I’ve just returned home from a short holiday on England’s arty south coast in the attitudy town of Brighton. Brighton is packed with tattoos, dreadlocks, guitars, local bands, art-culture, galleries, motorcycles and generally all things cool and niche. As is customary for nerds everywhere, part of my first exploration was to find a suitable comic shop. Familiar ground to hover around and satisfy my need for nerdery among friends, AKA: people like me.
After visiting a couple of semi-cool book shops and moody, underground graphic-novel-heavy stores. I was growing increasingly sceptical of finding an actual comic shop. I was simply and blindly following Google Maps and crossing all available fingers for a soon discovery of ‘comicness’ resulting in my smiling face.
I eventually found the perfect place: Dave’s Comics on Sydney Street. A soho-esque part of town, rightfully nestled among the guitar shacks and brick-a-bracs, flanked by tea-shops and independent galleries filled with local art. The cobbled streets hold us all in place as Dave’s Comics gives Brighton a cool little heart-beat in the midst of a mainstream, sunbeam high street.
Found. One Comic shop.
Split into 2 spaces, the first 2 ground-floor areas were packed with toys, t-shirts, costumes and merchandise and demanded my attention from the jump. Some really cool and familiar stuff in there, perfect. Moving upstairs to the secret — and naturally lit — attic space, I discovered good stock of all the new books on a Wednesday, visible and tidy displays of other recent books too, a good selection of grovels and posters and to top it all off… a rather posh-looking couch to park your bum on, inviting you to leaf-through Wednesday’s books maybe even discussing them with the other nerds in the room. A really cool little of a comic shop to stumble upon during a wishful Wednesday. Winner.
I book-marked the store in my head and will always return if I’m ever in Brighton again. Cheers Dave.
Side note: I requested a ‘press-pass’ to the up-coming London ComicCon at the excel centre on October 26th and was promised access by the marketing team. It looks like a pretty solid Con judging by the tone online. It may — or may not — live up to the dizzy and glorious heights of Fan Expo though. We’ll see.
Full previews to follow.
26-28th October – Excel London ComicCon MCM Expo
looks like a great shop Danny. I love the facade and it looks like a place people would love to spend time in, browsing, chatting etc.
Does a place like Dave’s carry any old collectible comics? Is there a market for these books in the progressive current pop culture comic shops across the pond?
There’s definitely a market for the old collectable books over this side, Walt. At the last Con I went to, the stands that carried the old-school collectables were actually the busiest (from memory).
While ‘Dave’s Comics’ DOES carry a limited bunch of older books — and may well be the best place in Brighton to pick them up — the best place in London for these books is Orbital Comics on Great Newport Street.
Arguably the best all-round comic shop in London.
Might be cool to sniff out some stats for next week’s post?