Midtown Comics
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| Private | |
| Industry | Retail |
| Founded | 1997 |
| Founder |
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| Headquarters | New York City, New York, United States |
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Number of locations
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3 stores (2010) |
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Area served
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Worldwide |
| Products | |
| Website | midtowncomics |
Midtown Comics is a New York City comic book retailer with three shops in Manhattan and an e-commerce website. The largest comic book store in the United States, the company opened its first store in the Times Square area in 1997. Its second was opened on Lexington Avenue in 2004, and is known as the Grand Central store for its proximity to Grand Central Terminal. Its Downtown store was opened on Fulton Street in the Financial District in November 2010. It also operates a boutique inside Manhattan's Times Square Toys R Us.
The store is noted for appearances by celebrities known outside the comic book industry, for its friendly and energetic staff, and for being the most media-friendly comic store in the United States. It was named by The Village Voice in 2012 as the Best Comic Book Store in New York, and has been hailed by Comic Book Resources as "the industry’s leading retailer of comic books, graphic novels and manga." On July 13, 2012, the National Geographic Channel premiered Comic Store Heroes, a reality television program set at Midtown Comics. Due to its geographic proximity to the headquarters of the "Big Two" of the American comic book publishing industry, Marvel Comics and DC Comics, and the relationship between the store and industry professionals, it was ranked number 44 on Bleeding Cool magazine's 2013 Top 100 Power List of Comic Books.
Midtown was founded by partners Gerry Gladston, Angelo Chantly, Thomas Galitos and Robert Mileta, who met as teenagers in Astoria, Queens, and later sold comics in their video stores in Brooklyn and Queens before opening Midtown Comics in Manhattan, which houses approximately 500,000 books in its collection. According to The New York Times:
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