New Neighborhood Comics Clubhouse stocks affordable books and collectibles

Back in middle and high school, my best friend Zach and I would ride our bikes to the local comic books shop, usually two or three times a week. I collected Spider-Man heavily, but my favorite was always The New Warriors, a supergroup lead by a vigilante named Night Thrasher, who dressed in all black and road a skateboard.

As the years went on, I picked up every issue of The New Warriors, having the shop pull new releases for me so that I wouldn’t miss a single one. I collected the entire run, 1 through 75, and I still have them all today.

Unfortunately, when issue #23 was released, it was printed poorly, so every copy that my local store had was off-center, cut funny, and generally imperfect. It grated on me then and has ever since, instigating a lifelong search to find a perfect copy of a book that few likely had much interest in.

So when I stopped into the new Neighborhood Comics Clubhouse at 1116 E. Montgomery Crossroad in the days leading up to their soft opening on October 1, the first thing I asked owner Lee Heidel was if they happened to have a copy.

Amazingly, they did. And it wasn’t messed up.

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Getting books in the right hands

“With this location the idea is really to have an opportunity to get more affordable books and collectibles into people's hands,” Heidel explained of the new space, a sister store to his main spot on Bull Street, just south of Forsyth Park. “When we buy collections, oftentimes we’re buying thousands of books at a time. And out of a thousand books, five maybe are what we’d consider to be super valuable books.”

“But there’s still tons of amazing stories and art that we simply don’t have room for in the [Bull Street] store,” he went on to say. “We try to have around 10,000 back issues at the store at any one time in our back issues area. And this allows to more than double that amount of space for back issues.”

These days I’m not quite as obsessed with comics as I was in my youth when I’d make multiple trips per week to my local shop and spend whole summers reading book after book. But as someone who grew up with the art and storytelling form as a major part of my young life, I do still enjoy popping into these places whenever I get the chance. And of all of the places I’ve visited, Neighborhood Comics is truly special.

“There’s a concept that I feel is fairly unique to bookstores, and it’s the concept of handselling.” Heidel told me. “It’s the idea that…the staff member listens, takes the time to find the thing, and then puts the thing in the customers hand.

“Putting it in your hand, it almost never makes it back on the shelf, because then you’ve made this personal connection as a customer in the store and the clerk that you’re working with,” he added.

I experienced this very thing at his flagship location recently, when I stopped in with the idea of picking up a new graphic novel. I didn’t have anything specific in mind, which had me feeling a bit nervous: Gatekeeping amongst nerd culture is a real thing, and I had images of some Simpsons-like Comic Book Guy shaming me for not knowing anything about anything.

Instead, however, I was treated to a friendly clerk and a wonderful recommendation, and, as Heidel intimated, I walked out with a new book that I was excited about.

“[It’s important] that my staff be caring and listen and want to find the right fit for someone who maybe has felt on the outside of this stuff for a long time,” he said.

The new space, formerly used as storage for their vast collection of back issues, is meant to mimic the original location in its approach to customer service, but in a somewhat different format. Instead of focusing mostly on new releases, The Clubhouse will specialize in older comics (aka back issues), most of which are priced at just a dollar per book.

“It’s a chance for us to make sure that those books do get read and do find a home,” said Heidel. “If you’re new to this and you just want to try some things, the barrier to entry is low.”

In addition to numerous long boxes containing upwards of 20,000 comics, they’ll also be offering past issues of niche magazines such as Mad, Heavy Metal, and Creepy, heavily discounted graphic novels, and figurines. Plus, Neighborhood Comics’ main man is putting together comic bundles, which collect several issues together to tell a complete story.

The Clubhouse location will also be unique in that, through the end of the year, it will host Fuzzy Needle Records, brainchild of one of Neighborhood Comics’ first customers, Chris Cowgill.

“Chris has a very broad musical sensibility and palette, both as a listener and connoisseur of music, but also as a collector,” Heidel noted. “But just like with Neighborhood Comics, he’s not planning to just stock what he likes. The idea is to really have a broad collection of things that he can stand behind. So whether it’s soundtrack to a David Lynch film, which I know they’ll be lots of those here, or classic re-pressings of 60s garage rock, there’s going to be something for everybody as a part of what he’s doing.”

“He’s super into people celebrating what they’re into, no matter what that is,” he added.

As we wrapped up our conversation, my copy of New Warriors #23 in hand, a smile on my face, I asked Heidel, as I often do at the end of an interview, if there was anything else he wanted to tell me about the new shop. His answer was simple.

“If you like the idea of paper books, if you like the idea of comic books coming out every month, if that’s part of what you like about it, then definitely show up, support it in one way or another, whatever that means to you,” he said. “And spread the gospel of comic books.”

Neighborhood Comics Clubhouse is open from noon to 7 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday. Find Neighborhood Comics on the web at https://neighborhoodcomics.com/.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: beloved neighborhood comics expands with clubhouse on Savannah's southside