Downtown Comic Book Store Bizarro-Wuxtry Prepares to Leave Its Space After 35 Years – Flagpole
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Downtown Comic Book Store Bizarro-Wuxtry Prepares to Leave Its Space After 35 Years
Across from the front counter at Bizarro-Wuxtry, newer releases beckon readers. Credit: Jarrod Lipshy
by Jarrod Lipshy<a href="https://comicvibe.com/uniqlo-pokemon-ut-collection-launches-july-24/” title=”UNIQLO Pokémon UT Collection Launches July 24″>July 8, 2026
From the moment you open Bizarro-Wuxtry’s sticker-mottled front door, you get the sense you’re crossing into a parallel dimension worthy of the store’s name.
Immediately past the countertop are freshly printed single issues from current series. Creaking further down the well-worn floorboards, you’ll find spinning drug store magazine racks dedicated to local Athens cartoonists. In the corner is an ample stock of collected underground oddities from the likes of Evan Dorkin and Daniel Clowes. Through a doorway on the right, you’ll find a musty-carpeted room bearing countless boxes, brimming with single issues that span comics history. From atop a shelf, a row of colorful, demented-looking “Bippy” carnival prize dolls from the 1960s watches over you.
Back towards the front and off to the left, a large room presents riotous displays of vintage toys, model kits, Halloween masks, paperbacks, discount VHS tapes and award-winning graphic novels. Looking down, you can still see cuts in the brown linoleum where the service counter for the Athens Chamber of Commerce once stood
Many shops go through eras. Bizarro-Wuxtry is living all of them all at once. The store is like an in-progress archaeological dig site. Each shelf and each room records a niche moment, adding to the story of the comic book species as a whole. “We try to represent all sides of comics,” explains manager Devlin Thompson, “with the emphasis more on art comics—stuff I can stand behind.”
Bizarro-Wuxtry, a subsidiary of Wuxtry Records downstairs, was the brainchild of Shannon Stewart, manager of the now-closed Baxter Street Wuxtry store. “There were comics at Wuxtry from the word ‘go,’” Thompson asserts, but Stewart had the notion to put the comics in their own separate space.
Wuxtry’s downtown record store once consisted solely of the tiny, window-covered unit at the corner of College and Clayton streets. It expanded next door to its current address at 197 E Clayton St. in 1988. Wuxtry Comics took over the corner unit in 1990, and Stewart hired amateur comic artist Devlin Thompson soon after as co-manager. When space opened up on the second floor in 1991, Wuxtry’s owners seized the opportunity to grow. According to Thompson, it was around this time that the “big boss” Dan Wall said they were like the “Bizarro” version of Wuxtry, a reference to Superman’s eccentric pocket-dimension counterpart, “and at that point, the name was born.”
The unit the store currently occupies was initially much smaller. There was a wall just a few feet past the counter, where newer single issues are now on offer. Eventually, the wall was knocked down, new rooms opened up, and the shop gradually grew to its current incarnation
Thompson, who was 22 at the time he joined the Wuxtry team, has been the sole manager since Stewart left in 1994. Since then, the shop has weathered “two cataclysmic, massive market crashes” in the comics industry, multiple recessions and at least one pandemic, “but we’ve lived through them all, thus far.”
Like its record-dealing counterpart, Bizarro-Wuxtry has hosted a range of admired artists over the decades. Thompson looks back most fondly on the 1993 Fantagraphics’ “Hateball Tour” featuring artists Peter Bagge and Dan Clowes, which gave birth to Thompson’s immortalization in a comic by Bagge entitled “Bippy.” Evan Dorkin, creator of Milk & Cheese and The Eltingville Club comics, held a signing earlier that year. Other notable visitors included Drawn & Quarterly cartoonists Adrian Tomine and Seth, and David Greenberger of The Duplex Planet. The shop has also featured many Athens artists, including Joey Weiser, Klon Waldrip, Abby Kacen, James Burnes, and comics power couple Eleanor Davis and Drew Weing.
Bizarro-Wuxtry has sponsored and co-organized Athens’ FLUKE comics and zine festival since its inception in 2002. Starting in 2023, it has also hosted “SPLAT!”, a session where visiting authors can present and discuss their comics the night before FLUKE
Thompson says the shop draws a wide range of comics readers, anyone from their mid-teens to their 50s and above. Patrons enjoy the staggering breadth and depth, with wares spanning from New York Times bestseller graphic novels to obscure cartoonist compendiums to recent manga to horror comic back issues bearing cracked covers. All are given roughly equal shelf (or box) presence, exposing visitors to the whole gamut even as they thumb for specific items of interest
“Comics are life,” professes Thompson. “I’ve been reading comics steadily since some time before my 3rd birthday. So, I mean, I have no memory of a time when I couldn’t read. And I have no memory of a time when I didn’t read comics.”
This unabashed love comes across in every corner of the shop—even the ones that could use a little reorganizing. “The medium isn’t great for communicating every concept, but most of them, and many things it can do better than anything else,” Thompson reflects. “It is a synthesis that is unlike looking at pictures or reading. It’s engaging the brain in a different way.”
Unfortunately, Bizarro-Wuxtry now faces that most dreaded of comic book narrative devices: a forced reboot. An undisclosed buyer is purchasing the Shackleford building, which houses Bizarro-Wuxtry, Wuxtry Records, Native America Gallery and Bear Hug Honey Co. While the ground-floor businesses may be left mainly intact, Thompson was told that the new owner hopes to start renovations on the upstairs floors soon
Even when hard-pressed, Thompson says he cannot divulge further details: “We don’t have a date. We don’t know what’s happening. We’re looking at ideas.” The store will be operating on limited hours for at least the next month: Wednesdays and Saturdays from 12–6 p.m
The shop recently posted an offerBut, at the same time, Thompson expresses a desire to keep serving his loyal patrons despite the change in building ownership. “They do want us out of here,” he laments. “So we got to figure out how we work with that, but it’s my intent to be doing this one way or another. But how that works out, I don’t know, and it will not be on the second floor of the Shackleford building.”
Unsatisfyingly, but perhaps apropos, the story leaves us hanging onto a slate of dramatic questions: What fate awaits our heroes? Will their whimsical comic shop, beloved by Athenians and visitors alike, find a way to survive? It appears we’ll all need to stay tuned to find out
Meanwhile, on the second floor of the Mission Square retail center across Atlanta Highway from Georgia Square Mall, another figure emerges to partially sate Athenians’ comics fix. College Comix, which mainly operates via online sales, has recently expanded its in-store hours to 12–5 p.m. on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays as of July 1. The brick-and-mortar store mainly carries new single-issue comics and graphic novels, offering pull lists for in-person pickup or mail delivery. Shop owner Joel Kight says they can’t possibly recreate the Bizarro-Wuxtry experience, but they do want to cater to those interested in new series and recent indie graphic novel printings. He encourages comic fans to visit during their in-store hours to browse their backstock, start a pull list or place a special order.
Like comics themselves, comic stores have always found ways to evolve and adapt. But as long as there remains a passionate community, there will likely be a place you can walk in, look around, talk shop, maybe get a recommendation and leave with a fresh, colorful book tucked under your arm—one with a whole world inside just waiting to be discovered
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