Love of Comic Books Spurs Business

Some questions never have to be asked. Like who is Wade Shaw's favorite comic book superhero.

Everything from the logo on the sign at his business to a sizable personal collection tucked away–and not for sale–at his shop, Wade's Comic Madness, Shaw is all about Captain America. 

"He’s always been my favorite character, but Iv’e always liked a lot of different characters," said Shaw, 40, a virtual lifelong comic book and Captain America memorabilia collector. "There’s always going to be some new trinkets that I can find from the past."

But, as for why Shaw keeps a cardboard cutout Captain America, countless unopened action figures, an old-school metal lunchbox, framed posters and several hundred other pieces on display at his store?

"I don't keep anything at the house," Shaw said. "The kids would just break it, or the dogs."

Comic-collecting beginnings

Shaw's collecting days began long before his kids were born or he had a Levittown home to call his own. As a kid, Shaw was an avid collector, so much so that by high school he started trading comic book doubles. At 17 he started going to comic book conventions and his business, he said, "snowballed from there."

While he can't put an exact number on how comic books he had growing up, Shaw estimates that it was a "couple thousand, even back then."

"Instead of having a boxspring and a bed frame ... I just had a mattress piled on top of 36 boxes of comics," Shaw said of his teen years.

Then, in 1993, he opened his business in a small portion of a video store in the New Falls Road strip mall where Wade's Comic Madness is currently located. 

"That's pretty crazy," he said.

For the love of the comic books

From his humble beginnings selling and trading his own collection, Shaw grew Wade's Comic Madness to a shop that boasts 500,000 comic books and a much larger footprint than when he first opened. 

"Not a lot of people can say they do what they love and that kind of thing," Shaw said. "This is it for me."

So, can you ever outgrow comic books?

"Not personally. I still love it," Shaw said. "There’s different facets to each thing. There’s the reading of them. The new stories are always coming out ... They’d like to keep it fresh, so that’s always enjoyable."

Besides fueling his 20-year business with his personal love of comic books, Shaw has come full circle. As a dad, he now gets to help his 8-year-old son shape his own comic book collection.

But, unlike dad, the younger Shaw's favorite superhero is Hawkeye from the Avengers instead of Captain America. 

"It is getting more and more diverse. It seemed like back a couple years ago (comic book collecting) was more in the 20s and 30s crowd," Shaw said. "But, now you have brand-new kids who see the new Avengers movie and they’re 5 years old."

Maybe one day Wade's Comic Madness will have a shrine and throngs of memorabilia featuring Hawkeye in the way it does the store's original hero, Captain America.