To celebrate the ninth anniversary of Parker's best comic store, Hall of Justice Comics & Collectibles is having a full day of festivities on Saturday, November 23, courtesy of owner Jonthan Garnett and his faithful crew, including manager Randy Salazar. There will be huge sales, customer-appreciation drawings with prizes worth over $4,000, Fiction Beer Company pouring "IPYay Comics" beer created just for the occasion, and nearly twenty professional artists and comics creatives on hand to meet fans and sign their work.
It might be the ninth anniversary of the brick-and-mortar store, but it's really been twelve years for the company, says Garnett, who started selling comics out of his basement and appearing at the early iterations of what was then Denver Comic Con. "It's been nine years at three different locations. And a lot of gray hairs," he laughs.
Those three different locations have shown a marked success over the past near-decade. "We started in a space that was about a thousand square feet," recalls Garnett. "Then we moved into a larger space, about 2,200 square feet." When the much-larger store next to that second location became available in 2022, Garnett jumped at the chance to expand again, this time to triple the size. "We moved in here thinking we'd never fill it up," says Garnett. "But only a couple of years later, and danged if we haven't pretty much done it."
Part of that inventory has to do with the nature of the comics retail business, a practice that often involves the public bringing in boxes of old comics looking to sell. "We see collections coming in all the time," says Garnett. "Collecting comics is a very personal hobby. The stuff I collect, my wife doesn't care about. The stuff that Randy collects, his wife doesn't care about."
Salazar interjects here to add that "nobody cares about" the stuff he collects.
"When that person passes on, it becomes a burden for family to deal with," Garnett continues. "We see it all the time."
The comic-store fantasy is, of course, that the mother lode shows up in a box at the front counter one day: vintage copies of Action and Detective comics from the 1940s, or early Spider-man books from the 1960s. That happens, of course, but it's about as rare as hitting the lottery. "More often, it's a collection that's already been cherry-picked, you know?" Garnett says. "Like, a full run of New Mutants with the Deadpool issues already sold away. But that's the business, right? We have the ability to take all that stuff in and get it in the hands of collectors, and take it off the shoulders of family that want to move on.
"Randy likes to say that we're not buying comics so much as we're buying work," Garnett smiles. "And he's right. This is often stuff that's not been bagged and boarded, or if it has, it's in these thirty- to forty-year-old yellowed bags. It's work, but we love it. People are constantly walking through the door wanting and needing, really, to sell stuff. And most of the time, we're able to take it."
While the era of undiscovered comic stashes might be dwindling, Garnett and Salazar agree that there's a new era coming. "We're getting to the point where we're going to see a lot more stuff coming out of curated collections," he says. "These collectors are either passing on or, more often, just getting to a stage of their lives where they want to downsize and make some money on these comics they've collected over the years and spend that money on quality time with their families and friends."
That idea of quality time is also what brings Garnett and Salazar to put on full-day parties like the one on Saturday. "It's just great to get everyone together," Garnett says, "and a reason to remember why we do it. It's easy to get so caught up in the stupid minutiae of the business end of it that you forget the love for comics that got us all into it in the first place. Because you see the people come in and how happy this medium makes them, and that's the thing.
'It's appropriate that this anniversary happens right before Thanksgiving," Garnett says. "Because that's really what we're doing: giving thanks."
See the guest list below:
- Garry Brown - artist on Falling In Love on the Path to Hell. He has also worked on Spider Man, Catwoman, Crude, The Massive, Babyteeth, Black Road, Scream Curse of Carnage, X-Force and lots more.
- Emi Yonemura Brown - served as director and storyboard artist for the Emmy-nominated Disney+ X-Men ’97 animated series.
- Alex Sinclair - colorist, part of the Jim Lee trio (Jim Lee, Scott Williams, Alex Sinclair), who has worked almost exclusively for DC but recently began working for Marvel.
- Jorge Corona - current artist on Transfomers, Aint No Grave, etc. A local rock star.
- Morgan Beem - co-creator of Crashing, Swamp Thing:Twin Branches and a new graphic novel, You Belong Here, coming out next year.
- Travis Mercer - DC artist, interiors on Absolute Power: Jon Kent, Cyborg, Green Lantern/Green Arrow Worlds Finest, plus covers.
- David Stoll - co-creator of Dead Mall from Dark Horse.
- Zach Howard - co-creator of The Cape, artist on Hellboy, Wild Blue Yonder and a new project called Moonshine Bigfoot.
- Clara Meath - comic artist on Mother 47, and cover artist.
- Sara Stern - colorist on Batgirls, artist on Rick and Morty, starting colorist on Transformers with Jorge Corona's next arc.
- Rye Hickman - co-creator of Lonely Receiver and TEST, who did art on Bad Dream A Dreamer Story and covers.
- Jeremy Lawson - creator of Imp King, colorist for DC on Swamp Thing: Twin Branches and more.
- Dan and Dave Kemp - brother colorists who have worked on Spawn, Daredevil and tons of other books in the ’90s and ’00s.
- Johnny Larson - local artist, very eclectic style, hip-hop fan, and all-around awesome dude!
- Caleb Ady & Luke Stokes - local creators of Aruku Akumu. Caleb won a recent McFarlane Spawn challenge and will have a published Spawn cover coming out soon.
- Prince Bryant - local artist who has worked on comics for Pop Culture Classroom.
- Cecil Lammy - local sports radio personality and comic writer, owner of Smokin Gun Comics publishing.
