Midtown Comics

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, and its Astoria, Queens outlet store opened in March 2020. It also used to operate a boutique inside Manhattan's Times Square Toys R Us. In 2020 Midtown, which had handled DC Comics' subscription sales for years, launched a sister company, the comics distributor UCS Comic Distributors, would begin distributing DC's books.

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 CBR.com 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. In 2013, it was ranked number 44 on Bleeding Cool magazine's Top 100 Power List of Comic Books, due to its geographic proximity to the then-headquarters of "Big Two" of the American comic book publishing industry, Marvel Comics and DC Comics, and the relationship between the store and industry professionals.

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 the flagship Midtown Comics in Manhattan, on West 40th Street and Seventh Avenue. The store houses approximately 500,000 books in its collection. According to The New York Times:

The stereotypical view of comics stores is that they are dim, cramped and dusty places with a no-girls-allowed clubhouse atmosphere. In reality, they run the gamut. For instance, the West Side Midtown store is bright, airy and welcoming to all, with two floors and 5,000 square feet (460 m²) of space. The main floor, which is one story above street level, has a long wall with countless racks of new and recently released comics. The rest of the space offers DVDs, manga, trading cards, back issues and trade paperbacks. Toys and other collectibles are upstairs. The second Midtown store, on Lexington Avenue and 45th Street, though smaller than the first one, is just as inviting.

Midtown Comics is the official retail sponsor of New York Comic Con, and has performed this role since the NYCC's inception in 2006. Each year, Midtown creates a "show-within-a-show", featuring round-the-clock appearances by comics creators and variant comic books by publishers like Marvel Comics and Top Cow.

Midtown's website was at first purely informational, but has developed into a full-scale retail website. The stores and website are supported by a warehouse in Queens, and a staff of around 150 who are described by New York Magazine as "a rare mix of nerd knowledge and chummy confidence – [and] who foster an atmosphere where browsing is more than just a means to a badly needed social end."

Midtown also produces a weekly podcast that covers the comic book industry, with a different comic book creator interviewed each week.

On November 10, 2010, Midtown Comics opened a third Manhattan store. Known as their Downtown store, it is located in the Financial District, at 64 Fulton Street, in the southernmost section of the borough. Inaugural book signings were held for that branch featuring Jim Lee and Jonathan Layman, creator of Chew. As of June 2012, Midtown is the largest comic book store in the United States.