Every Wednesday for 20 years, Joshua Allen has gone to Steve’s Comic Relief store in the Mercer Mall to pick up the newest issues of his favorite comic books.
Allen, 31, received his first comic books—Green Lantern and X-Men—as a gift from his stepfather at about age 9. Since then he has accumulated “a couple thousand” books. Almost 23 years later, Allen said he’s continued to follow the Green Lantern series and is confident he’s purchased every back issue of it he could find in the store.
“I just like superheroes, the kind of over-the-top heroic stories,” Allen said.
Steve’s Comic Relief in Lawrence is one of three stores owned by Somerset resident Ed Iannone, and has been a staple in Lawrence for the past 25 years.
“We get all walks of life in here,” said Iannone, who has owned the store for 17 years. “I have professors from Princeton University come in here, I have guys from the Verizon trucks coming in here, doctors, dentists, accountants, college kids, high school kids—you name it.”
Iannone said customers are 90 percent repeat and each how his or her own pattern; some come in every week, every month or every other week. His customer base is very strong and very loyal.
Allen is just one of many of the store’s loyal customers. He also searches online and travels to collect back issues and said his hobby is among his top priorities. But his enjoyment stems from the characters that define the books.
“It fits in with those other kinds of stories to me,” said Allen, a resident of Lawrence. “I’ve always liked King Arthur and the Knights, too, and to me, Superman and Green Lantern and Batman are those kinds of heroes just in modern times.”
With the release of new movies like Green Lantern, the Batman trilogy and the upcoming Captain America, even those who have strayed from comic books have found their way back to the stories. For Bill Underwood, the monthly visits to the store are the result of re-interest in the comics he once read as a teen. After nearly 20 years away from the books, a new twist on an old series caught his attention.
“There was a comic series called Green Lantern that came out about two years ago, where it just got really dark,” the Lawrence resident said. “And I thought, this is really good … With the movie coming out, I just got a re-interest.”
Underwood, 36, decided not to see the movie based on bad reviews. But other movies, like the Batman series, also sparked his interest.
In the two years since he began reading again, Underwood said he’s been able to buy several of the classic story lines for lower prices, such as books that inspired the movie Watchmen, and classic story lines by Frank Miller, who wrote the movie 300.
“So I just do it for fun, I just do it to read,” Underwood said. “And the artwork’s gotten a lot better, and the writing’s gotten a lot better.”
His comic stash from his teen years remains buried in his parents’ basement, with only the collector’s books protected, but Underwood said they’re good, well-written books to hold on to.
The writing is something that’s kept Hamilton resident Jim Zimmerman, 24, reading comic books since he was a teen. In fact, comics helped him overcome one of his struggles as a child.
“I was dyslexic when I was a kid, and I didn’t read more than five sentences in a row until I was 13, and I picked up an issue of The Amazing Spiderman,” Zimmerman said. “And I read it, and I started to read more. And the next year, I read The Hobbit … comic books got me to read.”
Now, he works at the summer camp and after school program at Princeton Friends School and comes into the store weekly to stock up on new books for the kids. Some of his favorite books for kids are Disney trades, DC and Superfriends, which features popular superheroes in nonviolent situations.
Iannone said the comic book industry has not suffered any more or less than other industries despite the struggling economy. An average comic book costs $3-$4, so collecting comics is a hobby many may still sustain. What keeps customers returning are the products and the draw of their story lines.
“The product has become much more diverse over the past 10, 15 years … it’s still comic book-oriented, but they’re collecting them now in hard covers and trade paperbacks, things that you would now find in Borders,” Iannone said.
Iannone said comics have consistently changed and adapted since they’ve been in existence. If a story line begins to lose its followers’ interest, a new series may be developed, with a different twist on the characters and their stories. Titles may also be changed, merged, divided or revamped, and writers and artists come and go. One of the newly revamped series that arrived at Comic Relief this summer was Daredevil.
“Daredevil’s been running since the ’60s, but it’s a new number one, just doing a different twist on the tale, and people get a charge out of it,” Iannone said.
In the past 10 years, the store has increased its selection of trades, which are books made up of six issue parts. The trades have taken off in popularity in that time, but were originally designed because certain issues would sell out, so the trades collected the issues together and allowed people to purchase them again.
Some customers even purchase both the trade and the standalone comic book, often to read through the trade and preserve the single issue, Iannone said.
Steve’s Comic Relief is located in the Mercer Mall at 3371 US Highway 1 #158 in Lawrence Township and is open daily.
New comic books are available every Wednesday. For more information, call the store at (609) 452-7548 or search Comic Relief (NJ) on Facebook.
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