Voulez-vous lisez des comics avec moi?

Although I’d discovered plenty of shops in Paris which sold les bandes-desinnées, they mostly consisted of French works (which, I can assure you, are created with as much care and finesse as their food) or manga.  It also occurred to me during my travels in Paris that French people care as much for us Americans as we do them, so the likelihood of finding a shop dedicated to our superheroes and comics seemed a bit thin, to say the least.

Still, I thought I’d take a go at it, especially since, as I mentioned yesterday, I needed to review The Spirit #16 and had no hard copy to look at.  Through some internet browsing, I landed on Avoid the Future!, a blog dedicated to international comics, which featured an interview with Philippe and Philippe, owners of Arkham, the most famous (and the only?) store in the city entirely dedicated to the comics of North America.

The shop is located in the 5ème arrondissment, a little ways southeast of the central, touristy parts of Paris.  I took several transfers on the Métro to get there, finally exiting off ligne 7 at the station of Censier-Dauberton to arrive at a very pleasant, quiet, unsurprisingly charming and pretty corner of Paris:

After proceeding a couple minutes south, I found myself on Rue Broca, the corner of which had a fruit-and-vegetable vendor with a grand, colorful display of seasonal produce, where I bought myself a particularly beautiful-looking peach.  Rounding the vendor, I immediately spotted Arkham by its Technicolor sign and the Jack Kirby art along its upper scaffold.

Like any good comic book shop, it had a window display chock-full of books and paraphernalia from geek culture, everything from Marvel to DC, from zombies to ninjas, from Peanuts to Chucky—an excellent sign of quality.

Inside, I was delighted by literally walls of comics, both trades and singles, including a very prominent stand holding the week’s new issues.  I was even more pleased to find the title I was looking for peeking out prominently among the rest, as if it knew all along I had been on my way to claim it from the other side of the ocean.  You can see it right there, beckoning to me, on the second level of the top shelf of the stand:

I almost half-expected the place to be empty, but no shop of this much obvious, loving dedication could fail to have devotees, and there were quite a few gents browsing the back issues and pulling their week’s subscriptions.  In fact, one of the owners—it must have been Philippe—was crouched over a pile of large delivery boxes, which bore within, I read, the orders for that week.

French heavy metal played clearly, but not disturbingly, from speakers placed on top of the bookshelves, which told me everything I needed to know about the kind of people who ran and patronized the place.  Everything was neat as a pin and meticulously organized within the small space.  What the store lacked in free movement, it more than made up for with a sense of overflowing abundance, a treasure trove of American pop culture in a city of proudly ancient and European class and taste, a blessed hideaway for the modern US expatriate of the geek variety.

I could’ve spent a good chunk of time there, and was tempted to stick around to see if the delivery boxes held the week’s new comics for me to make a grab for.  I would’ve also liked to interview Philippe (whichever one he turned out to be) as a kind of cultural exchange for the site.  But I had only a couple hours before having to take off to the airport, and anyway, even if I got my hand on the new stuff a day early, I wouldn’t have been able to take advantage of it on the plane (not to mention it would’ve cost me approximately the value of an infected spleen removal procedure).  Instead I captured a quick video of the shop for posterity, which I hope you can appreciate despite its nauseatingly hurried camerawork.  Anyway, I’m sure you can find better ones at Arkham’s YouTube channel.

I was forced to bolt for the Métro right after I bought my copy of The Spirit.  My French was apparently acceptable; no one took note of my foreignness.  But anyway, how could they?  In that shop, I felt perfectly at home.