Comic Shop Review: Vortex Comics, Milwaukee, WI

The entrance to the Vortex

There are a few different kinds of comic book stores. Some stores are about comics and games. Some are about comics and pop-culture. Some are just about new comics books and trades. Vortex Comics is just about comics, new and old.

Located in the west/southwest of Milwaukee's outskirts, Vortex occupies the bottom floor of an older and rather plain building. The building is beige, and on the day I visited with the expansive gray April skies, the train tracks near the street, and the flat land stretching out in front and behind me, the brightly colored posters and paintings in the windows added some much needed color and texture to the setting. 

JR surveys his domain

Inside the store is equally modest, but everything Vortex eschews in flash it makes up for in comics. New books are lined up in shelves along the walls. They keep several of the last months books available for none subscribers. The comics are divided by publisher, Marvel, DC, & independents. The books were in a sort of alphabetical order, but I couldn't quite tell how that alphabet ran along the shelves. Sometimes it went left to right across several shelves, sometimes just a single shelf, and I swear in one location they were alphabetical vertically. I sorted it out, and I had no trouble asking the very approachable and helpful shop owner JR.

Mike, pushing the rock

Aside from the new books the center of the store is dominated by a series of shelves that house several hundred long boxes of back issues. The upper section of bagged and boarded issues vary in price. I plugged some holes in my collection and completed my Secret Wars (III?) collection. The bottom two tiers are filled with dollar books, lots and lots of dollar books. I filled some more collection wholes, and based on the number of issues they had in the run I started a Morrison Doom Patrol collection.

The day I visited, and probably most everyday, the shop owner JR was running the till. Very friendly, knowledgeable, and helpful. He even offered to dig for other books I was looking for but didn't see while I was there and mail them to me, even though they may only be dollar books. JR's shop assistant Mike handled the Sisyphean task of restocking the collection bins. Pulling from the back stock and working from A-Z replacing books and noting where acquisitions need to be made, and by the time he reaches the end of the alphabet it's time to restart the beginning again.

Honestly, the organization of the back issues was pretty phenomenal. I've seen smaller collections in much larger state of disarray. This as much as anything showed the amount of love for the store, and the product. Both JR and Mike bantered politely, and the shop talk didn't delve into anything off-color. JR gave me a full tour and even a quick carpentry tutorial on how to build long box shelves of my own.

If I lived in the area there is little doubt that this would be my comic shop of choice. The stores focus is clear and the care given to the product is evident in that focus. Tons of back issues, plenty of new issues on the shelves. This may not be the shop for the casual fan but if you like comics it is the place for you.