I am pretty sure that you can count the number of comic book shops that have been in business for almost four decades on one hand (maybe even one finger!) and if that is a rare breed, Joe Ferrara of Atlantis Fantasyworld in Santa Cruz is rarer still.

What could you learn if you were in business for forty years?

I had spent the morning trying to find a coffee shop to work at with the right combination of vibe and great coffee—driving all over Santa Cruz—walking in and out of at least six coffee shops. I was wandering around Pacific Ave. like a zombie until I found myself in front of Atlantis Fantasyworld. This is not a dusty, dark nerd-cave underneath a parking garage (well, actually the last part is true), it is bright, well organized and feels, dare I say, upbeat inside. Everything about Atlantis feels intentional and then you meet Joe and begin to understand that every detail has been thought about, crafted and iterated over the last 38 years.

“It started as a hobby,” says Joe who opened the store in 1976. That hobby took him through the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, three years in a temporary tent while the town rebuilt, and into his new location, where he’s spent the last 22 years. Atlantis Fantasyworld has the only logo ever commissioned and drawn for a comic book store by the great Neal Adams and will live in infamy as the comic shop from The Lost Boys (filmed at the…