Every week, we’ll be featuring a local comic book shop that our staff and/or our readers believe is worth celebrating. In Episode #2, I visited my personal go-to shop: Hall of Justice Comics & Collectibles in Parker, Colorado. I stumbled on Hall of Justice a few years ago and owner Jon Garnett’s store immediately became my family’s first stop whenever we’re searching for a specific comic, collectible, or when we’ve just got time to kill. Most recently, we’ve been stopping by each week for a new Scooby-Doo! and Krypto, Too! book – part of a weekly post-swimming lesson incentive for my four-year-old. I saw down with Jon just days after Hall of Justice celebrated its 10-year anniversary – with a star-studded celebration that included a number of well-known comic writers and artists.
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Hall of Justice Comics & Collectibles
| Website: hallofjusticecomics.com | Email: [email protected] |
| Address: 10136 Parkglenn Way #109, Parker, CO 80134 | Facebook: HallofJusticeComics |
| Phone: (303) 484-9103 | Instagram: HoJComics |
The Hall of Justice Comics & Collectibles Origin Story
Ben Kendrick: How did you get into comic retail? As a kid, were you into this kind of thing or what brought you to this point where you’ve got your own store?
Jon Garnett: As a parent, you always want your kids to do more, to read more, to do more sports, et cetera. As a kid, we were familiar with comics. I grew up down in Pueblo. We did a lot of local trips, camping trips, and we’d pack the RV up and we’d always inevitably stop in little mountain towns and gas stations – and raid the spinner rack. We didn’t have phones. We didn’t have those pre-Game Boys. And so this was your entertainment. If you’re going to be in a car for however many hours, you better have books or something else with you to keep yourself entertained. And that’s my brother and I, that’s what we did. And then it got to the point where going shopping off a spinner rack as a kid is frustrating because you have no idea where you’re in whatever story. You get a piece of this puzzle and then the next place you go has nothing like the books that you already picked up.
So we found a local shop down in Pueblo and my dad took my brother and I there – and we set up hold slots. We were buying comics for all of the wrong reasons at the end of the eighties, beginning of the nineties with the entire almost-implosion of the comic book industry. There was still good stuff: Hellboy came out of that, and I have a huge love for Hellboy. McFarlane’s Spider-Man was at that time, the Death of Superman, all that stuff. Then you get older, you get into high school, and there’s sports and cars and girls. And comic books get pushed to the back and you walk away from it.
That’s what I did throughout high school. And then in college, I was working at a little mom and pop pet shop in Greeley. And a buddy of mine who worked at the store was like, “Oh my God, Hal Jordan. They’re bringing Hal Jordan back to life!” Because he had been dead after being Parallax and the Spectre and all that stuff. And that was right when Jeff Johns did Green Lantern: Rebirth. And he’s like, “We have to go find a shop to check that out.” It wasn’t like the Rebirth, the event from a couple of years ago, it was just the Green Lantern: Rebirth. And then we did Flash: Rebirth and they brought Barry Allen back. It was such a good time. That’s also when you had Warren Ellis writing Iron Man – and so all the extremist stuff with Iron Man was awesome.
We set up a whole slot and we’d go over there once a month to pick up books and read everything. Then I found like the initial collection that we opened this store with, there was a guy in Greeley who had had a shop in the 60s and 70s, but all of the comic books were in a buddy’s garage. His buddy was selling his house and he needed to move all of this stuff out of his garage. He was renting an apartment up there and could rent a single car garage in that apartment complex for stupid cheap. He actually rented three garages: one for comics and, total hoarder, two for all of his other crap that he had.
When we eventually graduated college, my wife and I moved down here to Parker and, I told him, “Let me buy this from you because you have no time to mess with it. I was trying to list stuff on eBay and trying to do little bits and pieces. And so we bought that and that’s what we opened the original store with. It was that back issue collection. So, here we are ten-plus years later.
Ben: Yeah, you just had the anniversary.
Jon: Yeah, it was last Saturday.
Ben: How’d that go?
Jon: It was awesome. Normally the upstairs looks like this (boxes on tables for processing new collections), but we had 21 local people and published creators here for it. 21 guests here upstairs that either wrote or drew or did fan art or something like that. It was busy.
Ben: That’s got to be really satisfying to know ten years later that, I don’t want to say figured it out, I’m sure there’s a lot of challenges still.
Jon: I don’t know. I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m making this all up as I go. It’s the stupidest industry in any kind of retail environment, comic books. I bang my head against the table every week on how to order and stuff. It’s still amazing. It’s really awesome.
What Makes Hall of Justice Comics & Collectibles Stand Out
Ben: What do you feel makes the shop special? I think one of the things – and I was talking to Wayne about this – Time Warp was really great for me because Wayne knew everything and was also a personable person. But it’s so much more dynamic now with collectibles and toys and cards – it’s more complex of a business – and shops have to do unique things to survive.
Jon: I think providing a welcoming space that’s available to anybody, without turning your nose up or discriminating against somebody, that’s what we aim to be. If you like the old adage: “If you build it, they will come.” We’ve had this community that’s grown up around the store and it’s because we bend over backwards to try to help people. We had a lady in here yesterday, and it’s intimidating. You walk into a store, you know a little bit. Maybe you’ve seen a Marvel movie or a Marvel TV show, and you’re like, “I want to go dig.” Superman was the perfect example this summer with James Gunn’s Superman movie. We had tons of people that came in. They’re like, “Where do I start?” And that’s a character that’s been around for almost 80 years.
Do you want silly, goofy 60s Superman that’s very kitschy and kind of out of place with the current reality? Or do you want something that’s a little more current? So having staff members that are able to navigate that interest and help them find something that they’re really going to love. Also making recommendations, “You should try this if you like Superman” or “Have you read Invincible? Have you seen the Invincible show?” I like to think we’ve created a welcoming environment and it partly is my wife’s fault.
My wife didn’t want us getting to the point of setting up this store and it might not feel right. We traveled around, we visited a ton of comic book shops and there’s a, there’s a stereotype, right? The Simpsons comic book guy. The dark, the dingy, the disorganized, the “What are you doing here?” mindset. We wanted to break that mold and be family-friendly and welcoming. I have, my oldest is eleven, my youngest is nine, and they have both grown up in and around the store. So we wanted someplace where, young kids to old guys – to everybody in between – can come in and feel it all.
Ben: I think that comes across because, for one thing, it is very, bright and colorful in here and it does feel very clean and organized. My daughter is the one that I’ve been bringing in and we would go get, I think I was saying this to you in the email, straight for the kids corner – and go get the early-reader Scooby-Doo! and Krypto, Too! comics. She’s very into Krypto and Scooby-Doo and that kid corner that you’ve set up is accessible for her to participate in it all. She can go over there and see characters she knows and get that seed planted. Get her reading and interested in this kind of thing.
Jon: Kids nowadays have grown up on a diet of graphic novels, even though they don’t know it, Dog Man and Cat Kid and all of that stuff. We’re prepping a whole new generation of comic book readers that don’t know that they’re comic book readers. You know what I mean? And it’s funny because the kids are going to class and the school is saying, “You can do book reports, but no graphic novels.” And I’m like, “What do you mean no graphic novels? There’s great stuff out there. Come on. Some of that’s better than some of the books that they would end up reading.”
How DC Studios and Marvel Studios Can Better Support Local Shops
Ben: One of the things that I’ve always been interested in, from the time that we started building Screen Rant, and rode that Avengers interest wave, one of the things that still appears difficult, is to get the same people who go see those movies into a store like yours – and really invest. What do you think is the remedy to that?
Jon: It’s a big problem to solve. Yeah, that’s the million-dollar question. We’ve seen it. I mentioned Superman from this summer because in all of the years that there have been Marvel movies, we never get people in the door saying, “Give me Avengers. I love the Avengers movies. I want to read more about them.” We have it all the time with TV shows like Umbrella Academy, a huge influx of people that were looking for that source material. Invincible. I can’t keep the silly Invincible compendiums in stock because people watch it on TV and come in here for more. So, I don’t know why people watching the serialized version of these characters are more prone to seek out the source material – versus the big blockbuster movies.
I really wish I knew how to crack that mold. But Superman was an anomaly because, again, he’s had a million movies, not a million movies, but he’s had a bunch of movies. And to have people that went out to see it, that obviously felt a connection with the character, which is hard to do, right, because he’s all-powerful, he’s everything, was really cool to see. And then to bring them in and be like, all right, you need to check out All-Star Superman. You need to check out all of these different Superman collections that have been around forever. I don’t know how to answer it. I wish I knew a sure-fire way to get more people in. Because it’s like there are Marvel Cinematic Universe fans, and then you’ve got Marvel Comic Universe fans, and they overlap a lot less than you might think.
Ben: It’s true. I wish that the studios had done more to support you guys – because there is a lot more that could be done. Maybe Gunn will be a guy who can do that because he comes from that world but I’m still surprised there isn’t some way that, when the movie is done, there’s a stinger or something that says “If you want to read more about this character or this world, here are the books that inspired this film.
Jon: Here’s the comic book shop locator – and a QR code.
Ben: It just it seems like such an easy layup for them because you’d be getting people invested in ways beyond when a new movie is out – and they grow to understand or appreciate the characters more. Then when another movie comes out, they’ll say “Now that I’ve read this…”
Jon: “That wasn’t how it was in the comic book.” [Laughs]
Ben: [Laughs] Maybe that’s why the studios don’t do it then. Keep these people as far away from the comics as possible so they don’t realize the books are better.
Comic Book Recommendations from a Decade of Hall of Justice – Including Must-Read Indie Titles
Ben: Recommendations. When someone comes into the store and they say, “I’m new to comics,” what are the books that you point them towards?
Jon: With the big two, with DC and Marvel, the Absolute line right now from DC or the Ultimate line from Marvel. They’re easy to get a hold of and the stories are great. The art is fantastic. Those two have brought more new readers, more new people who are interested, into the store the last couple of years – more than any other initiative that I’ve seen from any of the big two. Outside of that, I’m a huge fan of Rick Remender. So anything that he writes, I’m all in on. Low is one of my all-time favorites. It’s space fiction. The art is absolutely beautiful. I like to push indie books because I think indie books have more of a personal hook than the superhero stuff does. The horror stuff, sci-fi, Harrow County by Cullen Bunn. If you’re looking for silly, goofy stuff, The Goon by Eric Powell, any of that stuff.
I think if you can break out of the superhero mindset, open your eyes to all of the indie stuff that’s out there. I think there’s way more to be fulfilled with reading the indie books. Not that there’s anything wrong with the superhero stuff. That’s what pays the bills and for good reason, there’s a lot of great stuff in those books.
Ben: It’s the thing we struggle with too, as entertainment media: supporting indie publishers, studios, and game developers. We’re obviously a business, we’re trying to reach new audiences, and go where our readers want to be. So a disproportionate focus is on pop culture characters. It’s great that you have such a passion for the indie books and are advocating for them. Because you’re right, there is a lot of great stuff out there. We try to highlight what we can but there are definitely great books we’re not covering.
Jon: I just like to remind people there’s a world beyond capes and cows. Just step out of your comfort zone and try something different.
Thanks to Jon for taking the time to talk with us! A reminder that Hall of Justice Comics & Collectibles’ contact information is highlighted at the top of this article. It is our hope that readers will take the opportunity to follow and support all of the shops we feature in this series.
Want to see your favorite comic book retailer spotlighted on the site? Remember to submit your local shop for consideration by e-mailing us at [email protected].
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