Yep. When I was in kid on Long Island, it would be either war comics (especially Sgt. Rock), Conan the Barbarian (or his himbo spiritual cousin, Ka-Zar the Savage) any of the various Archie titles, or a horror comic. (I thought superhero comics were stupid when I was a kid. In order for a comic to entertain me, it had to include war, swords, Archie or monsters).
When I was in the fifth or sixth grade, my dad would occasionally pick me up titles that only seemed available in Manhattan, where he worked as a bus driver — books like the 1980’s iteration of the Blackhawk Allied commandoes or (joy and rapture) The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones. (Maybe Indy’s title adhered more loosely to the rule of thumb I cited above, but that was forgivable, because it was the greatest comic book ever created.)
The last time I saw a rotating rack like this was … 1993? 1994? For a while, it was neat little fixture of the 7-11 along Route 1 just outside Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Virginia. You could make a run for coffee or nachos at any hour and snag a comic while you were at it. By then, I was thoroughly entrenched in the DC and Marvel superhero pantheons. (A really cool goth kid in my freshman dorm had shown me Frank Miller’s work, and I was hooked.)
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 