Strange Adventures

Strange Adventures is downtown Halifax's comic shop, a packed, poster-covered room at 5110 Prince Street that has been the city's ground zero for comics since 1994, run by owner Calum Johnston under a banner billing it as part of "Canada's oddest and award-winning comic book stores." It has won The Coast's Best of Halifax readers' poll for comics so many times that the paper inducted it into the poll's Hall of Fame, and it remains the store most Haligonians mean when they say "the comic shop." It sits a few blocks off the Spring Garden Road strip, worth folding into a day built around our Spring Garden Road shopping guide or our broader things to do in Halifax roundup.

From Fredericton, With Comics

Johnston opened the first Strange Adventures in Fredericton in 1992, added the Halifax store in 1994, and later a Dartmouth location on Portland Street; all three operate today, with Halifax anchoring the chain's identity. "I've always liked comics," Johnston told The Coast in one of many interviews over the years, "and I like sharing them." That sharing instinct shapes the store's reputation: staff who read the stock, pull lists for regulars, and a long-standing habit of putting local creators front and centre. Visiting cartoonists have treated it as a mandatory stop for decades; one touring artist's 2014 East Coast shop crawl described it, without ceremony, as one of the country's great comic stores.

The Trophy Shelf

The awards are real and international. In 2001 Strange Adventures won the Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award, the comic industry's top honour for retailing, presented at San Diego Comic-Con, a distinction very few Canadian shops hold. In 2006 it took the Harry Kremer Award for Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Retailer at the Joe Shuster Awards, and back in 1996 a Previews reader poll had already named it the world's greatest comic store. Closer to home, it dominated The Coast's Best Comics Store category through the 1990s and 2000s, collected a tenth straight gold in 2017 to enter the poll's Hall of Fame, and returned to the top of the podium as recently as 2024. Johnston's own take on the annual ritual: "It's a little stressful each time the poll is on."

What's on the Shelves

The inventory runs from this week's new releases, Marvel, DC, Image, and the independents, to graphic novels and trade paperbacks, manga, kids' comics, and long boxes of back issues. What sets the Halifax room apart is the local section: comics and books by Nova Scotia cartoonists, some of them published by major companies, have long been a store specialty, and signings with visiting and hometown creators are a regular occurrence. The shop participates in Free Comic Book Day every May, and its weekly new-arrival updates, posted with the enthusiasm of people who cannot wait to hand you something, are a reliable guide to what matters in the medium right now. Casual readers are as welcome as collectors: say what you liked, a movie, a show, a game, and staff will build a bridge from there to a shelf's worth of options in the medium's enormous back catalogue.

Thirty Years of Halifax Comics

The store's timeline tracks the medium's modern history. When the Halifax shop opened in 1994, comics retail was climbing out of the collector-speculation crash; the graphic novel boom of the 2000s turned prose readers into comic readers, the manga wave brought a new generation through the door, and the movie era that followed sent newcomers looking for the source material. Strange Adventures rode each wave without changing its essential job: put good comics in people's hands and let the local scene flourish around them. Its signings and event nights, from creator appearances to themed community evenings, gave Halifax's comics scene a home address. Three decades on, the weekly new-comics ritual still anchors the store's rhythm, with fresh stock landing every week and updates posted on its site for the faithful.

A First Visit

Expect a genuine downtown comic shop rather than a pop-culture department store: narrow aisles, new-release walls, racks of trade paperbacks, and boxes of older issues for anyone willing to dig. Pull lists and subscriptions are a staple for locals, and visitors hunting a specific issue can call ahead at (902) 425-2140; if the shop does not have it, staff will say so and often know where to look next. Signings and event nights draw queues down the block, so it is worth checking the store's site or Facebook page before a visit if you want to catch one. The Dartmouth and Fredericton sister stores carry similar stock, but the Halifax room is the one with three decades of trophies on the wall.

It is also one of the better souvenir stops in the city, and not only for comics readers. A graphic novel by a Nova Scotia cartoonist is the kind of purchase that survives a trip: it packs flat, costs about what a museum T-shirt does, and keeps giving long after the vacation ends. Staff are used to the bewildered-but-curious visitor and will narrow a wall of options to two or three candidates with a few questions, which is the difference between a shop and a store. Give it twenty minutes on a downtown walk between the waterfront and the Public Gardens and you will understand why the Best of Halifax poll eventually had to invent a Hall of Fame to make room.

The Practical Details

Address & Location — 5110 Prince Street, Halifax, NS B3J 1L3, downtown, a few minutes' walk from the waterfront and the Spring Garden Road shopping district.

Hours — The store posts current hours on strangeadventures.com and its social channels; confirm before a dedicated trip, since holiday and event schedules shift them.

Contact — (902) 425-2140 or strangeadventures.com. Sister stores: 101 Portland Street, Dartmouth, and 68 York Street, Fredericton.

Prices — Standard comic retail: new issues at cover price, trades and hardcovers at list, with bargain boxes and older collections for treasure hunters.

Best For — Collectors, of course, but also curious first-timers, parents hunting kids' comics, and travellers who want a locally made souvenir that weighs less than a lobster plush.

Getting There — On foot from anywhere in the downtown core; multiple transit routes serve the surrounding streets, and paid lots and street parking sit within a few blocks.

For more than thirty years this room has been where Halifax goes to argue about continuity, discover a first graphic novel, or find something from a local artist you cannot get anywhere else. Whether you leave with a weekly pull or a long-box find, Strange Adventures is one of the city's genuine retail institutions, and it earns its trophies one conversation at a time.