Heartaches: Bizarro-Wuxtry, The Remarkable Athens Comic Shop, is Up For Sale

Features Robert Newsome | July 24, 2026 a stunning view of the door In 1992 I moved to Athens, Georgia. One of the first things I did was check out the local comic shop. I was used to a certain type of comic shop from my high school days; the type where Love and Rockets was shelved in the back room next to the pornography because Love and Rockets had the word “mature” on the cover, a place plastered with posters of Batman scowling over a darkened cityscape or close-up drawings of Marvel Comics character The Wolverine. I absolutely wasn’t used to comic book stores like Bizarro-Wuxtry. It was an environment that completely overwhelmed (and permanently re-wired) my late teenage brain. The store was a riot of comics I’d never heard of, ‘zines nobody had ever heard of, and a million other things that I’d never considered the existence of, all piled on top of each other, simultaneously competing for my attention and merging into an amorphous whole of weird new experiences and ideas. Also, Love and Rockets was right there at eye level, on the main shelf, nowhere near any hardcore pornography. I could pick up a copy without feeling weird and ashamed. It was alien territory. I can’t remembe...