Golden Age Collectables Ltd

Pat Shaughnessy's eyes light up when he recalls the first really exciting comic book he ever bought.

“Detective #50,” he muses. “It was a 1941 Detective Comics with Batman, only a couple of years after Batman was first introduced. I would have been, like, 12. And it would have been the first really old, Golden Age comic I ever owned. I think I paid $12 for it at the time, and I must have looked at that comic a thousand times.”

Comic books are Pat's passion, and today, as the owner of Granville Street's Golden Age Collectables, he's surrounded by them. From a fully stocked newsstand, to graphic novels, manga and trade paperbacks, thousands of new titles fill Golden Age's shelves each month. Plus, there's the affiliated merchandise — everything from action figures to t-shirts, to “Star Trek Pizza-Cutters.” Business is brisk, Pat notes, and the store's customer base is wider than ever before, thanks in large part to the recent explosion of movies like Iron Man and The Avengers, as well as TV series like 'Arrow' and 'Gotham'.

“We get people who have never been in a comic book store in their lives, but they saw a Breaking Bad t-shirt in the window,” he muses. “Or The Walking Dead — we get a lot of people who come in the store who had no idea it was a comic book.”