MOUNT GREENWOOD — On Friday, fans of America’s favorite blockhead, Charlie Brown, his mischievous beagle Snoopy and the rest of Charles Schulz’s beloved Peanuts cartoon gang are set to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the comic strip's first appearance in print.
Tim Davis, the 56-year-old comic book geek behind the counter at Alternate Reality, 3149 W. 111 St., couldn’t let the milestone pass without trying to recruit more pint-sized comic readers with a Peanuts-inspired sale on kids' comic books.
His comic book emporium, one of about 20 survivors in Chicago’s slowly dying comic book store scene, desperately needs more kids to develop a comic-reading habit.
In a lot of ways, the future viability of comic book stores like his depends on it.
“It’s funny because in the late '70s parents would tell their kids, ‘Don’t read comics, they’re garbage,'” Davis said.
“Now, parents drag their kids in here and say, ‘pick something, read something,' because kids don’t read. They’re too busy playing video games on their, whatchamacallits, their iPads.”
If reminding parents that the adventures of Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Peppermint Patty and Pig Pen are the kind of stories that inspired generations of boys and girls to fall in love with reading and might do the same for their kids, well, it’s worth a shot.
Plus, there's a special 20 percent discount on all kids' comics.
Davis still remembers the first time he saw the TV special, “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”
“That was my entry drug into Peanuts,” said Davis, who regulars at the 111th Street shop call Comic Book Man.
“I was a big Peanuts fan in the late '60s, the way most kids were when they saw 'Great Pumpkin' and the Christmas special on TV. When I figured out Peanuts was a comic strip, I got my parents to get me a couple paperback collections.”
Back then, Peanuts was mostly a black-and-white newspaper comic strip that followed a standard three-panel format and was read by mostly adults until the full-color animated specials appeared on TV.
“Peanuts was one of those weird strips that was for adults and kids. Schulz figured out a way to write at two levels ... without insulting either one of them,” Davis said. “Why does Lucy pull the football away from Charlie Brown? Because in life that happens a lot. When you’re a kid you just think it’s funny. When you’re an adult you think, ‘That s--- happens all the time.' Peanuts, it’s for everyone.”
Davis was about 6 years old when he discovered comic books at an Englewood drugstore.
“It started with 'Adventures of Superman,' which would run on WGN after Cubs games and on Saturday mornings. I remember my grandfather took me to a drugstore at 61st and Loomis that had racks of comics behind the counter. The Superman from TV was a comic, same logo. I put two and two together. I bugged him to get me the comic book and that was it,” he said.
“Then I noticed the Saturday Morning Justice League that I watched was a comic. … Spider-Man was a comic. I read comic books. I wish that would happen with kids today. When Guardians of the Galaxy comes out in theaters, you’d think people would come in for comics, but it doesn’t happen that way.”
Despite the dwindling number of comic book loyalists, Alternate Reality’s 3,200-square-foot maze of colorful pulp attracts a steady stream of customers, especially the faithful who come for the sale on new comics the first week they hit stands.
It’s a deal that Davis says was absolutely necessary when he first opened Alternate Reality in 1994, the tail end of a comic book speculator boom that flooded the Chicago market with comics shops.
“Comic book stores were everywhere, and the only thing you can do to compete is with the price. Why buy here when you can get the same comics anywhere? Well, I’m giving 15 percent off new comics every day for everyone,” Davis said. “That’s how it's been since I’ve been open — 1,108 weeks. Yeah, I keep track of that stuff.”
Davis started hawking comics in 1978 because he hated working at Jewel and his pal, the counter guy at the now-closed Comic Emporium at 109th and Western, had decided to quit.
“I said, ‘Hey, do you think I could get this job?’” Davis said. “I talked to the boss and got hired.”
After a few years, Davis gained a cult following of comic-reading kids, one of whom gets credit for dubbing him something of a local superhero.
“I was at Evergreen Plaza after work with a buddy, walking down by the Orange Julius when one kid there with his mom said, “Mommy, Mommy, look! It’s Comic Book Man!,’” Davis said. “My buddy looked at me and said, ‘Well, you’re Comic Book Man.’ Yep, some little kid pinned me back in ’80s.”
After a “bloody, gory” and failed attempt to buy the place in 1983, Davis left Comic Emporium — the South Side’s first comic shop when it opened in ’75 — and, like a superhero on an epic journey, “wandered in the wilderness for 10 years. ”
During those lost years, Davis got a college degree and felt the pull of comics draw him back to the business.
“There are two kinds of people: the ones who always wanted to open comic book stores and, oh, yeah, it’s a business. And people who always wanted to open a business and decided to make it a comic book store. I wanted to own my own business,” Davis said.
“It’s a business first, or at some point we’re just not around anymore. And beyond that, if you don’t love it, why the hell are you doing it? That’s my philosophy.”
It’s also the motivation driving Comic Book Man’s never-ending fight to keep his Alternate Reality alive. Attracting young readers — kids drawn to fantastical stories in comic books, some tales that evolve into blockbuster films, big-time TV shows and popular video games — remains a constant focus.
In 2002, Davis penned an impassioned open letter to the Goliath comic book publishers, Marvel and DC among them, pleading for them to make more of an effort to hook a new generation of “cradle-to-grave” comic readers. He even offered this “really, really simple” solution that he wrote in all caps: “CREATE A COMIC LINE FOR KIDS.”
“I wrote that when there wasn’t any [kids'] comics. But I’m not going to sit here and say that I’m the guy that got more on the racks. … More than anything, a year or two after that a lot of the industry started thinking more about doing kids' comics,” he said.
In 2009, the independent comic publisher BOOM, launched its “BOOM Kids” line of children’s comics that’s now called “KaBOOM” and now prints monthly comic books based on the 65-year-old Peanuts comic strip you can find at Alternate Reality.
Comic Book Man plans to use the only real power he has — the ability to lower prices in a single bound — to honor the legacy of Charlie Brown and the gang and maybe inspire kids to fall in love with comic books the way he did so long ago.
Waiting for kids these days to fall in love with comics might be a little like waiting for the Great Pumpkin.
But Davis holds on to hope that the kids will come to his shop and be amazed for the same reason Linus, Schulz’s mini-philosopher, believed the Great Pumpkin would pick his particular patch.
“He'll come here because I have the most sincere pumpkin patch,” Linus said, “and he respects sincerity.”
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