ComicsPRO 2011 pt. 2 of 3!

Last Saturday night, after the ComicsPRO meetings ended, Chris Powell of Lone Star Comics, organized a tour of four Dallas comic book stores. Here in this self photo taken on the bus as it departed is Kate and myself (from Alternate Reality Comics in Vegas, of course) in the foreground and on the top left is Jay from Maximum Comics (another Vegas store - he's got two actually) and Derrick from Comic Oasis (yet ANOTHER great Vegas store), with Gary Dills of Laughing Ogre Comics trying to muscle in on the Vegas posse (grin!) on the very far right. Derrick and Jay are good friends of Kate and myself and being as we're all busy with or own stores, we don't get to get together with each other as much as we like, so we got some good hanging out time done in Dallas. And we all got to do some good visiting and sharing of ideas with other fellow retailers, even though they weren't from Vegas (double grin)!
The first store we visited was Keith's Comics and here's Keith welcoming us into his store. Keith's Comics is enormous, which you can't tell from the exterior, it's VERY long and a person could get lost looking at all the treasures within.

I apologize for not having better (or more) photos here on this entry that would give you a sense of these stores if you haven't had the pleasure of visiting yourself, but I will have more interior photos on my Alternate Reality Comics, Las Vegas facebook page tomorrow (blogspot doesn't allow for more than five photos per entry, that's why this ComicsPRO report is in three parts).
The second store we visited was Chris and Richard's Zeus Comics and it is a beautiful, fun store. Zeus Comics is a great example of a modern comic book store, whereas Keith's Comics is a great example of an old school comic book store done right.

In this photo above from left to right is: me (Ralph, natch), Chris (Zeus Comics), Kate, and Richard (Zeus Comics)
The third store on the tour was Wayne's Generation X Comics and this was also a VERY large store with gaming being a very big part of their operation (but comic books were well represented). Wayne and his wife made ribs for those of us that weren't vegetarians or vegans and Kate (not being a vegetarian) was very happy.

In this photo above you can see within the window to the meat room at Generation X Comics, Derrick from Comic Oasis on the left and Chris from Lone Star Comics.
The tour ended at Lone Star Comics, which is another LARGE comic book store (well we were in Texas, where they seem to do everything king sized!) and this store also had a big gaming section, but they also have a large, very nicely displayed selection of the diverse cross section of genres comics encompass. I love their graphic novel shelves!

I want to thank everyone at all four of the stores on the tour for being so hospitable to all of us. Please remember to check out the Alternate Reality Comics, Las Vegas facebook page tomorrow for more photos of all four of these fab Dallas stores!