Stores I Shop at in Dreams

Had a dream last night where there was a comics shop/bookstore/thrift store (it kept shifting) on Eureka Ave. just west of Fort Street.  I often have dreams about such hidden or unknown stores around that area, perhaps because in real life The Record Exchange (used record/CD store) used to be located there, which I semi-regularly stopped at until it closed in the mid-2000s. (Not sure of the exact date it closed, but I know it was still there in May 2002, since I bought some 1970s magazine-size B&W comics there on May 24, and the store was gone by May 2006, when I mentioned the store in an email to someone in the past tense.) 

I also have had dreams about such non-existent stores being located in Trenton on West Jefferson Ave., around the Trenton Theatre area (a couple blocks north of where the Trenton Book Store used to be) as well as in Grove and Fort Street strip mall in Wyandotte where Danny's Foods used to be (a strip mall that is pretty much dead space these days, with just a dollar store and a small Chinese restaurant surrounded by empty storefronts). 

I have also had a couple dreams where a 7-11 type store is located in Trenton off on a side street, which I discover while walking by the old neighborhood (which I used to do back in the 1980s when I lived there) and when walking inside I find that the store still has a spinner rack of new comic books, including defunct publishers like Charlton and defunct titles like Marvel Two-In-One, priced around 75 cents each -- brand-new comics, but somehow unchanged since the 1980s which is when I last bought comics off the spinner racks.  This imaginary 7-11 type store may be inspired by the 7-11 on King Road near Fort Street in Trenton, which I sometimes (but not often) bought comics at back then.  The "off on a side street" aspect of the store may be inspired by a local Circle K (a 7-11 type store) located in my area at the corner of Sibley Road and Pennsylvania Ave. that I've passed many times but have almost never gone in.  They certainly don't carry comics, but back in the 1980s the store probably had a spinner rack. Back in the 1980s, this particular store was a Lawson's (later Dairy Mart) which is the same chain that I bought a lot of my comics at in the 1980s.  I bought mine at the Lawson's/Dairy Mart in Trenton at the corner of King and Grange.  That store closed in 1989, and I never went to this Circle K (previously Lawson's/Dairy Mart) in the 1980s.  I moved to this area where it's located in May 1992, but don't recall going inside -- and back then my interest in new comics was non-existent anyway. I didn't perceive the comics spinner rack as an endangered species in the 1990s so paid less attention to such things until I noticed that they were no longer around anymore.

Anyway, back to last night's dream.  So I'm stopping at this store over on Eureka near Fort, where there (as in real life) are located a bunch of nondescript buildings, but it turns out one of them is a bookstore that has new & old comics and used books.  One of the books on the shelf is a hardcover British Annual type comic that reprints three 1980s New Teen Titans comics which I somehow had never heard of before.  One of the issues was written (apparently not drawn) by George Perez, and the other two issues in the book are a 2-parter written by Alan Moore.  (Somehow in all my years of comics collecting I never once considered the possibility of an Alan Moore-written "New Teen Titans" comic, and now after having this dream I'm thinking, "Why didn't that ever happen in the 1980s?") 

There was also a new comic on the shelf that looked like an Annual that appeared to be a co-publication of Marvel and DC, and yet I think it was simply starring Green Arrow and The Flash (co-headlining the comic).  I moved over to a table that had a bunch of paperback books for around 25 cents each, and below the table there were old romance novels priced lower, at 10 cents each.  (I think I know how this part of the dream came about: Around 8 years ago or so, my local library had a long table of used books for sale, and below the table they had used romance novels priced a lot cheaper, like around 10 cents each.  Back then I had no interest in romance novels so I didn't even bother looking at them.  So now I occasionally wonder what romance novels I might have passed up back then in my ignorance.)  In the dream, I decided to save the romance books for last (I woke up before I had a chance to get to them) and instead looked through the books on the top of the table.  Unfortunately I didn't remember any of the titles although I vaguely think I found some 1960s mystery/suspense paperbacks. 

That's about it; I woke up around that point in the dream,  There was probably much more that happened that I forgot.  Still, it got me thinking that subconsciously I must enjoy "discovering" little-known or secret stores that sell things that I like -- places that are hidden and out of the way, or that I've overlooked before.  Perhaps there is this feeling that there is something interesting happening somewhere and I only need to find it somehow -- or that things that I liked in the past may still be there in the present, tucked away in obscure corners.  Or like somewhere time has stood still and it's still 1985 and there are still spinner racks with new Charlton comics in them, and somehow I've stumbled upon this secret store. 

The good thing for me is that in most cases I don't need such dreams, the reality of my used book finds is awesome enough as it is.  Stopped at a thrift store on Friday and bought 45 used paperbacks for only $9.54 (including tax), with plenty of nice finds that I was grateful to have gotten. Life is good, so perhaps my dreams are simply reflecting my enjoyment of life

Marvel's MYSTIC

Shown here is the cover of a U.K. edition of MYSTIC, published by L. Miller & Son in 1964. According to the Grand Comics Database, the series ran 66 issues from 1960 to 1966, consisting of reprints of US comics including a jumbled mix of Marvel's 1950s horror, post-Code giant monsters, and 1960s Silver Age superheroes.

     What makes this interesting is that MYSTIC was also the name of a long-running (61 issues) horror anthology series published by Marvel from 1951 to 1957. (The first issue debuted a few months before another, even-longer running series you may have heard of: STRANGE TALES.) The publisher Martin Goodman must have liked the name because there was even a (short-lived) MYSTICAL TALES series published concurrently, ending its run the same month as MYSTIC (Aug. 1957) due to the "Atlas implosion." Marvel had also published 14 issues of a MYSTIC COMICS during the early 1940s -- more evidence that Goodman must have thought the MYSTIC name had some selling power.

     (Coincidentally, there was another MYSTIC periodical on the stands in the 1950s, though not a comic book. From 1953 to 1956, Ray Palmer edited 16 issues of MYSTIC Magazine, which was similar in style to FATE Magazine, which he had founded in 1948. Palmer's MYSTIC was retitled SEARCH with issue #17 and continued until his death in 1977.)

     Given all that, it's a bit surprising that Marvel dumped the MYSTIC name after 1957. It's only an accident of history that STRANGE TALES was kept alive while MYSTIC was left to die. The covers of some of the later UK issues give us an idea of what a MYSTIC that survived into the "Marvel age" of the 1960s might have looked like.

     According to Steve Ditko, one of his Marvel characters "wound up being named Dr. Strange because he would appear in Strange Tales." If MYSTIC had survived into the 1960s instead of STRANGE TALES, perhaps the character would have been called Doctor Mystic instead!

     Or perhaps Doctor Strange's frequent description as "Master of the Mystic Arts" (which replaced an earlier tagline, "Master of the Black Arts") was Goodman's own suggestion, bringing back a word that he once felt had commercial appeal.