The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
NO COMIC RELIEF
Shop owner’s adventures in comic books coming to an end as he prepares to close his store in February
STAMFORD — Paul Salerno rang up a stack of back-issue comic books for a customer on Tuesday at A Timeless Journey, the city’s only comic shop. The price came to a hefty $195, but thanks to a store-wide sale this month, the customer saved about $150.
The two bantered with one another over the price for a few minutes. It was friendly; the customer, Domenic Corbo, and 54-year old Salerno go back a long time.
The sale comes at a bittersweet time for Salerno and his loyal customers. Come February, A Timeless Journey’s time will come to an end after 28 years in business.
“Paul persevered for more than 20 years in a tough industry, and the amazing thing is that people are astonished he won’t be here,” said Corbo, a lifelong Stamford resident.
A Timeless Journey opened in 1989 on Elm Street, the same year Tim Burton’s “Batman,” starring Michael Keaton as the Caped Crusader, was released. Since then, the shop has moved twice, settling in at its current downtown location on the corner of 8th and Summer streets, in 2013.
It was a different time back when the store first opened, Salerno reminisced. “When we started, it was a much bigger collector’s market,” he said, “with guys who read comics all their lives. It was a whole different world. There was no internet.”
At this point, mid-sentence, Salerno pulls a random comic from a box on his desk.
“If you were looking for ‘Giant Sized Avengers #5,’ you’d go to a show, which were few and far between, unlike now, or go to a store to finish your ‘set,’ ” he said. “That was the big thing — finishing your collection. That was our main customer back then.”
With the release of “Batman” and the focus on collecting, the time was right for Salerno and his then-business partner, Dave Edwards, to open a store. (It was Edwards’ idea to place an ‘A’ in front of ‘Timeless Journey’ so the shop would show up first in the phone book).
But a lot has changed since then, and not just the ubiquity of phone books. The comic book industry, along with its customers, has grown up.
“Now, the majority of people who are buying older comics are buying them for value,” he said. “They’ll get them graded, re-sell them, and it defeats the purpose of the whole comic. When you grade a card, you can still see the front and the back. When you grade a comic, you never open it up again. To me, the best part of the comic is on the inside.”
Salerno orders his comics two months in advance based on subscribers; if people aren’t talking about a comic, he won’t order it because comics are nonreturnable, which limits what people are willing to buy.
And while the “Batman” movie may have propelled the store when it opened, Salerno said comic book movies today are successful because the characters are more popular than the medium from which they originated.
“The movies have realized there’s decades worth of storyboards,” he said. “Every comic is a storyboard for a potential movie.”
Meanwhile, retailers are still relying on a loyal subscriber base while movies based on those comics make millions at the box office.
“Probably 98.9 percent of the people seeing those movies are fans already, and the lower percentage are those looking for something different,” said Erik Yacko, owner of Alternate Universe in New Haven and Milford. “It’s not like as soon as the movie comes out, I have a line outside my door.” Brightest Day, Blackest Night
Alternate Universe’s New Haven location has been open 23 years, while the Milford shop has been open 12. Yacko’s dad bought him his first comic when he was 5, and the rest is history. That doesn’t mean it’s always been smooth sailing, though. He called the comic book business a “disposable income market.” “If you don’t have the money to go to a comic shop, you’re not going to go,” Yacko said. “It’s not a necessity, it’s a hobby. There’s always going to be other things that trump us.”
In 2009, Disney bought Marvel, one of the major comicbook publishers aside from DC, responsible for characters like Spider-Man, the X-Men, Iron Man and others. Yacko said the acquisition put a strain on retailers.
“When we started, it was a much bigger collector’s market, with guys who read comics all their lives. It was a whole different world. There was no internet.” Paul Salerno, owner, “A Timeless Journey”
“The big companies don’t help the small mom-and-pop community stores,” he said. “We’re the middle man selling their comics.”
Salerno left an accounting job for A Timeless Journey; 28 years later, he’s leaving A Timeless Journey for an accounting job. He was offered the job in Stamford and it was an opportunity — higher pay, a regular schedule, and benefits — that he couldn’t refuse.
“You’re never going to get rich doing this, but you’re hopefully going to make enough to pay the bills,” said Salerno, who lives in Trumbull with his wife Susan. “It’s harder now because I’m catering more to the reading public, and fewer and fewer people are reading comics.”
Salerno said it will be a strange transition to a traditional 9-to-5 job — A Timeless Journey was open six days a week. He’s looking forward to having a more steady income and schedule, but he’ll miss the store, and, more importantly, the people. “I may never see people again that I saw twice a week for 20 years,” he said. “But owning a business is a roller coaster. Right now, it’s kind of down. It’s due for another ride, but I need the stability.”