First up, a lovely view of the shopfloor and the main comics wall. Judging from the comics on display, this would be around 1987/8 and may even be around the time of the Watchmen signings.
My eyes immediately drawn to the central column and those wonderful flying Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers wall plaques. They were a feature of the shop for decades.
Then you have the shelves absolutely sagging with the weight of comics. None of them full face at this stage, we just didn't have the room for that luxury.
Another shot of the shopfloor below, this time looking down at the back issue section in the corner. This was the time when back issues were at their height and to be honest Paul really should get off his arse, stop reading the comics and put some of those back issues away.
Different view of the shop, different time. The long haired rock thing stalking the aisles in the photo below is Jason, who introduced me to the hilarious treat that was Edwards #8. Judging from the bottom left of the picture this would be around the time that the Turtles hit really big on the TV, as we've got some of the merchandise on the shelves....
And next, the wall. This was a big feature of the shop from very early on. Personally I think Phil just didn't want the expense of painting the walls so just wallpapered with some posters he had lying around. From this photo you don't really get an idea of the scale, but this is a two storey high wall of posters we're looking at.
Later on it was at least partially covered over with absolutely huge posters of Batman, Terminator and Indiana Jones. As far as I recall when we were having the refit after being taken over by FPI, there was talk of removing the posters and giving us a really nice iconic wall display complete with huge panel and character blow ups. It would have looked absolutely spectacular. But it never happened, partly I think because they realised that the posters were actually more structurally sound than the plaster and taking the posters off the wall would have brought the plaster down as well....
And to end with, more recent shots of the shop: A nice exterior shot
The Propaganda shelf with a Cerebus display and the view towards the tills. This was where I would regularly highlight everything I thought you should all be reading, something I was always very proud of and something I'm carrying on (in name if not in shelf presence) at the FPI weblog by doing the Propaganda reviews:
Richard - many thanks for taking the time to document all of this. I was a frequent visitor 1988 - 1991 best Saturdays of my life! I pop back in whenever I can.
ReplyDeleteI recognised the shot of Jason as he used to catch the same bus from Sheldon as me (but I was a quiet lad back then and wouldn't strike up a conversation) - odd to be reminded of a familiar stranger from 20 years ago.
Ta