Daydreams Comics was crowded on Saturday afternoon, which wasn’t a surprise. It was Free Comic Book Day (FCBD), a nationwide annual event that happens on the first Saturday of May, and this year it fell on May 4, a day celebrated by Star Wars fans every year.
“I should have ordered more,” Daydreams owner Nathan Parriott said, talking about a special FCBD Star Wars comic. “They were pretty much all gone by 11.”
FCBD started 22 years ago. Daydreams has been around even longer.
Michael Zeadow, the original owner, opened Daydreams Comic in the now-gone Hall Mall in 1986. The shop has moved around downtown Iowa City a few times before finding its current home at the corner of Washington and Linn, but people always followed it. It’s grown into an established part of the city’s cultural landscape over the last four decades, despite the emergence of bookstore-killing online competition offering discounts, like Amazon.
“The internet markets are really good if you know what you want already,” Parriott told Little Village. “But in the comics-sphere, it can be difficult to know where to start sometimes. So having someone to talk to and learn about good starting points from is really helpful.”
Discussing what’s made Daydreams a success, Parriott has a clear answer: “It’s the people.”
There’s been a lot of continuity when it comes to the folks behind the counter over the decades. Zeadow sold the shop to Adam Mix, an employee, in 2000, starting a tradition for Daydreams. Each of its owners since Zeadow have worked there. When Parriott bought the shop from then-owner Zach Power in March, he became the fourth Daydreams employee to become owner.
“I started behind the counter at Christmastime in 2014,” Parriott said. It was a part-time job, one day a week at first. Parriott was still in school at the time, and also working part-time as a barista at Prairie Lights.
Part-time became full-time, and after another long-time employee left last year, Power started discussing the future of Daydreams with Parriott.
“It was just a sort of opportune thing that was best for everybody,” Parriott said about his decision to buy the shop.
In addition to continuity among staff, there’s also a lot of consistency when it comes to customers.
“It’s pretty rare that I don’t know the names of most of the people in the shop at any time,” Parriott said.
A community has been created at Daydreams since 1986, with some of the customers from the early Hall Mall days still being regulars.
“Community is the thing I find most important about this,” Parriott said. “I want this to be a social space for people to gather, not just a commercial space.”
