Comics On the Green

Open since 1992 beside the courthouse green, with non-sport trading cards and CCGs tucked among NEPA's deepest comic back-issue stock.

The name is literal. Comics On the Green sits on North Washington Avenue a block from the Lackawanna County Courthouse, and the courthouse lawn is the green in question. The shop opened in 1992 and has outlasted every other comic retailer in northeastern Pennsylvania, collecting Electric City Magazine's Best Comic Shop in Northeast PA award every year from 2000 through 2017 and a Diamond Comic Distributors Best Of nod back in 1996.

Cards are a real but secondary part of the business, and it's worth being precise about that. The shop's official retailer profile lists non-sport trading cards and collectible card games among what it sells, sitting alongside new comics, back issues, imports, graphic novels, toys, statues, prints and supplies. Customers describe a mix of raw and slabbed material in the cases. If you're hunting graded sports rookies, this isn't your stop; if you want non-sport cards in the same trip as a back-issue dig, it very much is.

The standing discounts are aggressive enough to plan around: 30 percent off every graphic novel, every day, and 50 percent off most back issues. Dollar boxes are shelved alphabetically rather than dumped, which anyone who has spent an hour in an unsorted long box will appreciate. There's a subscription and pull club with early access to new releases, and the shop gives comics away free to kids.

It's open seven days, which almost nothing else in downtown Scranton manages. Tuesdays and Wednesdays run latest at 10am to 7pm; Monday, Thursday and Friday close at 6pm; Saturday runs 11am to 5pm and Sunday 1pm to 5pm. New-comic Wednesday is the busiest day and the best one for browsing fresh stock. Note that one retailer directory lists Tuesday closing at 6pm rather than 7pm — the shop's own site says 7pm, so call ahead if you're cutting it close.

Three decades in, the customer base is genuinely multigenerational, with subscribers who've held pull lists since the late 1990s. The shop ships eBay orders nationally and still answers email at an aol.com address, which tells you most of what you need to know about the institution you're walking into. It's three blocks from the Marketplace at Steamtown, making it an easy second stop on a downtown loop.