In the morning, in the Alcalá Cómics store, almost everyone who comes in is older Alcalaínos to buy the press. They arrive with coins in hand, let them ring on the glass counter and Lidia hands them one of the day’s newspapers or the week’s celebrity magazine. These customers barely enter the aisle full of comics and plastic figurines, which remains almost empty until the afternoon, when everything is different: the place is filled with people looking for a strategic board game among the shelves at the back of the shop and with those who want a certain number of HirayasumiFrom One piece or of superman. Because yes, in the world of comics the classics are still alive as they were decades ago, when social networks didn’t exist and comics could be bought for a few cents in any local stationery shop.
Alcalá Cómics is one of the oldest shops specializing in comics, manga, fantasy literature and board games and with one of the largest catalogs in all of Madrid. Last September 19th we celebrated 30 years since Fernando Garrido got it into his head that he no longer wanted to be a newspaper seller in another owner’s newsstand, but to have his own shop where the children and young people of Alcalá de Henares could buy comics. Mortadelo and Philemonthe most recent issues of dragon ball and the American superhero comics that are classics today.
Lidia Márquez, his wife, put her hands on her head, but thanks to her support the shop is still alive three decades later. The public has changed a bit since then, because those who come looking for something new or a title that introduces them to the world of stories that are read and seen frame by frame are no longer so young. “If it’s not every day, almost everyone comes in with someone new who wants to start reading comics. And the time you’re most excited is when the kids come in,” Fernando says.
Today the shop’s customers are mostly adults, and some are still the same children as back then, who now have more than a few cents left over from the family purchase to pay for a comic, a pleasure that has gradually become more expensive. In three decades, Fernando says, they’ve seen everything in the store. How magazines and newspapers went from taking up most of the shelves to just one corner of the counter. Like the saga game of Thrones It started out as an unknown book and suddenly became a phenomenon that required pre-sale lists to be created so that no fan would be left without the latest release.
Even as card games and board games – not Solitaire, nor Monopoly, Fernando clarifies with a laugh, but much more elaborate – were gaining popularity and are now a niche market in which manufacturers strive to create the most imaginative product.
Fernando says that in this world, what is sold in department stores, or what becomes famous on the internet, usually becomes popular first in small specialty shops like his. “Now Funkos (those plastic dolls with big heads that imitate other characters) are in many places, just see them in a shoe shop or a butcher’s shop,” he says. “We started offering her in 2012 and she was like any other doll. You can bet, of course, because behind it there is also a distributor with lights who knows what can be successful.”
Currently the price of a Funko is around 15 euros, although there are some that multiply their value several times up to thousands, thanks to the furor unleashed by collectors. During the peaks of popularity of these toys, the so-called “Funko hunters” came to the shop, undertaking the mission of scouring the most specialized shops in search of authentic jewels. Unlike ten years ago, Alcalá Cómics now has a shelf full of boxes with stickers of Wednesday Adams, Mickey Mouse or Michael Jordan.
Tuesday is replacement day. Newness arrives and it is necessary to make space. “Don’t think that all stores cover the type of stock we have,” clarifies Fernando. The seven workers at Alcalá Cómics go from place to place with boxes that smell like the printing press, placing on the shelves what customers will come looking for this afternoon. One of the workers is Javier Garrido, son of Fernando and Lidia, who at 32 years old, as could not be otherwise having grown up among those same shelves, declares himself “a freak”.
He still remembers when his father planted a table in the center of the store’s first location and people started gathering there to play board games. Precisely for this reason, 11 years ago, they moved to their current location, in store nine in Plaza de España in Alcala: people wanted to come and compete with Yu-Gi-Oh! OR Pokémon and there wasn’t enough space. Now, in the back of the store, there are about eight tables where people play almost every day because Alcalá Cómics is no longer just a place to buy, but also a place to meet other lovers of its products.
