[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.)

                          ____________________