Truman's Comics, Waterford, Michigan
Dan Truman fought in World War Two. He had come back from Europe and tried school but didn't care for it. He had a sweetheart who became his wife and together they had two daughters. Sometime in the eighties, whenever it became profitable to trade in baseball cards, he opened a baseball card shop and stocked the extra space with comic books, "vintage" skin mags and sci-fi and fantasy paperbacks.
Over time, his customers clued him in that the better name for his place was Truman's Comics. After a few nights of deliberation, he changed the name of his store to Truman's Comics from Truman's Baseball Cards, Comics, and Your Dad's Old Playboys.
He had his own store. I don't know how business went for him. I really only remember bits and pieces. . . snippets of conversation between him and my mother and father. I reckon the early nineties were good to him, business-wise. But he died in '92.
I must've shopped Truman's Comics for five years. Occasionally, on one of my travels far away from home. . . to Highland Park, say, or Milford, I'd come across a stray comic shop and I would go inside and check them out. I'd flip through the back issues, which they were allowed to sell at unreasonable rates, back then. I checked out their back issues, yeah, but I always saved a few bucks for the new releases I picked up at Truman's. I considered myself a loyal customer.
I never had much money to spend there, but I was consistent. At least twice a month I was in there. I don't think I ever spent more than ten dollars a month. X-Men, Wolverine, Marvel Comics Presents.
I was there, basically, during the X-Men's rise to fame. If you consider the Hollywood adaption of the X-Men to be their crowning moment (or it's shameless demise), I was there just when the LJN Nintendo Entertainment System game came out and Marvel only had two X-Men titles, The Uncanny X-Men and Classic X-Men.
I liked Wolverine. I liked the fact that he seemed to like hurting people and even would go so far as to torture his enemies. I liked the fact that, when his stories were good, the writers kept the moralizing bullshit to a minimum and concentrated on a remorseless, alcoholic woodsman stabbing people to death. A Northwoods Frankenstein. I always thought the writers were just terrible for trying to make him grapple with his own inner demons. It was better when he was just shitfaced and brawling, or stalking someone. I'd still probably be reading him right now if he had the interior monologue of Bukowski.
The X-Men took off and Wolverine was, for awhile, the most popular mutant. I learned to watch for his guest appearances in other titles. Really, Truman got more and more of my money as I grew. He might have been making twenty bucks a month off me up until the end. That's still not much, though. Compared to what I saw other people dropping there. Marvel started milking its fan base for all it was worth.
And I'd see all kinds shuffling in; stoners, skaters, blue collars the age of my Dad, blue collars fifteen years younger than my Dad, dumbass kids, punk kids, guys in expensive leather jackets, girls in halter tops, girls in snowboots and snowsuits. All kinds, I saw Mr. Truman talking to. Always smiled, tried to joke. Never condescended. Never.
Mr. Truman had short gray hair, a beard, wore glasses, had a build that looked like he could have knocked some guys on their asses, back in his prime. He was old. Old and tired. But he gave whatever he had to the store, to the people who shopped there. He was there from noon until eight weekdays, noon to six on Saturdays and stayed home on Sundays.
It was just a second ago that I first thought of what he must have looked like lounging around the house on Sunday afternoon. That's funny to me. To have known the guy for over fifteen years without thinking about how he looked on his recliner.
My father would drop in on Fridays, after he was done with work. My dad wanted to get home, but he'd stop at Truman's for me. Truman would have what I wanted in a bag, waiting for him. When my father got home, I'd stay wherever I was at and listen for the sound of that plastic PassPets bag full of Marvel comics. I'd thank him. And I'd read them and read them again. . .
And I'd call that Friday afternoon, and ask if he had my titles in. It got to the point where he wouldn't even let me finish my question. "Hudson? Yeah, we got your books. Come on in."
I admit I was a pain in the ass on the phone. I must've been. Every time I went in, he'd give me a copy of this Comics News. . . promotional newsletter. And I'd check the dates in the back of that and they were usually wrong. So he got plenty of phone calls from me. I was young and impatient.
Spending time in his store, though, looking back on it. . . I used to take in drawings that I did. Pictures of the X-Men and so on. He'd look at them, tell me to keep it up. He'd ask me how school was going. He'd ask my parents if I'd been behaving well. He let me know if there was a crosscover coming up.
I recall one miniseries released by Epic Comics, Havoc and Wolverine: Meltdown. I'd seen previews for it. It was done in watercolor. Everything written about it contained some variation of the selling-point "FOR MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY." I was thirteen at the time.
When I asked him whether he intended to stock it or not, he said that he wanted my mother to have a look at it before he sold it to me. That thought scared the shit out of me. The thought of her standing there in front of the counter, next to the hogtied stack of Hustlers in plastic bags, reading a comic "FOR MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY."
Wasn't Meltdown a great series? Havoc and Wolverine wind up taking on an evil Russian physicist. . . All in all-too-dope watercolor. And to read Wolverine swearing. . . and to see him pop his claws through the back of some guy's head and actually see the blades bust out of his eye-sockets and knock his glasses off. The artist drew him with a busted, red nose in every panel. . . and he gave him a beergut, too. The adolescent thrill of gore and profanity. There's nothing like it.
But Truman cared enough about his reputation that he didn't want some pissed off mother dragging her son in one hand and the son's comic collection in the other into his store saying it was going to be the last time he saw either of their faces.
I stopped frequenting the place sometime after the new X-Men title came out. The Claremont and Lee one. Comics, by that point, weren't in such hot shape. That X-Men #1 became the greatest selling comic book of all time. Then came marketing thing, that was dirty pool. . . that quasi-indie rush that brought out Image, and Eternity, and Valiant, and the magazine Wizard got really big, too. . . and the artwork was all going toward a McFarlane/Lee/Leifeld kind of thing. . . and the stories were all about undercover paramilitary operations and started reading like Gay Republican Propaganda.
At about that time, I was starting to get into manga. I liked Robotech a lot. Viz was putting out Nausica Of The Valley Of The Wind and Lum. Then Macross II came out. I'd altogether abandoned American comics.
And then old Truman died and my Mom read about it in the obituaries. That night, after my father got home to work, he showered, dressed up a little, help me put on a tie, and we got into the car and drove to the funeral parlor out in Waterford. I was still on my learner's permit. I still remember the setting sun in the rearview mirror, and the way the clouds ahead of me caught the light and turned it golden, and the sky behind them was purple. And there was nothing on the stereo and traffic was light.
His was the first corpse I'd ever seen. I didn't like the looks of it.
His buddy Steve was there. Steve would watch the store some days. That night, he was in the front row, to the right of the casket. He wore a courderoy blazer and bluejeans and cowboy boots. His face was red, especially his eyes. His nose was runny, too.
"He only had one of his own," he muttered. He was holding my hand. "But he had the rest, too. . . Seems like he had them all. . .."
And he was crying again. It was hard funeral to deal with. I understand most are, but you had complete strangers. . . dozens of them, coming in to see this guy that sold them comics, and we all looked like shit. Old Truman was probably the best-looking one there.
You get a different sense of the impact such death leaves, when so many people the family really doesn't know showing up in spades with their hearts in their hands.
I didn't go to Truman's anymore, after that. There would be a silence, there. I knew it. Big Steve and Truman's wife looked after the place for awhile. They lasted nearly a year. Finally, I drove by one day, on my way to the video game rental place, and saw leasing information in their window. I knew there would be a quiet there. I never went in for fear of that no-sound. It would be the sound of no one saying how they missed the guy. The sound of no one saying it would be nice to still have him around. The sound of people accepting loss is silence. I was glad not to hear that silence and relieved to see that leasing sign for reasons utterly cowardly and utterly selfish.