Welcome to Neighborhood Comics
Meet Lee Heidel, Co-Owner of Savannah GA's Comic Book Heaven
Hello New Readers!
It’s been nice to see so many names appear in my inbox over the last few weeks. It seems that a sure way to gain traction on Comic Book Substack is to compliment Mr. Zdarsky, which I am happy to do.
My name is Lee, and I’m co-owner and managing partner at Neighborhood Comics. It’s a small (1,000 sq. ft) indie comic shop located in Savannah, GA and launched on May 4, 2019. In late 2023, we opened a second (even smaller) location, Neighborhood Comics Clubhouse on Savannah’s south side.
Neighborhood Comics Sells Stories
That’s our tagline. Yes, it means we sell comic books - but it also means we make connections, and new stories, pairing readers and collectors with comic creators and lovers of the medium.
We’re proud to help cultivate our comic scene in Savannah which is filled with Sequential Art students, educators and many different levels of professional artists and writers. Our award-winning Artist-in-Residence Program has seen dozens of illustrators interact with the community and spread the gospel of comic arts.
One of Those Stories is Mine
I grew up in a small, rural town without easy access to comics. I did have cartoons, and Super Friends was my favorite. On the rare occasion that I’d find a copy of Batman nestled among the grocery store magazines, I was in heaven. Read it. Re-read it. Try to re-create it. Give up and trace it. Repeat.
I went to college at the University of Georgia in Athens and had access to TWO dedicated comic stores that expanded how I viewed the medium. One was a traditional superhero shop where I caught up on everything I had missed in my childhood, buying up packaged miniseries detailing the exploits of Hawkman and Firestorm. I started pulling Green Lantern monthly.
My other store is still there and almost exactly the way I left it. Bizarro Wuxtry is a safe place for discovering the weird wide world of comics. It’s where I found Milk & Cheese and re-kindled my love of Super Powers action figures. They also had a room of vinyl records where you could pay by the pound. Sadly, that’s gone now. But, they filled it with more comics, so all good.
Comics played a part in choosing my major, Visual Art Education, and building a curriculum focused on applied creative fields like cartooning. I taught for a while. Then I moved, opened a design studio, got married, had a kiddo. Grown up stuff.
But when my daughter was around the age of 5, she fell in love with comics. Thank you, Art Baltazar and Tiny Titans. Unfortunately, like a lot of new readers, she didn’t feel welcome in the local comic shop scene.
More grown up stuff happened. My family moved to Costa Rica. I fell in love with the country and didn’t want to come back. My lovely, kind, understanding wife told me I could open up my own comic shop if I came back to the US. With that push, I got together with some other dads (Raymond and Corbin) and opened the shop with the goal of being new reader friendly and a celebration of all things comics.
New Readers Welcome
For me, new reader friendly means welcoming with open arms everyone that walks in the door regardless of their history with comics, their age, background or their identity. I love to meet curious, excited faces and help them realize the vast landscape that is modern comics. International formats, marginalized creators, TONS of books about cats and yes, even super heroes.
The Future
The business of running a comic shop is hard, messy and clumsy. But the benefits have been life changing. I love this community, my amazing team and still central to it all, I still LOVE selling stories. And once in a while, I even find time to read a couple.