Welcome to my About Me page. My name is Robert and I am one of the owners of Brainstorm Movies, Comics & Gaming. We're located in Chicago, Illinois and we've been open since October of 2003. Prior to this adventure, I managed an independant video store for almost 10 years. One day my boss came to me and said, 'You make too much money...you're fired.' So there I was on unemployment, grousing about how I'd made HIM tons of money over the past 10 years and I got the bright idea for my own store. I love movies. I love comics. I love games. Why not put it all under one roof? That's how Brainstorm Movies, Comics & Gaming was born.
Brainstorm is many things to many people. Whenever new customers come in I tell them that it's a comic shop inside of a video store...or a video store inside of a comic shop. Whatever your preferance is. As far as the video store part, we do all the regular releases that all the big chains do, but our real affection lies with Foreign films, art house cinema, cult classics and anything else that is interesting and smart that you won't find at the local Blockbuster or Hollywood Video.
As for the comic part of the store, we do all the DC and Marvel and many of the smaller companies. What I think sets us apart from other shops is our attention to our customers. When I was working on the idea, I thought about what it was that I didn't like about comic shops and I made sure I didn't do any of that here. We're slowly but surely winning over comic lovers and I have a number of customers who go out of their way to pick up their books at Brainstorm. So what sets us apart? Well, first of all we bag and board all of our new books BEFORE they go out on the floor. Second, we have a no minimum subscription service. If a customer wants 2 books or 50 books, we'll happily pull them. And regardless of the number of books on their pull list, subscribers get 10% off on their pull titles AND anything else on the new wall.
Best of all, the subscription membership is a dual video rental membership!
As if all of that wasn't enough, we also do games. We have HeroClix, Magic, Star Wars, Yu-Gi-Oh, Versus, Pirates and a number of tournaments for many of these games.
So if you find yourself in the Bucktown Wicker Park area, stop in and say hi. If you need directions, give us a call at 773-384-8721. We open at 12:30 pm every day, Monday through Thursday we close at 10, Friday and Saturday we close at 11, and on Sundays we close at 9. See you soon.