I just felt that I had to be proactive and put my absolute best foot forward." And so he did, completely renovating the entire space. "It was just months after 9/11, and all signs pointed to a real tough time for small businesses. "Upfitting the space cost an embarrassing amount," Shelton says. In February of 2002, Shelton moved his Central Avenue store once again, this time to the corner of 7th Street and Pecan Avenue in the Elizabeth neighborhood. Fortunately he was able to leave most of those stores in the hands of conscientious buyers who continued to carry on with the same level of quality their customers had come to expect. Comic book stores all across the country were going under, and, against his will, Shelton was forced to begin pulling in his resources, selling off his stores one by one. Fueled largely by rampant speculation, inflated print runs, and a preponderance of comics featuring special covers and "collector's item" events, fans turned away in droves from an industry that seemed more concerned with "FIRST ISSUE SPECTACULARS" than with story or continuity. Stormy times were ahead, as the mid-90's brought about the "crash" and near ruin of the comics industry.
The flagship store would also relocate, this time opening a few blocks from Thomas Avenue to a new location in the Midwood Corners Shopping Center on the corner of Central Avenue and The Plaza. Throughout the decades Shelton has owned Heroes Aren’t Hard to Find stores in Chapel Hill, NC, Charleston, SC, Jacksonville, FL, and a second Charlotte location in what was then the new Carmel Commons shopping center. Just a year later, he opened a third store, this time in Greenville, SC. In 1982 Shelton graduated from the smaller "mini-cons" into the big leagues by launching the first Heroes Convention - more on that elsewhere - and in 1983 expanded the business to open a second location of Heroes Aren't Hard To Find in Winston-Salem. The store soon expanded and moved a block over to Thomas Avenue, with nearly a third of the interior devoted to warehousing comics and supplies.
The store also provided a place for Shelton to market his custom-made line of comic collecting supplies, which he had begun having manufactured to his specs back in the 70's.
COMIC COLLECTOR SHOP STAN LEE MAC
Within a few months, Heroes Aren't Hard To Find - the name adapted from a Fleetwood Mac song title - was open 6 days a week and doing a brisk business. The store was just as much a place to contain his ever-growing collection as a place to potentially sell anything. In 1980 Shelton rented the first space that would become Heroes Aren't Hard To Find near the corner of Central and Pecan Avenue in the Plaza Midwood neighborhood of Charlotte.
The event was a huge success and, though he took a break from the smaller show in the mid 80's and 90's, the Charlotte Mini-Con resumed its role as an annual vintage-comics show in 2009. In 1977 Shelton took his knack for salesmanship and his growing comic collection one step further by hosting Charlotte's first comic-book convention, the Charlotte Mini-Con, at Eastland Mall. By 1968, Shelton was buying out the entire comic stock of Newton's City Pharmacy each month and by the early 1970s he was setting up once a month at the Metrolina Flea Market, where he built up a clientele of regular customers. "I knew right away that something was up, that these books were going to be worth money someday." Perhaps a tad more motivated than the average ten-year-old, young Shelton immediately began purchasing three of every Marvel comic being published, using the extras to trade for holes in his collection. A comic collector since childhood, Shelton began aggressively seeking out his favorite comic issues during the mid-60's, after noticing that Amazing Spider-Man #1 was selling for the then-unbelievable price of ten dollars.
Heroes was started in 1980 by a then 26-year-old Shelton Drum who had been selling comics at area flea markets for several years. Located #UnderTheWaterTower in the heart of the historic Elizabeth neighborhood, near uptown Charlotte, we work hard to foster a family-friendly atmosphere while carrying an incredibly diverse stock of comics from every genre. We carry a wide selection of new comics, graphic novels, and manga as well as back issues, Silver and Golden Age comics, statues, specialty items, and our own line of comics collecting supplies. HEROES AREN'T HARD TO FIND is one of the largest and most well-known comics retailers in the country.
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