Some time in the late seventies, I wandered into a tiny comic book shop on Melrose Avenue here in Los Angeles. The sole employee was its owner, a large and friendly guy named Bill who had opened the place less than a month earlier. We got to talking and he wondered why I knew so much about comics but wasn't buying any of them. I explained that I had all the old ones he had in the store and the new ones were shipped to me each month by their respective publishers — for free. He said, "How do you arrange that deal?" I told him I wrote comics and he was startled. I was, he said, the first "pro" to come into his shop. I told him I wouldn't be the last and to prove it, the next day I brought Steve Gerber by.
Bill Liebowitz and I became friends. Later, we got into a little money dispute which ended that friendship and my visits to his store but I still liked the guy and I admired his skill as a retailer. He understood how to run a comic book store which was not the case with most folks who ran comic book stores in the early eighties. Golden Apple quickly moved from its small location on Melrose to a larger one a block away…and has since moved to yet another store on Melrose where it now resides. There was a time when it stood out as probably the best-run comic store in the country and I'm told it's continued that way since Bill passed away in 2004.
These days, comic shops have taken a serious hit because so many people sell comics on eBay. So that's why it's ironic — and sad in a way — to see that Golden Apple Comics is for sale on eBay. I like that the terms of sale specify "local pick-up only."