I’m not going to surprise you by revealing my characters get their affinity for comic book superheroes directly from me. I didn’t originally intend for that to bubble up as I was writing; at least, not until that box holding a costume his cousin had created for Sean to wear to the village Halloween party showed up on the front seat of his SUV in Blindsided. Part of the fun of that sequence was getting to explore how little Sean understood of pop culture, and just how worldly his best friend, Vasily, turns out to be. And it also allowed me to create a pretty cool way for Suzanne and Sean to meet; if you’ve not yet read Blindsided, it will be something of a spoiler to say anything more on that front — and perhaps even more of a spoiler to hint that his Chat Noir costume will continue to pop up moving forward.
Chat is the latest in a long line of superheroes I’ve come to appreciate over the years, though it was pure luck I stumbled onto him. I happened to be curled up on the couch in misery on a rare sick day, surfing Netflix for anything to fill the hours while I waited for the cold medicine to work its magic. Their suggestion algorithm — already primed by my extensive viewing of Disney animation and anything science fiction-related — happened to suggest Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir as something I might like, and intrigued, I clicked into the show. The smiling feline-themed superhero who had been on the title card for the show turned out to be one-half of a superhero duo — a pair of Parisian teenagers who are granted magical jewels that are the source of their crime-fighting superpowers. There were the usual trappings of the genre, including secret identities and the tricky love square that can develop as a result; throw in compelling writing and stunning CGI animation, and I was hooked. By the time my wife returned from work that evening, I’d binged all of the first season and had nearly finished the second.
When I first discovered comics, Spider-Man immediately appealed to me for he was the first character that made being smart seem kind of cool. Like the detectives I would find later in mystery section of my library, Spidey had this ability to logically puzzle out what was going on below him as he swung over the streets of New York; that he had the same sort of teenager problems I did when he wasn’t wearing the mask, while fictional, made him totally relatable to a budding geek. All these years later, Chat and his civilian alter ego speak to me on a similar level; and, like any good story in that genre, Chat has a classically complex backstory with an insanely messed up personal life that includes an overbearing father (who also just happens to be the key villain in the series).
What’s not to like about that?
Pre-pandemic, I discovered that the studio producing Miraculous, Zag Animation, had a home base in Santa Monica, California. That in itself isn’t unusual, given the depth and breadth of the entertainment industry in Southern California; after all, the Walt Disney Company was literally just a few miles up the street in Burbank from their location (though likely an hour’s drive in the terrific traffic). What was unique, though, was that Zag had opened a small retail store in the first floor of their building. Naturally, on one of my next visits to my friends in SoCal, I managed to sweet talk them into driving up to Los Angeles to visit this Mecca to all things Miraculous.
On a weekend.
A sunny, summer Saturday California weekend.
What could go wrong?
Naturally, traffic was intense, and finding a parking spot anywhere in that beachfront town was a trial that I won’t soon forget. Neither, it seems, the expressions of mirth on my friend’s face when we finally reached the door to the store — and discovered it wasn’t open to the public save for specific dates that were listed in advance on Instagram. My horror at dragging my friends up to Los Angeles was equal to the embarrassment of being reduced to pressing my face to the glass of the doors — and snapping a zillion photos of what I could see.
Fast forward to this year: while planning a long weekend in SoCal where a charity 8K run was the featured event, the way my flights worked out I found myself with an unexpectedly open Friday. My friend and I began to think about touristy spots in Los Angeles we’d yet to visit, and while putting together the list, I thought about my massive failure back in 2019. A quick web search brought a surprise: not only had the Zag Store survived the pandemic, it was now open by appointment — and they had most of that particular Friday still available.
Loath as I was to ask my friends to make the trek a second time, I threw caution to the wind and included it in my list of places to visit while out there for the weekend. They agreed, the appointment was made, and my inner thirteen-year-old started to count down the days until my visit. As it happens, that weekend turned out to be the beginning of a weather pattern that ultimately would dump yards (yards, not feet) of snow in the mountains outside of Los Angeles; as we pulled into a parking spot in Santa Monica, the rain had been more-or-less alternating between a downpour and… a downpour… for the entire drive up to the city.
Still, a warm smile greeted us as we knocked on the door; it was pulled open and inside the three of us trundled. The space was a bit smaller than I expected, but fully loaded with all sorts of cool merchandise from the show. While it’s true that most of the items are available on their website, there were a number of insanely wild collectables that could only be found at the store; they even had some prototypes for gear they were considering adding to the catalog — and asked our trio for feedback on them while we were there.
I didn’t purchase quite as much as I expected — okay, who am I kidding? I walked out with a large bag filled with items from the show and a conscience guilty enough that I called my wife back in Tucson to preemptively apologize. Fortunately, she’s well aware of my slight obsession with this show and had planned accordingly.
We still managed to spend nearly a half-hour in the store; the clerk was very personable and insanely knowledgable about the series.
All too soon, though, it was time to move on to the next part of our day. I’m so glad we had a chance to get inside this time around; we did note the for sale sign on the building, and openly wondered to the clerk if Zag was moving out of Santa Monica. She let us know that they would be staying in the city — but at another location. And that the move was still more than year into the future. If that’s the case, I may just have to swing through again — presuming my friends are up for another round of Los Angeles traffic.