Comic Emporium

Open until 10PM six nights a week, Comic Emporium pairs Panama City's oldest comic counter with TCG singles and a themed set of gaming rooms.

Comic Emporium opened its doors on March 1, 2000, which makes it the oldest comic and game shop still trading in Panama City. Twenty-six years in, the store has grown sideways into a warren of named spaces rather than one big room. There is Board Game Boulevard for tabletop, the Library Arcanum for roleplaying, the Grinning Imp Tavern, the CE Game Cave, and a Barrel o' Dice that the shop cheerfully describes as world famous.

For card collectors the relevant corner is the TCG section, which carries boxes, packs and singles across the major games plus the sleeves, toploaders and binders to keep them from getting dinged on the drive home. It sits alongside a comic inventory running past fifteen thousand back issues, so a visit tends to turn into a longer browse than planned. Anyone hunting trading cards in Panama City who also reads floppies will find the two-in-one trip efficient.

Events run constantly and lean tabletop. A recent Saturday block was given over to a Power Rangers: Heroes of the Grid learn-to-play demo and tournament with a free Power Coin for every participant, which is a fair sample of the programming: low barrier to entry, prize support that skews toward giveaways rather than cash, and a deliberate effort to keep new players from feeling like they wandered into somebody else's hobby.

The hours are the shop's structural advantage over every other card counter in the county. Monday through Saturday it runs ten in the morning to ten at night, a straight twelve-hour day, six days a week. Sunday shortens to one until seven. That means it is one of very few places in Panama City where you can browse singles at nine on a weeknight after work or after dinner.

The store sits on US Highway 231 just north of the 23rd Street junction, an easy pull-in with parking out front. Special orders are available for anything not on the shelf, and the shop keeps an active Discord and Facebook presence where event changes get posted first, so it is worth checking before driving in for a specific tournament.