Page 45 - The best comic shop in Nottingham, if not the whole world...

Fifteen years ago two guys running a comicbook store in the basement of what was then a Virgin Megastore in Nottingham decided that they’d had enough of working for someone else and opened up their own shop somewhere with better air-conditioning and fancier décor.  Page 45 was born, and Nottingham could from then on boast that it contained the finest comicbook shop in the country.  In 2004 the shop won the inaugural Diamond Comics Award for Best Retailer in the UK, and that made it official, but anyone who’d been in there knew that already.  Matthew Dick of exquisitethings and Robin Lewis talked to Stephen Holland, one of the two guys who created the bookshop, about this 15th anniversary.

Page 45 was founded in 1994 and has gone from strength to strength since you first opened your doors. What inspired you to open Page 45 in the first place?

Panic.  It was an act of sheer desperation. Mark and I were working for a comic book chain that we knew full well was broken and about to go under at any second. So we asked each other, what else could we do?

In 1993 Mark and I organised the Aardvarks Over UK Tour. Dave Sim and Gerhard travelled the British Isles from Aberdeen to London on a 14-day, 9-stop tour to promote their 6,000 page magnum opus CEREBUS. The sheer scale of this endeavour and its subsequent success for a quality comic book not widely embraced by other retailers gave us the slightest inkling that we were more than capable in terms of professional acumen. It also turned us onto the fact that there was a massive untapped market out there for quality comic book fiction.

The legendary Bryan Talbot

After our Nottingham CEREBUS gig we decided that we could do a much better job if Mark and I opened up our own shop. On our own terms, with our own budget, our own aesthetics, and our own bias towards what I've since coined as "real mainstream" material: pure comicbook fiction, politics and autobiography by the likes of Nabiel Kanan, Posy Simmonds, Eddie Campbell, Bryan Talbot, Kyle Baker, Los Bros Hernandez, David Mazzucchelli, Alison Bechdel, Joe Sacco, Jeffrey Brown and John Porcellino & co.

The shop bears very little resemblance to the average comic book store. Nothing about your exterior screams ‘we sell comics’ unless you happen to be familiar with the art or characters on display.

Our window displays are designed to lure new people in by mistake, and it works. That was always Mark's conscious goal: to lure new people in with his magnificent window displays, a tradition we've continued with a little help from our more creative friends.

If you don't currently read comics, and you hold the stigmatic preconception towards them that the 'real mainstream' understandably does, then until they encounter what we stock instead, they're just going to think, "Comics: I don't read them, so I don't need to go inside". That's why we never pop physical comic books in the window, instead we have handcrafted artifacts inspired by them. Just like we don't have the word "comics" in our name.

We're still asked by newcomers on a daily basis, "Why are you called Page 45?" It's very gratifying since the precise reason we called ourselves Page 45 was to provoke Joe Public into asking why. If you ask us, then you've already asked yourself, and if you've asked yourself, you've already remembered our name. Scott McCloud called it "style positive, content neutral". And given that we'd actually named Page 45 after the 45th page of Scott McCloud's UNDERSTANDING COMICS, well, we'll take that accolade and run.

Scott McLoud is the reason they're not called Page 44 or Page 43 or Page 42 or bibliography or...

Could you say more about the way you’ve chosen to present the shop and the underlying principles behind those decisions?

Sure. Superheroes are at the back so they don't put off the women; everything with a spine is at the front so it looks like a bookshop.  We stole the whole thing from Waterstone’s fifteen years ago, right down to having the big book plinth front-centre, so that books are stacked up on top of it just like you'd see in a bookshop. The principal is very simple indeed: lure people in by deceit, keep them comfortable by giving them surroundings they're familiar with, then make yourself available to answer questions.

How do you approach someone who’s completely new to comics?

It can be a little daunting for newcomers but the key is to understand that, then cater for it. So we make ourselves as approachable as possible without being too pushy. A gentle "Hello!" as each new person wanders in and, if we get the chance to make eye contact easily as they pass by the counter, "If you have any questions, just shout". It's a sort of "I'm here if you need me" whilst backing off to allow people to browse at their leisure and not feel harassed. 50% of the time there's an immediate response with an immediate question, so thank God we make the effort.

Do you think you're still one-of-a-kind as far as comic shops go?

Thankfully, no. For a start Josh, who owns and runs Gosh! opposite the British Museum in London, is an inspired professional I've always admired, and one of our old customers Jared Myland opened OK Comics in Leeds. I also hear very good things from Dave's Comics in Brighton.
 
But Page 45 remains one of the very few exceptions which stocks as wide a range of subject matter as you'll find in any prose bookshop: politics, travel, autobiography, satire, straight fiction, crime, sex and science fiction. It's all here, only in the form of gloriously delineated graphic novels. Plus, as opposed to the highest-bidding publishers determining what will be in Waterstone's windows this Christmas and beyond, Page 45 is entirely autonomous in what we promote. We jettison the average, leaving us space to shelve and window-dress what we personally believe in, then Tom, Jonathan, Dominique and I make damn sure that we're there paying attention on the shop floor to help you in your quest to find the very best books to suit your own personal tastes. Please, please just ask!
 
Given the thriving nature of your business over the last fifteen years, why do you think more people haven't followed your lead?

It's a question of faith. Mark and I always had faith that quality and accessibility will undoubtedly triumph. That individuals would flock to the books that actually have something to say, and the skill with which to say it. Perhaps no one out there in the UK believes that we honestly sell what we say we do in such vast quantities, and that we don't have a 50/50 male/female customer base. I say, come on in and take a look around: there are boys dragging their girlfriends out of the shop, not the other way around. I say, we've just signed another five-year high-street lease because we've been breaking our own records in an economically freezing-cold climate. It's faith and it's passion, and it's all about trust.

Persepolis is a 2007 animated film based on Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical graphic novel of the same name

Are comics becoming more mainstream, inch by painful inch, or do you think that the occasional blips in media attention (like Jimmy Corrigan, or Persepolis) are just that: blips?

The last time that comics hit the headlines was twenty years ago with the holy trinity of Maus, Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns (still lazily referenced by journalists who patently haven't read anything since - or even then), there wasn't that wealth of material in the US and UK to back them up and build a momentum.
 
Now it's totally different. Now the likes of Jonathan Cape are fighting their competitors to publish the works of much lauded comicbook creators, like Dr. Bryan Talbot (Alice In Sunderland now in its umpteenth printing, and Grandville released last week), Lynda Barry (What It Is) and Alison Bechdel (Fun Home). Plus they know what to do with their established creators like Posy Simmonds MBE who has always produced incredible works in comics like Gemma Bovery and Tamara Drewe which the adult Guardian readers have relished for years without for one second thinking that they were reading comics. I imagine William Hogarth subscribers were similarly oblivious to what they were purchasing with The Rake's Progress portfolio of prints: they were buying comics!
 
No blip now. Fifteen years ago, there were a mere 100 graphic novels worth keeping in stock. Today we have 5,000 different titles, so if you stroll into Page 45 we can recommend as top quality more than five graphic novels about the specific subject or theme of your choice. This time we have the back-up, and then some.

Visit Page 45's website

 

Page 45's fifteenth anniversary