Comics to Astonish, a specialty store in eastern Columbia, is commemorating two decades of providing a wide range of products for customers by offering special discounts on new and vintage comic books on Saturday and hosting a special tournament for fans of the Magic the Gathering role-playing card game on Sunday, August 11.
“Well, this is the big one,” Keegan Conrad, owner of the shop, said about the celebration. “The day we opened” on August 11, 1993, “we said that if we got to our 20th anniversary – which for a comics store is no easy feat – we would have our biggest discounts ever.”
To fulfill that promise, Comics to Astonish is selling recent back-issue comics for 70 percent off their usual prices and providing a discount of 20 percent for titles produced between 1956 and 1985, usually referred to as the Silver and Bronze ages of comics.
In preparation for the event, the shop's staff has added more than 2,000 vintage comics and hundreds of Silver Age titles in excellent condition.
As a result, customers can purchase The Brave and the Bold #28, which featured the first appearance of the Justice League of America in early 1960, and Incredible Hulk #181, which was the November 1974 debut of the popular mutant hero Wolverine, for the same discount.
The store is also offering a 30 percent discount on Magic gaming card packs and singles, as well as on comics supplies and non-sports cards.
Like many comics store owners, Conrad learned to read at an early age by reading comics. He was 3 years old when his mother bought him a Gold Key Star Trek comic, which he still has even though “it's not in very good shape.”
Four years later, “I purchased my first comic that I remember buying with my own money, Star Spangled War Stories,” which featured the hero known as the Unknown Soldier.
After a brief hiatus from reading comics when he was 16 years old, Conrad and his friend, Rann Johnston, became comic book dealers, though Johnston soon became the manager of the Heroes World store in The Mall in Columbia.
When Conrad walked into the store on May 29, 1993, an employee told him that Heroes World had lost its lease and would be out of business by the end of June, which meant there'd no longer be a comics specialty shop in Columbia.
After asking himself “Where am I going to get my comics now?” while driving home, he decided to start his own shop, which was open for business on August 11 with friend Tom Brodkin running the store while Conrad finished working as a driver for UPS. The store's name was inspired by the old Marvel comic title "Tales to Astonish."
Two decades later, among the best-selling titles in the store are Justice League from DC Comics, The X-Men from Marvel, and Buffy, the Vampire Slayer from Dark Horse. In addition, Conrad recommends East and West from Image Comics, Conan the Barbarian, another Dark Horse series, and for the kids, My Little Pony.
Along the way, Free Comic Book Day on the first Saturday in May is “our most-attended event each year” because “we give out thousands of free comics at our store and at each location of the Howard County library system.”
One of the most significant additions to the store's merchandise was items for the Magic: The Gathering role-playing card game, which happened because customer Dave Slater came into the store every day for a week and said: “You must carry this product!”
“Finally, to appease him, we bought a box and sold all the packs in the first hour,” Conrad said. “We quickly purchased more, and then more, and this single product line carried the store through the slow times of the mid-1990s.”
To thank all the Magic players, on August 11, 20 years to the day after the store opened, the store will host a tournament and will give away a Sealed Booster Box of Modern Masters and another Booster Box of Modern Masters for the next seven people who finish the game.
Looking back over the past 20 years, Conrad said that the most fun he's had owning his own comics store has been “all the great comics fans and people I have met.”
The comics specialty store, which is located at 9400 Snowden River Parkway #112 in eastern Columbia, will mark the anniversary from 12 noon to 8 p.m. on Saturday.
