The Four Color Media Monitor

Belfast Live has a report about a couple residing in northern Ireland who opened a specialty store around Comber:

Growing up in Seville, Mario Escobar had a difficult family background, but those feelings of anxiety melted away when he opened up a comic book or watched a fantasy movie.

After moving to the UK almost 30 years ago, Mario met his wife, who is from Northern Ireland. But after their son was diagnosed with ADHD, the pair felt it was the best option to move. They settled in Bangor, and watched as their son achieved three As in A-Level and go on to study Animation at university.

Throughout his son's ADHD journey, Mario also discovered that he had ADHD too. Both lovers of the comic book world, they decided they would put their passion for the genre into a new reality, and will open We Sell Heroes this weekend.

Speaking to Belfast Live, Mario said the store, which is on Castle Street in Comber, will hopefully be a space where young people can come and express themselves.

"Our son has always been interested, like me, in comic books and science fiction. Because of his diagnosis, I found out that I had ADHD too," he said.

"We always knew we were different, and there were few places to go to enjoy what we liked to do.

Well it's great the family wants to open this store for selling escapist entertainment. But they'd do well to consider that even overseas, there's only so many PC advocates who despise the leisure products they sell, and may have corrupted what's already there as it is, given the disaster the USA entertainment scene, comics and otherwise, have become over the past 20 years. Based on which, how can one expect to be truly successful if the companies making the products the store could be selling are watering them down?

The store will serve a good cause too though:

"This charity supports children and adults with ADHD and mental health issues too. We thought it would be appropriate that we invovled them within We Sell Heroes.

That's certainly impressive. Although the following would surely be considered questionable by USA standards:

"We want to provide a safe space for anybody who wants to come in and express themselves, grab a coffee, and just have fun."

What bothers me from a USA perspective is that this is something left-wing universities have emphasized, for very negative reasons. Even if the guy's not taking that kind of approach, the use of the phrase still bugs me. Other than that, he is right that the goal of a comics store like this should be to have fun, and hopefully, it'll serve that purpose as best as possible.

Labels: Europe and Asia, sales, science