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As we reported a month ago, the Dragon’s Lair in Omaha, Nebraska, had occupied the same building since 1976, until a recent fire elsewhere in the building caused extensive smoke and water damage to the store.

Main stock bins installed March 12.

Since then, the store has relocated five blocks west, to 2227 N. 91st Plaza on Blondo, and will reopen today at 9 AM.  (It’s located behind Romeo’s Mexican Food & Pizza which has been in business as long, if not longer, than The Dragon’s Lair, so the food must be good.  (I grew up in that neighborhood, and I can’t remember it NOT being there.))

Owner Bob Gellner will open the new location today, with a sale and a drawing for two $50 gift certificates.

The Dragon’s Lair isn’t a fancy shop like Bergen Street, or a mancave like the Android’s Dungeon.

What it is is a comics shop also selling cards and games, staffed by people who are welcoming, even if you only visit them once or twice a year from out of town.  Most of his staff have been there a long time (Craig Patterson, the manager of their Millard location, was working at the Blondo store back in the 80s when I started shopping there), and some of their customers and employees have gone on to start their own stores in the metro area.  (One customer even became a best-selling graphic novelist!)

First printing!
Cover price!

From January 1985 until January 1994, Dragon’s Lair was my local comics shop.  It’s where I fed my inner Marvel Zombie, and, a few years later, starved it to death as I discovered a multitude of other titles I had to read more than X-Men, Spider-Man, or She-Hulk.  It’s where I discovered Tales of the Beanworld, Neil the Horse, Bone, Sandman, Concrete, Justice League International, Uncle Scrooge; and ignored hundreds of other small press titles, which I can only guess at now, as I peruse old preview copies of Amazing Heroes.

It’s where I bought my weekly copy of the Comics Buyer’s Guide, and the occasional copy of the Comics Journal.

It’s where I found cheap copies of Marvel Tales and Not Brand Echh and MAD Magazine in the back issue bins.

It’s where I spent the first ten years collecting comics, and I’m lucky it was my local comics shop.  Omaha is lucky that it was the local comics shop in the 80s.  They are the reason my passion for comics is so eclectic, and why Omaha has such a strong geek community now.

If you live in the Omaha metro area, heck, if you live in eastern Nebraska or western Iowa, stop by!  (You should probably visit some of the other great shops in the city as well.  Omaha is a nerd oasis.)  It’s a quintessential Midwestern store, not unlike the dry goods variety stores once common on Main Street USA.  Low key, offering great selection and service, run by nice people.  I’ll be stopping by the next time I’m visiting family, and until then, I wish them a grand reopening!

As the year draws to a close, we’ve been reflecting on all the wonderful books published in 2011, and in doing so, we’ve also realized there are some classics worth revisiting. The authors and friends of Oxford University Press are proud to present this series of essays, which will appear regularly until the New Year, drawing our attention to books both new and old. Here regular OUPblog columnist Edward Zelinsky writes about My Antonia by Willa Cather.

The first time I read My Antonia, I hated it. That was to be expected: It was required reading in my sophomore English course at Omaha Central High. This was during the Sixties. In the Age of Aquarius, no one was supposed to like assigned reading. That’s why it had to be assigned.

I next confronted My Antonia in college. Like Jim Burden, Willa Cather’s narrator, I had left Nebraska to go to east to continue my education. During those years, some feminists were arguing for Cather’s place in the women’s canon. Thus, Antonia, the Nebraska icon, was to be transformed into Antonia, the feminist icon.

This didn’t seem quite right to me. As I reread My Antonia in college half a continent away from Nebraska, Cather’s portrayal of Nebraska seemed more appealing than it had when I had grown up there. And Antonia was too rich a character to serve anyone’s political agenda.

It was when my eleven year old daughter discovered My Antonia that I came full circle. Jacoba was blessed with a wonderful English teacher who guided her to read challenging novels. My Antonia became Jacoba’s favorite book. This prompted me to confront Cather’s most famous Nebraska novel once again.

This time, I was really hooked as I read of Antonia, her family’s travails and her ultimate triumph on the plains of Nebraska. This book, I declared, was good; it deserved to be taken off the required reading list.

The following year, when we visited my mother in Omaha, Jacoba asked if we could go to Red Cloud, Willa Cather’s hometown which she fictionalized in My Antonia as Black Hawk. I told my mother we were going to Red Cloud because Jacoba wanted to. That was partially true.

Our day in Red Cloud remains one of the best memories of raising my daughter. The citizens of Red Cloud are understandably proud as they guide visitors through the many Cather-related structures still standing.

At the end of the day, our guide gently walked us toward the cemetery where Antonia is buried. The small, picturesque graveyard was dotted with Nebraska sunflowers. Standing at Antonia’s grave was one of the genuinely peaceful moments of my life.

As I stood by Antonia’s grave, I realized that, like Jim Burden, I had gone east to be educated and live my life as a lawyer, but that I had forever left behind an important part of me in Nebraska.

A few years later, when Jacoba’s twin brothers reached Bar Mitzvah age, the synagogue in Connecticut was decorated with Nebraska sunflowers.

Edward A. Zelinsky is the Morris and Annie Trachman Professor of Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University. He is the author of The Origins of the Ownership Society: How The Defined Contribution Paradigm Changed America. His monthly column appears here.

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