This blog is technically a comic-book-based blog, even if I’m not buying comic books on a monthly basis any more (although I do buy the occasional creator-owned trade paperback to support creators whose work I enjoy; I hope I’ll discuss them in the weeks and months to come). I just wanted to reiterate this fact, not as a mission statement, but a simple reminder of the main focus.
As a fan of comic books who grew up with the only avenue for reading them was to buy them (graphic novels were not in the library then, and we didn’t have apps where we could access thousands of comic books whenever we wanted), I enjoyed visiting comic book shops in different locations whenever I had the opportunity. These specialised havens to my beloved comic books always provided that wonderful thrill: the smell, the wall of new comic books, the back issue bins that could provide hours of entertainment just rifling through them.
As a comic book blogger, I would also document these visits – see the ‘comic book shops’ category for my notes on various places I’ve visited and used during my lifetime, located in London, Canterbury, Bristol. For me, it’s a lovely record of these wonderful places, especially when unfortunately quite a few are no longer in operation.
I try to keep those posts updated – I’ll include a note to indicate when a particular shop is no longer in business, because I have a need to be accurate and complete in my archive, even though people don’t really use this blog as a resource for comic book shops in that way. (Although, it has been a delight that some of these posts have seen commenters leave memories of the places I’ve discussed, some even having discussions outside of responding to me.)
This need to keep track of all these shops has led to this post, which is effectively an update post but is also a new post. Back in 2008, I wrote about They Walk Among Us, a comic book shop in Richmond, which to me was notable as the business used as a comic shop in the sitcom Spaced (although not the specific location I visited, having subsequently moved from the placed used in filming). It closed in 2009, taken over by Ace Comics, but then taken over by Raygun. I hadn’t visited Richmond in the intervening years, so I thought I’d visit it to cross the ‘t’s and dot the ‘i’s in the comic book shop category. Yes, I know I have a problem.
If you compare the photo of Raygun above and the photo of They Walk Among Us in my previous post, you can see that it’s exactly the same shopfront apart from a paint job – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, I guess. It’s pretty similar inside, although there is a difference: Raygun is primarily focused on comic books, whereas They Walk Among Us had a heavy focus on geek-related merchandise, as well as some comic books.
I was happy to see that Raygun has lots of comic books: new comic books on a main wall; many shelves of trade paperbacks from the usual suspects of Marvel, DC Comics Dark Horse and Image; plenty of manga on another wall; and plenty of old comic books in boxes in the middle. (I find it particularly weird to peruse the back issue bins nowadays – I keep seeing comic books that I bought as they came out, now with a price tag of several pounds more than I purchased them for back then.) There is also some merchandise, but it is in no way a major aspect of the shop, so three cheers for Raygun’s dedication to comic books.
The location of the shop is still a place that I find curious – yes, Richmond is a great place to have a comic book shop because it gets a lot of footfall (it was already a popular destination because of the river and the park, but it feels that Ted Lasso has made it even more popular), but the route from the tube/train station to the park/main shopping road/Ted Lasso area doesn’t go past the shop unless you take a different road to get there. It must be doing OK because it is still in business 15 years later, so I shouldn’t overthink it, but it’s something I found odd so had to mention it.
It was lovely to visit Raygun, a delightful comic book shop in a delightful area, and I hope that I don’t have to add a footnote at some point in the future to document an unfortunate turn of events. If you love comic books and are in Richmond, you should definitely visit Raygun.
