A Very Specialized Comic Book

I've been frequenting One Stop Comics in Oak Park, Illinois since 1988. My main comic book guy from 1974 to 2002 was Chicago legend Joe Sarno, but Joe didn't carry every title I was interested in. For example, I would buy Prime Cuts (the Fantagraphics black and white anthology magazine) at One Stop.

Two years ago One Stop opened a satellite shop just one block away from my home in Chicago (while retaining the anchor store in Oak Park). I visit the One Stop in my neighborhood every couple of weeks and say hi to the guys.

A few months ago I saw a copy of an Oak Park newspaper lying on a table. I've written previously about my fondness for newspapers and I couldn't resist paging through that issue just to see what that newspaper looked like. I wasn't expecting to find anything of interest to me in the paper so imagine my surprise when I spotted an article about One Stop Comics!

"Spider-Man saves OP  comic store!" The article explains that a comic book store that ordered at least 575 copies of Spider-Man #666 could get 500 of them printed in a personalized edition with a photo of their comic shop on the cover! Of course this could project could tailspin into nothing more than an exercise in vanity since the only comic buyers who would see that comic were pre-existing customers who came into the store. But One Stop owner Rick Manzella worked the system well and managed to get this article into the newspaper and possibly thereby expand his customer base. Good for him!

You can see that newspaper article for yourself here and
you can see the website of One Stop Comics over here.