Soho Comic Book Store: Gosh! Comics Open Daily in London

Gosh! Comics trades from 1 Berwick Street, London W1F 0DR, on the corner where Soho meets Oxford Street, and it opens seven days a week from 10:30am to 7pm. The shop was founded in 1986 by Josh Palmano and spent about 25 years opposite the British Museum before moving to Soho in 2011. If you want a comic book store in London that feels like a well-edited bookshop rather than a merchandise warehouse, this is where most local readers would send you first.

For a quarter of a century Gosh! Comics sat on Great Russell Street in Bloomsbury, a few steps from the gates of the British Museum, and many London readers still remember buying their first graphic novel there. The 2011 move to Berwick Street gave the owners a chance to design a shop from scratch. Co-owner Andrew Salmond told journalist Paul Slade in 2020 that the store's mindset 'has for a long time been all about outreach', aimed at people who would not normally walk into a comic shop.

That outreach shows in the layout Salmond described. When the shop moved, the ground floor was set up to look like a bookstore, with a big central table of books on all manner of subjects and similar titles in the windows, while the weekly releases and back issues went downstairs. His point was simple: a giant Spider-Man in the window tells passers-by whether a shop is for them, but a table of reportage, memoir and fiction in comics form makes them curious enough to come in.

The online catalogue mirrors the shop's sections, which is a useful map before you go. Graphic novels are split into 2000AD collections and UK classics, European translations, manga, humour, non-fiction and biography, LGBTQ+, strip collections, superheroes and general fiction. That breadth matters in a city with three big West End shops. Gosh! Comics leans literary and international, so a reader hunting a French album in translation or a Japanese romance volume will usually find more here than in a shop built around toys.

Current prices on the shop's own site give a feel for the spend. Marvel Knights Punisher in softcover is £14.99, the manga My Dress Up Darling XOXO is £12.99, and Buuza!! Volume Two is £14.99. Small-press work is cheaper and more interesting: the one-shot M25 is £5.00, and issue three of Texture Magazine is £15.00. Salmond said the store has always been a big supporter of small press creators, and that table is where you find comics no algorithm will show you.

The children's area is one of the best organised in London. The catalogue breaks Kids into board books, picturebooks, all-ages graphic novels, age 8 to 12, age 13 and up, kids manga and kids superheroes, plus a shelf of Little Golden Books and educational titles. Parents can hand a ten-year-old the age 8 to 12 shelf and leave them to it. The staff also publish a Gosh! Best Of list every year, split into adult and kids and young adult picks, going back to 2017.

Collectors come for the shop's exclusive signed bookplate editions, which appear on the homepage months ahead of release. In late October 2026 the list included a pre-order for the Wytches Pledged Edition volume one with a signed bookplate at £17.99, listed as available from 21 October 2026, and a signed hardcover of Subculture at £31.99. These are usually limited runs, so the pattern is to pre-order online and collect in Soho, rather than to walk in on release day and hope a copy is left on the shelf.

The shop also sells its own art prints, including a Black Cat Mystery print at £15.00, plus cards, totes, jigsaws and a few figurines. Merchandise is a side line, though. Salmond was frank that Gosh! Comics does 'very little merchandise' compared with Forbidden Planet. If your shopping list is mostly statues, Funko figures or trading card boosters, skip this stop and spend your time on Shaftesbury Avenue instead. Gosh! Comics earns its place for books, signed editions and new names in small press.

Because the shop opens at 10:30am every day, including Sunday, the quietest browse is the first hour on a weekday, before Soho office workers come out at lunchtime. Late afternoon on a Saturday is the busiest window, when shoppers spill off Oxford Street and the downstairs room fills with regulars collecting their pulls. If you only want the graphic novel tables, you never need to go downstairs, so even a busy Saturday is manageable if you stay on the ground floor.

Events are part of the rhythm. The store runs a rolling programme of signings and launches, and those evenings can turn the ground floor into a standing-room crowd. The shop announces these on its social channels, so look there first if you want a quiet visit. If the queue at the till is long and you only came for one book, the website takes orders for delivery, and gift cards are sold in store and online, which makes Gosh! Comics an easy present for a reader you are visiting in London.

Gosh! Comics is still run by people who read what they sell. Palmano founded the shop, and Salmond, his business partner, has spoken publicly about staffing, events and the shop's place in London's comics scene. Salmond described a solid base of long-standing comics readers as the bedrock of the business, while the shop floor is set up to win people who have never bought a comic. In practice that means you can ask for something like a novel or memoir you already love, and the team will point you to a graphic novel in the same vein rather than to the newest crossover event.

Walk south down Berwick Street and you reach the street market, where fruit and vegetable stalls share the lane with lunchtime street food. The same street is lined with independent record shops, so a comics stop and a vinyl crawl fit neatly into one afternoon. Keep going past the market and you come out near Brewer Street, with Carnaby Street a few minutes to the west for a coffee.

For a second comics stop, Forbidden Planet's megastore on Shaftesbury Avenue is about a 12-minute walk east through Soho Square and across Charing Cross Road. It has a different job: floors of merchandise, games and a basement of new issues. Between the two shops you can cover literary graphic novels and superhero back stock in one trip. Soho Square itself, a short detour east of Berwick Street, is a good place to sit on a bench and open what you just bought.

Address: Gosh! Comics, 1 Berwick Street, London W1F 0DR. Hours: Monday to Sunday, 10:30am to 7pm, as listed on goshlondon.com. Email: info@goshlondon.com. Nearest stations are Tottenham Court Road on the Central, Northern and Elizabeth lines, about five minutes on foot, and Oxford Circus, about six minutes west. The shop has stairs to the lower floor, where weekly comics and back issues are kept. Gift cards are available in store and online.