

JAMES: We have an odd … it’s odd for us because there’s so much turnover. So much of our population is not our population.

Transient college kids?

JAMES: It’s hard to tell who’s actually new or who’s been here for a year and then just on that … that sort of thing and just discovered this thing, people come and go, it’ll happen three times this week. It makes it difficult to figure out who’s new coming in and who just job transferred, college transferred into Columbia.

What would be your favorite comic book movie then from the new generation, let’s say Blade and above?

JAMES: I was going to say because when you said my favorite comic book movie, my favorite comic book movie is Road to Perdition. (Laughs)

And favorite superhero movie?

JAMES: Iron Man.

How do you feel about the way the character’s kinda Robert Downey Jr.-ized?

JAMES: The whole basis behind the character was there’s a lot of him problems, a lot of just him being what he wanted to bring to the character, and a lot of people now, a lot of fans think oh, this is who Iron Man is and you see that the comic book character has changed into it a bit. ANONYMOUS: In any conversation that comes up often happens is what was the first comic that you opened up with this character that you liked? Since so many different people write these characters over 40 years that everyone has to put a little something on it. It’s like putting different jazz spins on one melody. We recognize the melody because if we go too far from the melody, we say that’s not interesting anymore, and we do that with comics. If we don’t stick to the core, it becomes too far away.

What do you think of marketing tie-ins between the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the comic books?

JAMES: That is the norm. That is the standard. I don’t even notice it anymore.

No fanboy gripes to be made?

JAMES: At one time, I had a boatload of petty fan boy gripes, but not anymore ANONYMOUS: It’s very much like there’s no cheering in the press box, that we were young and we were looking for a team, you were caught with that team, you live and die with it, and there are points where you get a job as professional, you’re rooting for better scoring, but then you can’t be surprised when things move forward because they do. James is just not the fan boy he was. It’s his job. It’s professional. You can’t be shocked if someone is going to try something outlandish to make a crazy amount of money.

Anything you can say about the New 52 versus Marvel NOW!?

ANONYMOUS: I think it’s a really interesting thing that they swung for the defenses and I think to me the more interesting thing is that while people are talking about how their sales were going up, Marvel sales was going up, too. It became good for the industry. Any time it seems that you have two people that have to take into account what the one is doing, that competition, you’re going to get something good. No matter what that quality is, the thing is, if 100 people come in, they got a 100 different tastes. There’s 100 things that make them smile. To offer that makes sense. If you’re deep … remember, people who are hardcore DC fans who don’t like Marvel, it’s legitimate why they don’t like them. It’s not just a weird thing. The Marvel people, they’re very different comics, the difference between the gods and the flawed people on both sides. It’s nice that there’s something for everybody. That really is the bottom line on that.

You’re a big fan of indie books. Do the customers buy that much indie?

JAMES: In the same way that if it’s a really good TV show, you don’t care what network it’s on. I wouldn’t go watch … ANONYMOUS: That might not be true in many other places, but here you come in and we talk, and you find out stuff. You don’t have to rely on the label for quality. You can rely on human beings, the interaction because they know you well enough. They’ll say, “Oh, you like such and such, you’re not going to like this, but I know you like so here, read this.”

Any favorite among the indie?

JAMES: East of West. ANONYMOUS: Manhattan Projects.

How about Jupiter’s Legacy? There was a lot of hype to that. Did it sell well for you guys?

GLEN: We’ll see how the second issue sells. We’re willing to try and sometimes second issue really outsells the first issue as far as how fast it sells off of the wall, but sometimes you have 94% drops (laughs) between issue 1 and 2.

You guys just had Free Comic Book Day. How’d that go?

JAMES: It went fantastic. It was amazing. ANONYMOUS: 30 man-hours of volunteers that came to help. There were more than 422 people who came through the doors. We just let a few people in at a time so if they get in, everyone was very, very happy. We had peoples working the crowd and they just talked all things, just it’s a celebration narrative. It’s all of these things, it’s the stuff made at the movies, it’s the art, it’s the most wonderful day of the year and it was a good celebration. JAMES: It was our biggest one. I’m going to try and sleep for the next week. We walk, any of us walk into a comic store, even a store we’ve never been into before, we can get our bearings really quick. There were people yesterday that just didn’t even know that we were organized alphabetically. Is it by company? Is it company or … No, it’s alphabetical. If you don’t tell people that, they’ll just wander around and they’ll be like yes, this is too much work and so …

What’s the craziest story from the event?