Mike Reinhart and Mark Waters grew up reading comic books and later began selling copies from their own collections after starting a business endeavor they both began in their mid-20s.

Waters, 46, and Reinhart, 47, are the owners of Midgard Comics, 102 W. Lincoln Ave. #2, and have been in business together for nearly two decades while maintaining full-time jobs—leaving Waters’ mother, Sandy, to manage the store.

As customers trickled in and out of Midgard Comics, co-owners Reinhart and Waters sat behind a glass countertop—which protectively displays various comic book memorabilia—discussing their long relationship with comic books.

Waters said 2011 was the store’s best year in sales in recent years.

“And if this year keeps going the way it is going, it is going to be better than 2011,” he said. “So you can’t say comics are dying.”

The thing with comic books, Reinhart said, is that people born in the ’40s grew up during the rise of comics and children continue to be pulled into the colored pages—creating longevity that transcends well beyond more than one generation.

“When I went there was a couple in the their 70s, and that kind of surprised me,” he said.

Waters said he sees people in the teens and 20s getting into comic books again.

“I can’t think of one person who comes in on a regular basis that’s over 60,” Waters said.

Waters said Midgard’s demographic are people in their mid-20s and early 40s.

An issue is that students at Eastern have other priorities like maintaining finances and paying for school, which means they do not have the money to spend on comic books.

About the recent Marvel movie adaptation “The Avengers,” both men said the movie did well on sticking to the antagonistic relationships between certain superheroes, which they were happy to see.

Despite what people may think, Waters said a new comic book movie does not necessarily mean a boost for business.

“I think that the movies have helped in general,” he said. “But, movies don’t tend to spike things right at the moment—we say the biggest boost in new readership in last August when there weren’t any movies going on.”

Waters said the boost was because DC Comics relaunched its DC Universe.

Reinhart agreed, but also said he has seen a change in those purchasing comic books.

“I think overall there are more people that have been collecting things than reading comics,” Reinhart said.

People buy them to collect now, he said.

Waters agreed.

“But they don’t think about the value—they don’t think ‘the book I’m going to buy today is going to be worth a bunch in three months,’” Waters said.

Both men agreed the new age of comic book-to-movie adaptations began with the Marvel’s release of two movies—2000’s “X-Men” and the 2002’s “Spiderman.”

“And when they did the ‘Iron Man,’ people knew they were going to do the single movies…the buzz was that that was going to be the first one in the series to lead ‘The Avengers,’” Waters said.

He said he will be interested to see how Warner Brothers will progressively cast and release the Justice League movies.

“I think it would be a mistake for them to just throw together a Justice League movie without building on it like Marvel did slowly,” Waters said.

Nike Ogunbodede can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].