Farewell, Books Galore

I was very sorry to hear that Books Galore in Erie, Pennsylvania is closing.I went to college at Gannon University in downtown Erie, and Books Galore was my comics shop during those years...and the year or so after I graduated but before I moved to Columbus. So, between 1995 and 2000, I used to visit pretty much as often as I could.Books Galore seemed to be a big, old brick house repurposed into a used bookstore with a comic shop in the middle. At one end of the ground floor was a desk and cash register, at the other, racks of new comics, divided into DC, Marvel and every other publisher, with long boxes of back issues between. This area was bordered by bookshelves, and these were lined with used prose books. (There were a few shelves of trade paperback collection and graphic novels just to the right of the counter, but, back then, such books were still something of a rarity). There was an upstairs, where I think they must have stored more comics and/or books and that was only open…