[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 92 (Thursday, May 26, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2738-S2740]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
RECOGNIZING EARTH PRIME COMICS
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I have long told the story of my love for
Batman comics dating back to my younger years growing up in Montpelier,
VT. When I was 4 years old, I would race to the Kellogg Hubbard Library
in Montpelier with my latest Batman comic. As a child, reading comic
books allowed me, like so many others, to broaden the expanses of my
imagination. While Spider-Man and Superman are fine, I have always
preferred Batman. His values, his pursuit of justice, his balance of
human strength and vulnerability have always resonated with me.
I would like to take a moment today to recognize a store where I have
bought more than my fair share of ``The Dark Knight,'' an institution
foundational to the comic-loving community in Vermont: Earth Prime
Comics.
Founded in 1983, Earth Prime Comics was one of Vermont's first comic
book stores. It began as a shared venture between Christine Farrell and
John Young, first operating out of John Young's attic in Burlington,
VT. In that attic, John and Christine's extensive collection of comics
quickly garnered a surprisingly large following. Earth Prime Comics
soon moved into a real retail space: a converted Victorian house on
Bank Street in Burlington. Requiring even more space for its growing
business, Earth Prime moved to a storefront on Church Street in
Burlington in 1989, a location where it has remained for 33 years.
Over the past few decades, Earth Prime Comics has drawn comic book
fans from across Vermont and forged a comic-loving community where all
were welcome. Christine still owns Earth Prime Comics, and it has been
great to see how she and her team have continued to build and shape
their community to keep pace with the ever-changing comic landscape. In
the years to come, I have full faith that comic lovers of all ages will
continue to
[[Page S2739]]
thumb through the pages of comics in Earth Prime Comics, as I have on
so many occasions.
Earth Prime Comics was recently featured in an article published
earlier this year in ``Seven Days.'' I ask unanimous consent that
excerpts from the article, titled ``Origin Story: How Burlington's
Earth Prime Comics helped unite Vermont's comic lovers,'' be printed in
the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From Seven Days, Mar. 2, 2022]
Origin Story: How Burlington's Earth Prime Comics Helped Unite
Vermont's Comic Lovers
(By Chris Farnsworth)
I was 10 years old, staring at a strange house on Bank
Street.
It was late summer, and my mother was inside the Burlington
Square Mall shopping, so my brother Pat and I were cut loose
to investigate the comic book shop across the street. Shadows
from the trees in the yard cast the house in a mysterious
darkness, making it resemble some Jungian archetype of a
cave.
Pat and I were no rubes, despite our ages--Pat was 9. We'd
been to the comic shops in New York City. We had a growing
collection of X-Men and The New Mutants comics inherited from
family friends. Hell, we had the Longshot miniseries,
something we were rather proud of--and continue to be 30
years later.
Still, the house didn't look like a comic shop, and we
climbed the porch stairs with trepidation. We'd only been
Vermonters for a little while, and when you're the new kids
in town, caution is a defense against disappointment.
I heard Pat gasp and followed his gaze to a poster taped
inside the window. Staring out was the ferocious visage of
Wolverine, leaping at us with adamantium claws drawn. Our
hero.
This was the late 1980s, more than a decade before Hugh
Jackman's Wolverine and the rest of the X-Men ushered in the
age of superhero films dominating multiplexes. Back then, you
wrote letters by hand to the publishers of comic books--and
sometimes they answered. Comics fandom in the '80s was a
club, and Pat and I were pledges standing before the
clubhouse.
Steeling our nerves, we entered the store and breathed in
the smell of newsprint and cardboard, the telltale musk of a
good comic shop. Posters on the walls depicted more of our
favorite characters, alongside many we had yet to discover.
The mystery of these strange heroes and villains filled us
with tension, a curiosity that had to be satiated.
But the real treat was the comics themselves. Even before
we got to see the back-issue room, we salivated over the
sheer number of books on display.
A bearded, longhaired man with a knowing grin looked at the
two kids who'd wandered in with wide eyes.
``Well,'' I remember him saying, almost smugly, ``looks
like you found your place.''
Our place, as the shopkeeper called it, was Earth Prime
Comics. One of Vermont's first comic book shops, Earth Prime
has been a center of the state's comic community since it
moved out of original co-owner John Young's attic and into
that Bank Street house-turned-shop in 1983. The shop has
remained a polestar in its current home on the bottom block
of the Church Street Marketplace, where it moved in 1989.
``Not many places downtown have been around longer,'' said
Bill Simmon, who managed Earth Prime from 1989 to 1998. ``Old
Gold, Pure Pop, maybe a few others? You can count them on one
hand, I bet. Earth Prime is an institution.''
In its 39 years, Earth Prime has fostered generations of
local comic fans, helping some of them go on to become comic
artists themselves. The store has survived and thrived
through the excitement of the underground comics explosion in
the '80s, through the crisis and near collapse of the
industry in the '90s--all the way to the modern epoch when
movies and shows based on Marvel and DC Comics monopolize pop
culture and, some say, draw interest away from their source
material.
The little shop on Church Street is driven by the passion
of its mysterious proprietor, Christine Farrell, who is
rumored to have one of the largest and oldest private
collections of comics on the planet. While Sen. Patrick Leahy
(D-Vt.) may be Vermont's most famous Batman fan, she's said
to have been collecting Bruce Wayne's exploits from the very
beginning.
Farrell's store has been as much a clubhouse for the comic
community to celebrate groundbreaking independent creators as
a place to pick up the latest issue of Iron Man. It's no
longer the only comic store in Vermont--many have come and
gone over the decades, and the state is currently home to
Barre's Wonder Cards and Comics and Rutland's newly opened
Night Legion Comics. But Earth Prime has a special status for
veterans of the scene.
``I have to give all due respect and honor to Earth
Prime,'' Stephen Bissette said. The Duxbury native is one of
Vermont's most influential and respected comic artists,
having established himself with a seminal run in the early
1980s on Saga of the Swamp Thing with Alan Moore. He has
taught for 15 years at the Center for Cartoon Studies in
White River Junction.
Earth Prime has ``outlived every Vermont comic shop I've
ever been to,'' Bissette said. ``Long may that continue.''
It Came From the Underground
Earth Prime's arrival in the '80s was perfectly timed, as
the world of comics was undergoing a revolution on the
national stage. Meanwhile, in Vermont, the store united a
ragtag crew of comic fans into a community.
``I find, with people like us, it's inevitable, right?''
said John Odum, who hosts a podcast about all things geek
called ``Open World Chat.'' ``It's part of being a comic fan.
Eventually, we all start finding each other. It's just a
question of where.''
Odum is the Montpelier city clerk and a freelance writer
for comics sites such as Bleeding Cool. He grew up during the
independent comics revolution of the '80s, when artists like
Bissette and Veitch started pushing back against the
censorship of their youth, working with writers far removed
from the kid-friendly scripts of Stan Lee.
Moore's Watchmen series and Miller's dark, noir-tinged work
on Batman and Daredevil changed the mainstream superhero
books. The arrival of titles such as Cerebus and Elfquest
marked the rise of the underground.
``The 1980s changed comics,'' Odum said. Veitch agrees.
``The '80s for comics were like the '60s for music,'' he
said. ``For a short time, before the moneymen caught on, the
inmates got control of the asylum.''
Earth Prime was at the forefront of that movement in
Vermont. Its reputation drew fans from all over the state.
Don't Call It a Comeback
As the 1980s wound up, the scene changed at Earth Prime.
Amidon left for Massachusetts. Many of the first-generation
Earth Prime kids grew up and either moved away, as Pat and I
did in 1989, or simply lacked the time they once had to hang
out at the shop all day.
``The family atmosphere kind of changed,'' Simmon said.
``It was still fun to be there and talk comics, but look, we
weren't kids anymore. Life tends to get more serious, even at
comic shops.''
In the spring of 1989, Farrell bought out Young's half of
the business and moved Earth Prime to its current spot at 152
Church Street. Though none of the original gang wanted to go
into details, they implied that some sort of schism occurred
between the two founders of Earth Prime. Young opened Comics
City at the other end of downtown Burlington, before moving
eventually to Winooski. Customers were split; many, like
Rovnak, switched over to Young's new store.
Within a few years, the entire comics industry was rocked
like never before, as its own increasing cultural legitimacy
sent it into a boom-and-bust cycle. Collectors started
snapping up ``big event'' books such as The Death of Superman
and Batman: Knightfall, creating a bloat in the speculator
market that coincided with a disastrous decision by Marvel to
bypass the distributors and form its own distribution wing.
When the market crashed, the company was stuck with multiple
printings of variant issues that were meant to be
``collectible'' but are now the exact opposite.
What kept Earth Prime afloat while all the other boats
sank? Farrell herself seems to have been a major factor. Her
clear vision of how to create communities of like-minded fans
would serve her well, as one industry faltered and another
emerged.
In 1989, Farrell opened Quarterstaff Games directly above
Earth Prime. With its medieval-tavern vibe, it's Vermont's
longest-lived gaming shop. Like its sister store,
Quarterstaff has fostered a long-marginalized community and
given them a home--another tribute to Farrell's dedication.
Farrell's tenacity was rewarded as the century came to a
close and the fortunes of comics changed once again. Though
superheroes had made their mark on cinema in the past,
notably with Tim Burton's Batman and Richard Donner's
Superman films, the 2000s saw the rise of Marvel as an
entertainment business. In 20 years, the company went from
barely surviving bankruptcy to being a multibillion-dollar
juggernaut that dominates Hollywood. Disney would buy it in
2009.
For Giordano, that process started at Earth Prime, where
the future illustrator would draw all day at a table beside
the back issues.
``I would never have become an artist if I didn't have
somewhere like Earth Prime,'' he said. ``People there would
see me drawing, whether it was coworkers or customers, and
gave me positive feedback. There's power in that--I started
to think, Hey, maybe I'm not a total piece of shit. Maybe I
have some value. I owe everything to that experience.''
To Be Continued
I remembered Giordano's words as I stared down the front
door of Earth Prime a few weeks ago. I hadn't been inside in
years, but knowing that the store was there hung on me like a
weight, like a gift I couldn't dare take for granted.
I walked inside, unsurprised by the posters this time. The
staff were helping customers or reading comics as hip-hop
played softly over the speakers.
I thought of Shady, the black cat who used to guard the
boxes of comics with a lazy swipe of her paw. I thought about
how I've skipped every school reunion I've ever been
[[Page S2740]]
invited to and how none of them would have felt as much like
an authentic reunion as being inside Earth Prime did at that
moment.
A man roughly my own age walked in, flanked by several
children. One of them, a young girl wearing a white-and-pink
Spider-Gwen hoodie, had a list in hand. She bounced on the
balls of her feet as she browsed from shelf to shelf, humming
quietly.
I looked away, overcome by a rogue wave of emotion. I
seemed to see a thread stretching back through time,
connecting Bissette, Veitch and Farrell hunting the comics
racks to misfits like Giordano and Simmon finding family at a
fledgling shop. That thread reached all the way to the girl
in the hoodie, humming to herself in her happy place. Earth
Prime was hers now more than mine, and I loved that so much
that I felt a strange, damp sensation at the comers of my
eyes.
As I walked away from Earth Prime, I made a mental note to
text my brother. I wanted to say something reflective of the
strange epiphany I'd had standing in the shop. In the end,
though, I decided to keep it simple.
``Dropped by Earth Prime,'' I texted Pat. ``Still the
same.''
(At the request of Mr. Schumer, the following statement was ordered
to be printed in the Record.)
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