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Fantagraphics’ Jason Miles visits Un Regard Moderne, a comics shop in France.

1 COMMENT

  1. That place is AMAZING, and just as crowded as it looks in the picture. And there’s a great little restaurant, Au Jardin, across the street.

  2. That’s my apartment! When the piles collapse, I box up the books. Months later, I search for something, and find all sorts of surprises! It’s like Christmas!

    (The same thing happens when I visit Nebraska. That archive runs from 1969-1993, and includes impressive runs of Playboy and MAD Magazines.)

  3. When I see shops that look like that, I usually back out slowly. I know size is the problem, but it looks like a ton of disorganized comic shops that most people would go out of their way to avoid.

    If there was a fat guy in an Asterix shirt arguing about Tintin the translation would be complete.

  4. Reminds me of a curious used book shop in Saratoga Springs, NY, built in a labyrinthine series of rooms and tunnels in an old bank vault. Every turn brings new treasures, loosely organised by theme, like exploring an Egyptian tomb. It was marvellous. Possibly hazardous. Exactly what a bibliophile’s bomb shelter would look like.

    I think I would simply pass out from joy if I went into that shop in France. to me it gives more a bookstore vibe than a “creepy comics den” vibe.

    And it does look like what my home is turning into….

  5. Awright!!!! So,…no more crap about poorly organized, cluttered, fanboy operated American comic shoppes,…see!

  6. Heh heh, interesting to read the comments that the photo of that shop resembles their office/apartment/etc. Ditto here. And that doesn’t count the many many boxes full of gns and manga that are filling up my older son’s former bedroom (he did move out before I took it over …).

  7. Torsten, I’m impressed that you even managed to smuggle Playboy and Mad Magazine past customs in Nebraska.

    With Nebraska being such a third world nation and all…

    ~

    Coat

  8. Kat Kan, with all the nagging I get from my mother about all the comics boxes I still have at her house, I find it hilarious that you have done the opposite. This is the first time I ever heard of a parent taking over their kid’s room to house their comics!

    The one and only time I was in Europe, I was in Brussels. I kept finding all these bande desinee strores; beautiful high-end bookstores full of hardback graphic novels. Then I came across one little store that sold all American comics, and it looked just like the stereotypical cramped, cluttered, American hole-in-the-wall geek store!

  9. “Awright!!!! So,…no more crap about poorly organized, cluttered, fanboy operated American comic shoppes,…see!”

    Yeah, but this one is mostly stuffed with GOOD comics.

  10. Note that this is an extreme example. In Paris there is a lot of huge, well-ordered comic stores.

    Best,
    Hunter (Pedro Bouça)

  11. Yes, I concur– Un Regard Moderne is probably the single most cluttered and cacaphonous bookstore I’ve ever seen, at least– it makes Emil Lizzardo’s room in the insane asylum (and Buckaroo Banzai fans in here?) look like a warehouse furnished exclusively in Shaker furniture.

  12. It’s my favorite place in Paris. Not just comics, but as others have noted, cool literature, art books, hand made zines, everything. It had stuff I’ve never seen anywhere else, but I only had 40 euro.