Over the years I’ve bought from several stores, both on and off line, but I think I’ve found where I’m going to be buying from now on.

86th Floor is a British online comics supplier, so yanks and Canadians sorry But for us Brits this could be the answer of where to get the latest manga at a good price.

That’s not to say the site doesn’t have it issues. the first one for me being is that it’s not exactly the most easy on the eye site. And in both Flock and Chrome (the only browsers I use) the site home page is seriously broken, and takes a lot of fiddling to use properly.

They also use Google’s search, and I hate that on sites like this. For example trying to find anything that isn’t in the current issue of Previews is a total pain. The only way to realistically find it is if you know what issue of Previews it was listed in, and then use a back issue order form for that month. A simpler search and order function is definitely needed. I would have bought loads more from them if I could only have found the titles I was after.

That aside though the service easily makes up for the bad site design. I’ve used them for several months now, and so long as you aren’t desperate for something, it’s well worth ordering with them.

So what makes them worth ordering from? Well, in a crux, the discount. We all want to save money, and 86th Floor offer a discount scheme with discounts reaching 25%. In the few months I’ve been ordering with them my average is 25% discount, with the odd 20%. Can’t argue with that can you

Also, I no longer have to go all the way into town to my local comics store to order things and pick them up, since I order online and they ship them to me.

You do get charged shipping, which does cut into the discount a bit, but if you order more than a few volumes at a time, the discount/costs balance out pretty well IMO. So far my average monthly savings are around the £10-15, that’s an extra couple of random pick ups from the book shop.

As well as having the order shipped to you can you collect it at any of the comic cons held around the country that they attend.

There is a downside to this service however, if you’re in a hurry you’re out of luck. They only dispatch stuff once a month, around the beginning. With an invoice for payment which is due for the 18th. Which is also the day you need to get your current month order in by.

This is a bit frustrating admittedly, since if you get a magazine that’s released later in the month (Yen Plus and Neo are both released around the 10th-16th) then you won’t get them to the following month.

The other good thing I like about them is I can set up a standing order for Yen Plus, Neo, Shonen Jump etc etc and they’re automatically reordered for me every month.

Unfortunately only titles listed in Previews can be ordered from them, so if the titles you want aren’t in, or failed to generate the minimum values, you’ll need to get them else where. But you can’t have everything

I definitely recommend this company and recommend you order from them over the Book Depository or Play.com.