Fond memories of the old LCS.

Great Escapes

It may perhaps be hard to believe if you didn’t see it for yourself, but there was a time when comic books were readily available in ordinary retail outlets. I can recall seeing them, in the 1970s and 1980s, in four grocery stores, three department stores, at least one convenience store, and a news stand, all in the two neighboring small towns that made up my world growing up. All of these places did not have them at the same time, mind you, but at any given time at least two or three did.

But the number dwindled over time. By the late 1980s there were only one or two. At times there were no outlets at all in our entire county. I missed “Crisis on Infinite Earths” when it came out because there was nowhere to buy comics in my home town. Eventually the lack of outlets became permanent. American comic books had moved almost entirely into the Direct Market of stores that specialized in comics and allied merchandise.

I had heard of the existence of such places during my teen years. I had even caught a couple of glimpses of them during family travels. But not until the early 1990s, when I received a graduate study fellowship and moved to Nashville, Tennessee did I truly make the acquaintance of a direct market store. That place was called The Great Escape.

I lived on a distant corner of Vanderbilt University’s Peabody School of Education campus. On afternoons and early evenings when my brain could study no more and I needed to go for a good walk, I could head down 21st Avenue, past the main campus to Broadway. I’d pass the International House of Pancakes, and San Antonio Taco Company, and many other eateries; past an ugly-looking high-rise that the University owned; past a couple of smallish apartment buildings and Nashville’s smallest public park, essentially a traffic island with a bench, a couple of shrubs, and a sign proclaiming it to be a park.

Past the park was an oddly-shaped block formed by streets that didn’t run at proper right angles to each other. At the tip of it was a large, wedge-shaped dry cleaners. Behind that sat The Great Escape. The nondescript premises informed passers-by that it was a comics shop by means of a series of poster-like signs of comic-book characters. One of these was a giant homage to the notoriously tasteless 1950s cover of a tied-up Phantom Lady. I for one could have done without that. But it did not keep me from entering when I first had the chance to visit.

Inside the place was a bit dimly lit, a bit dingy—a lot like a stereotypical comic book store, yet without the scary, creepy vibe that some of them became notorious for. There were usually lots of browsers there. I had never seen so many comics in my life as when I first entered—long box after long box of back issues of just about every title I’d ever heard of, and many I hadn’t. Long boxes beneath the tables that held the back issues contained the 25- and 50-cent sale comics. Displays on the walls behind the checkout counter that highlighted some of the priciest rarities. One wall by the main entrance had racks and racks of new comics.

There was lots of other stuff too. Like most comics shops Great Escape had tons of models, toys, gamer paraphernalia, and the like. There were as many records, tapes, and CDs as there were comics. For a time there were paperback books (I found a lot of Charles Schulz “Peanuts” reprints there), before these were squeezed out to make way for used VHS video cassettes. Eventually there were used DVDs.

The comics were what I mostly paid attention to. Most of the back issues were only priced for a few bucks apiece. As a grad student I found even these out of my reach. In all the years I patronized The Great Escape I bought little more than “Crisis On Infinite Earths” (Finally I could find out what it was all about!) and some late Silver Age-Early Bronze Age adventures of Batgirl. Otherwise my purchases were almost entirely from the cheap boxes. New comics were not yet so expensive that I couldn’t get a few now and then. But the Dark Age of American comics was well under way, and there was virtually nothing there that looked at all attractive.

I found a lot of stuff to enjoy in the cheap bins. A typical browse turned up a couple or three, or maybe more. It was mostly Bronze Age material. Now and then I’d find something that I remembered seeing as a kid. Sometimes I filled in gaps in my own little collection. Over the years I found perhaps two long boxes’ worth altogether. Sometimes I felt vaguely conspicuous, homing in so obviously on the cheap bins, especially since I didn’t exactly look like a “typical” comics geek. But Great Escape drew a lot of people, and there were lots of “non-typical” fans who came through.

After a time I learned that there was a second Great Escape store in the Nashville area. This one was way up north of town, in the older suburb of Madison. To get to Madison I would drive down Broadway, past my church and into an old downtown that was then somewhere in the middle of its transition from a working retail district to a modern, gentrified “entertainment district.” It still had furniture and feed stores, and some country music tourist traps. Newer establishments like Planet Hollywood were on their way.

I’d cross the Cumberland River into a somewhat desolate area—now largely redeveloped—of empty lots and isolated low-end retail stores like UFO—United Furniture Outlet. North of here I’d proceed up Gallatin Pike, past blocks of worn-down industrial establishments, a couple of churches that looked like they’d seen better days, an abundance of liquor stores, a forlorn-looking daycare. There was an old-fashioned movie palace that had been turned into a salvage yard. There were worn retail blocks, laundromats, hamburger stands, bars, and a beautiful old Carnegie library that still belonged to the public library system. There were plenty of thrift stores, and used furniture and appliance dealers.

Eventually, as Gallatin Road ran into the suburbs, things would spread out and look a little newer, and sometimes a little nicer. Past the Briley Parkway intersection lay Madison, with its own downtown business district left over from the days before the Nashville Metropolitan Area swallowed it. Here were lots of pawn shops, and one of those short-lived hole-in-the-wall comics shops that popped up all over the place during the early ‘90s, and, in later years, a couple of new art galleries.

Just past Old Hickory, Nashville’s outer ring road—I was getting pretty far north by now—came an older shopping center where sat the Madison Great Escape location. It was about as nondescript on the outside as the one on Broadway. Inside it was a bit lighter, and a bit smaller. It was still a good-sized store, with a full selection of the sorts of merchandise that the other store carried. There were plenty of cheap bins to explore, and plenty of music recordings to look at on the rare occasions that I was in the mood for that.

With gas money tight I didn’t drive anywhere more than a few times a week. The trip up to Madison was usually worth it. There were periods when I’d go up there once every week or two. Other times I might go months without getting north of town. Sometimes I’d go up on a Saturday afternoon and see other sights out that way. It wasn’t all that much farther to a couple of bookstores, or to Goodlettsville and its antique malls. There were even some areas not too far away that had so far remained semi-rural. Sometimes I’d drive to these just to get out of the city for a bit.

My fondest memories, though, are of heading up to Madison after supper on a weekday evening, just to get a break from the usual routine back home. I’d drive up to The Great Escape there, browse for an hour or so, and head back down Gallatin toward home. By then it would be dark, or, if it was in the summer, at least along toward dusk. I’d take in all the lights in the business districts along the way, the illuminated signs, and the bars and hamburger joints that were still open. Though I never truly felt at home in the big city, I did kind of like seeing those lights, and all that activity, especially under an evening sky. It had its own kind of beauty that the area lacked by daylight. When it rained there was another kind of beauty, of lights seen through water and reflected from puddles, that’s hard to describe.

Just north of the river everything looked desolate and deserted in the evening. There would not even be many cars. But I could see the Nashville skyline across the river. It never looked better than it did from that angle at night. Best of all were those rare evenings when I saw it at just the right moment, the high-rises dwarfed by the vast purple of the twilight sky.

Back on the south bank of the Cumberland I could head up a quiet street and avoid almost all traffic and people. Or, if I was in the mood, I could drive through the downtown blocks past the street-level night life and the lights of the tourist traps and other leisure spots, observing it for a bit without actually joining it. Eventually I’d make it back past Vanderbilt’s main campus, and back home, ready to take a look at the comics I’d bought.

Over the years The Great Escape had two other stores in Nashville (They had still more in other cities, none of which I’ve ever visited). One store was right downtown, practically on the river. It was short-lived. The one time I visited I recall it having had lots of Bronze Age JLA comics. I managed to get a couple of JLA/JSA team-up issues.

The other location was a half-price store on a side street within a couple of blocks of the big Broadway establishment. It was only open a couple of days a week. I usually went there on a Friday after work. They had lots of junk and near-junk comics and audio. My cheap-bin finds continued there. Sometimes I’d spot, among all the old superhero titles, some cheap indie stuff with titles like “Mauritania Comics” and “Tompets.” I wish now that I’d snagged some of these items, just for curiosity’s sake. The half-price place was still going when I left Nashville in the 2000s.

As of last year the Madison store was still there. The Broadway place relocated some years back to Charlotte near White Bridge Road. I found it on a visit to Nashville—fortunately I knew that area fairly well—and checked it out. Inside it was pretty much The Great Escape as I remembered it, just reconfigured a bit for a different location. The place still had lots of records and other music, lots of videos, and lots and lots of comics.

I still visit both Great Escape locations on my biennial visits back to Nashville. I’ve found a few music CDs I liked, and some videos—you can find anime there now, and lots of old movies—and of course I still browse through the comics. I’ll look through everything carefully, knowing that I won’t be back for a long time. Typically I’ll haul out a little batch of comics from the cheap bins, a couple of DVDs, perhaps a music CD, and a marked-down trade paperback or two. I’ll go to the checkout counter and pay for it all, and take my bag out to the car. From here I’ll head back toward the motel where I’m staying, glad to have made one more Great Escape.

Article on The Great Escape, just before the Broadway location moved.

https://nashvillest.com/2010/09/29/the- ... gs-goings/

At some point before that photo was taken the posters I mentioned had been moved so that they were no longer visible outside.