Jim Brocius looks like your average burned-out hippie with his long hair, beard and reading glasses. There's a sign posted in the window of his comics shop that reads: "For freedom to exist we must have a free press and freedom of speech. For freedom to survive our only choices are to vote or to fight." Indeed, walking into Cosmic Comics for the first time, you expect that, at any moment, the guy will launch into a tirade against big business and the ongoing Barnes & Nobles-ization of the bookselling trade.

But Jim Brocius is all about negating clichés. The man hates abstractions, which is interesting, given that many of the comics you'll find in his store are about the fight for notions like truth, justice and the American way. Brocius believes in the American way, of course. It's just that he has no use for vague nouns or labels, especially political ones.

"I mean, what is a Republican, a Democrat, or a Libertarian anyway?" he says, lighting up a Pall Mall in a booth at the Putter's Bar & Grill next to his shop. "These are all vague nouns, and I think the vagueness is purposeful. It's a way to divide people, and then to conquer them. That's why these nouns are useful to politicians. Now, consider the word 'entrepreneur.' It has a distinctive meaning, and I understand it. In fact, everyone understands it. It's a word most people can get behind."

In Brocius' view, there should be no room for generalizations in politics, since there's no way people are going to get along by breaking off into groups. He feels that having political discussions puts him at a disadvantage, because he doesn't like to use jargon. He sees a lot of politically minded folks who seem to understand the terminology. Brocius, however, doesn't.

"Maybe I'm an idiot," he says. "But I don't think so."

Most of the readers who have frequented Cosmic Comics during the last 10 years would agree with his assessment. To them, Brocius has succeeded in a business that presents an unusual amount of challenges, what with the speculative side of the comics market that busts more often than it bubbles, and a "no-returns" policy so absolute it would make a corporate bookseller faint. But this motorcycle-riding, pro-marijuana, gun-loving Las Vegas resident has endured it all and ended up with the best classic comics shop in town.

Don't believe how hard the comics biz is? Dig up a phone book from 1996 and you'll find listings for 27 stores in Vegas. Today there are only nine.

Journey into Mystery

Born in Michigan in 1956, Jim Brocius never stayed in one school long enough to make many friends. His family was always moving from town to town. His father was somewhat of "a bum," and couldn't keep a job for more than a few months. So a young Brocius found solace in drugstore newsstands, where his mother worked. Well-behaved, he never bothered the owner. Brocius would read comics for eight hours straight, pouring over the pages.

"The first comics I remember reading were the Superman titles," says Brocius. "But I had seen Superman on the TV before that. Really, though, comics were no different from my Crayolas. They were just another form of entertainment."

In addition to the DC line (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman), he enjoyed war comics. But everything changed in 1963 when he picked up the Marvel Comics title Spider-Man, written by legendary Stan Lee and drawn by master illustrator Steve Ditko. For Brocius, the experience was eye opening. After all, Superman was invulnerable, and Batman was rich. These were the escapist - some would say mindless - ideals of the pulp-fiction tradition.

"It didn't dawn on me that my family was poor and had problems until I read about Peter Parker," says Brocius. "His life was really, really screwed-up - so screwed-up that it made my life almost seem attractive."

The more realistic Marvel Comics characters allowed Brocius to think about the world around him, and to ponder bigger philosophical questions like, for example, the one plaguing Peter Parker: "Does great responsibility come with great power?"

Since then, Brocius has chased "after comics like the paparazzi after Princess Di." As a teenager, he took whatever jobs he could get - lawn-mowing, babysitting - in order to have money to buy comics. Back in the '60s, of course, there were comics in every household, and sometimes he simply worked in exchange for a stack of Marvels.

School, on the other hand, did little to stoke his imagination. He made a lot of amateur comics, drawing Spider-Man knockoffs instead of doing homework. He had a teacher whose husband worked at Xerox, and Brocius latched onto the opportunity, running off copies of his homemade comics.

Brocius' love of comics made him suspect. It was tough being a collector, even in the '70s, and he put up with a lot of shit.

"When I got to be 13, the adults around me - not my family, but authority figures - would comment on my comics," he says. "They said I should be out chasing girls. At one point, the school wanted me to see a psychiatrist. This was in California, of course. My own comics had swear words and brutal violence, so I can't imagine what today's school system would make of me. Actually, I can imagine."

Brocius moved to Vegas in '74, and didn't like it initially. Once he turned 21, the town grew on him. He took odd jobs: pumping gas for taxi companies, washing dishes for the hotel-casinos. In '76, he hit on the idea of painting Santa Claus windows for local stores across the valley, and did that for a number of years.

The whole time, though, he was hustling comics at gatherings like the San Diego Comic-Con, where he would set up a table. He mostly sold toys and posters, but in 1968 he had had the foresight to purchase 100 copies of Conan the Barbarian #1, written by Roy Thomas and illustrated by Barry Windsor-Smith, and 300 copies of Shazam #1. He knew these titles were going to be huge, and soon after, he struck a little gold by reselling them at six bucks a pop.

But his enthusiasm for comics was just beginning. In 1977, he published his own underground comic book in Las Vegas.

The Crash Street Kidd

According to Brocius, The Crash Street Kidds is "a cheesy Crumb ripoff," but the book still pops up from time to time in price guides. He managed to sell 4,000 copies, wholesaling a bunch of them to Bud Plant and Steve Geppi. Brocius had met a printer in Vegas one day while circulating a petition in front of a Safeway. The petition was for the decriminalization of marijuana. The printer offered his print shop to produce more copies of the petition.

Through his new friendship, Brocius had access to offset lithography, for which he'd already earned a certificate in high school. So, after writing, drawing, inking and coloring his own comic book called The Crash Street Kidds, he assembled it himself. He shot the negatives, made the plates, cut the pages, stapled it, folded it. Each copy cost him 20 cents.

Meanwhile, his petition was a success, and the measure was on the ballot - and passed. But since Vegas was, and still remains today, a transient population, the measure was voted down the second time. Even if it had passed, the feds likely would have crushed it.

"If I lived in California, I'd file a federal lawsuit against the federal government," says Brocius. "What's the point of voting on something if the feds are just going to descend on you and say 'No!' I mean, taking away our right to vote is outright tyranny. People think it's trivial because it's just marijuana. But the implications are tremendous. You can petition whatever you want as long as it passes Constitutional muster.

"The power of the petition is up there with the vote itself," continues Brocius. "It's almost more powerful. We could write something now on a bar napkin, and they would have to accept it. Of course, politicians want to toughen up the standards for petitions, and you can see why. The petition has power over them since it forces a vote."

When politicians complain about an influx of petitions, says Brocius, they insult the American people.

"What about all the laws and taxes these politicians pass?" he points out. "I submit that the average American has a better grasp of any current petition than he does of the bizarre regulations these politicians come up with."

Brocius contends that there should be more petitions. According to him, people should have the final say, and there's no such thing as a politician who can be trusted. This is for several reasons. First and foremost is that our politicians are held to lesser standards than those they supposedly represent. Secondly, politics doesn't seem to attract decent people. 

"A lot of qualified people will never run for office, because they don't want to be under a microscope for some mistake they made in their youth, which pretty much all of us did. But is it too much to ask that politicians be honest? That they don't lie, cheat or steal, and actually respect the Constitution? Nobody is perfect; we all have our faults. I expect my elected officials to have faults, but must so many be dishonest and have so little respect for the Constitution."

It wouldn't be the last time Brocius tangled with bureaucracy. In '80, Brocius started airbrushing T-shirts on the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Convention Center Drive across from the Stardust. Back then, he simply went downtown and paid $25 for a business license, and he was off and running. Today, of course, it's much, much different.

Self-employed for 10 years, he eventually sought a loan to buy a house. After 10 years of regular work and bigger paychecks, he had to confront lenders in town who said there was still too much risk. They said he needed to secure employment for at least two years. So he worked for Union Pacific for two years and quit as soon as his loan was approved.

His social life centered on the Pirates motorcycle club, a Vegas biker group that was constantly harassed by the cops.

"The authorities used to come to our clubhouse on a regular basis and take down all the license plates," says Brocius. "Clearly, this was unconstitutional. I'd ask them, 'What crime are you investigating? Who's the victim? Can you get away with this at the Rotary Club?' It didn't stop them from doing what they did, of course."

Still, he had fun with the Pirates, and maintained his job on Las Vegas Boulevard. Airbrushing was his thing - until he got the bug to open his own comics shop.

The Entrepreneur

Ralph Mathieu is the owner of Alternate Reality Comics, across from the UNLV campus on Maryland Parkway. Working at a gift shop next to Brocius' airbrushing stand, he asked the biker to make him an X-Men T-shirt. The two shared a passion for comics, and Ralph moved into Brocius' house for a couple of years, trying to save money. They talked comics all the time, but never politics. They went to Frank Zappa concerts at the Aladdin. When he scraped together enough cash to buy his own comics shop, Mathieu moved out so that he could live closer to work. Little did he know that he was showing Brocius how to break into the biz.

"I always thought Jim was really intelligent," says Mathieu. "He was too smart to just be airbrushing T-shirts. He's a gifted artist."

When Brocius' brother, John, helped Mathieu truck some comics to Alternate Reality, he presented his sibling with a challenge: "You need to open a comics shop."

"I went to all 27 shops in town," recalls Brocius, "and only two stores had it together - Ralph's and the one run by the guys at Dreamwell. No one else had a clue, and I knew we could make it. So I went back to my brother and said let's do it."

In early '96, Brocius bought more than 70,000 comics from Your Friendly Neighborhood Comics Store, which was going out of business. Mathieu even helped load the boxes into Jim's truck.

But a lot had changed since Brocius first applied for a business license back in '80. When he went down to City Hall, the paperwork seemed infinite. And the taxes? They were - and remain - pure evil.

"Like this property tax I have to pay on all the fixtures in my store. See that cash register? I pay taxes on it every year, even though I already paid taxes on it when I bought it. So I guess I'll never really own that register. If I close the store and take it home with me, I won't have to pay for it anymore and I'll really own it then, I guess. Otherwise, it's double, or infinite taxation. Sure, it's only a few hundred dollars a year, but it's the principle.

"The state of Nevada makes more money from my business than I do," says Brocius. "I don't think that's right."

Principles are often on his mind these days. Ten years into it, he has a vision of making Cosmic Comics a kind of community center.

The Power Cosmic

Comics writer James D. Hudnall (ESPers, Harsh Realm) is one of Brocius' longtime customers. Hudnall admires Cosmic Comics not just for its unique selection, but also for its intellectual atmosphere.

"Jim has created a place rare in today's comics market," insists Hudnall, "where you can get a wide array of back issues, Silver Age comics, and a large selection of trades from both the big publishers and many eclectic independents. Jim also loves to philosophize about many issues, but he's especially interested in individual liberties. It's an area he takes very seriously."

"There's a lot of political discussion that goes on in the shop," admits Brocius. "A lot of my customers are voters, and I encourage discussion. Hell, it's always fun to rag on the government - as long as no one gets rude."

Political opinions are expressed at Cosmic Comics, to be sure. Even if Brocius disagrees with some of them, at least his customers have opinions. In many ways, the shop is a meeting place where people come to see friends, hang out, shoot the shit. And not all the conversation revolves around comic books.

Brocius is hoping to move into a larger location this year. He wants Cosmic Comics to grow into a place for people to circulate and leave petitions that promote freedom. He would like to use Cosmic Comics as a place to further political discussion. After all, discussion is the first step toward legitimate government.

"If we don't take the time to self-govern," says Brocius, "someone else will govern us."

Cosmic Comics is located at 3330 E. Tropicana Ave. on the northwest corner of Tropicana and Pecos. The store is open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. weekdays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekends. For more information, call 702-451-4609. LW