The Back Pocket Funny pages: Comic Book Hinterlands, #6

By David Macpherson

 

What is the best format for comic strips?

 

The easy answer is in a newspaper in the funnies section. That is the one most will come up with.

 

But there used to be another place where you could read comic strips: mass market paperbacks. They were a big deal for several decades. They seemed to be a well made receptacle for all the jokes and adventures.

 

This is the story of a bookstore that sold nothing but these comic strip paperbacks. The owner goes into long monologues about each book that might be purchased. He talks about the best format and how things had to change because strips and paperbacks are not always in synch. 

 

A funny story about comic strips and the love of bookstores. This piece of fiction informs and tells a good story about one of those men with more dreams than sense. 

 

The Comic Book Hinterlands is the place where the oddness of comics is celebrated. 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Macpherson
• Release date: Apr 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201425845

Book preview

The First Part

There were still used bookstores. Yes. In 2004, there were still such places. They had not completely metamorphosed into smoke shops and nail salons. A small town might still have a place that sold old books. Not as many as the decades before, but you could still find them.

They were sad places. They were seeing the writing on the wall, not just in the pages of the volumes they were trying to sell.

I was in between vocations, doing temp work. Making enough that I didn’t have to move home. I haunted certain types of business that were on the way out. I went to bookstores, copy centers, CD music shops and video rental places. I was marking the time with these businesses. We were all becoming obsolete. Waiting for the next big thing to take over and thrive.

I was hanging around, after whatever work I had for the day, at a comic shop, looking at a small stack of paperback books that reprinted comic strips. There was a good amount of Charlie Brown and BC books represented.  I was not too interested, but I remembered loving these types of books when I was a kid. I went through the pile and found other comic strip reprints.

They were all fifty cents. I discovered some Andy Capp paperbacks and decided to pick them up. I didn’t like reading Andy Capp when I was a kid looking at the funny pages of the newspaper. His stuff was too grown up: drinking, playing darts, fighting with the missus. It never was funny to me. But now that I was what one might call an adult, I thought I would check them out and see if I was now allowed to laugh at the antics. Besides, two of them would cost me a whole dollar. I figured I could make that happen.

At the counter, Mark looked at what I laid before him. Comic strips?

I averted my eyes, I guess. It might be worth a laugh.

You know, we can’t keep these in stock. They fly out the door.

Andy Capp? Is there a big revival? Are all the pub goers getting nostalgic?

No, not him, Mark said laughing. Never liked that comic. Does anyone like that? I can’t figure why one strip is perennial and others are gone. Actually, no one is reading newspapers anymore, I am amazed that there are still people trying to get strips syndicated. No. We can’t keep them in stock because of MacKenzie. He scoops up all the comic strip paper backs we got. He might leave a few if he has multiples of it, but actually, he probably takes them even if he has five copies of it. You got them before he swooped in?

Who’s MacKenzie? I don’t think I know him.

You might have seen him around. Old guy with a big wild beard. Smells of quarter cigars. Mumbles to himself.

No. I don’t think so.

He has a thing for these paperbacks. These old mass market ones. He loves comic strip and comic books in this format. He will buy them all. He has cornered the market. Problem is, it’s a market that no one gives a shit about.

I looked down at my Andy Capps like I was being judged for picking them up. Well, you got to try a bunch a things, see what he likes.

MacKenzie knows he likes these things. He wants everyone else. Bends my ear to breaking about them. He started his own bookstore. Few towns over, I think. It sells nothing but these comic strip reprints. A whole store that sells nothing but shit like this. That’s crazy. Hey, that will be a dollar. Thanks.

The Second Part

A few weeks later, I saw a flier posted up in the front of a junk shop. It was for Back Pocket Funny Pages Book Place. The description let me realize that this was the guy Mark was talking about. The town was near where I lived, but it was a place that I never went to. There was never anything there to go to. It was a place you left from. You didn't make that your destination.

You go off the highway down a steep road and if you go too fast by five miles an hour, you will miss downtown. I hear there is a great pizza place there, but every forgotten place with a postal code boasts of great pizza.

The book shop was not really a shop at all. It was the front room of a house. It jutted out from the rest of the house, so that it might have always been meant to be a storefront, but it’s also possible that it was just part of the house.

There was no parking anywhere near the shop. I parked the car near the town hall and walked the two blocks back to it. I was filled with second thoughts. Do I really need another bookstore