(Photo: Brad Paris)

You don’t sell toys and figurines like at other comic-book shops.
We wanted to be almost entirely a bookstore. We have an art gallery up front, where we show and sell cartoonists’ original work.

For how much?
On average $300 to $350.

What’s up now?
Pages from Brian Wood’s “DMZ,” a pretty intense comic about civil war in the near future, where Manhattan is a demilitarized zone.

Is there a forthcoming book that everyone’s talking about?
Absolute Sandman, by Neil Gaiman. It’s a phenomenal series of fantasy fiction that started maybe twenty years ago, and it’s being reissued in a larger format, recolored, with a slipcase. It’s going to be a beautiful thing, the equivalent of a Criterion Collection DVD.

What are you reading now?
The Complete “Peanuts.” The publisher is reprinting the complete series, and I’m on the sixth of 25 volumes.

You must have a Halloween costume planned. Superhero?
I don’t know yet. I had a sad stretch of eight months where I funneled all my energy into building this Ghostbuster costume. I really got obsessive about it and went to, like, 50 hardware stores looking for the exact pieces for the backpack. I’ve worn it two years in a row, so I might retire it this year.

Related:

• Archive: “Ask Shop Clerk”
• Articles by Denise Penny
• Table of Contents: Oct 23, 2006 issue of New York | Subscribe!

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