[2] Specialising in science fiction, occultism, and Atlantis, the central London shop also played a key role in bringing American underground comics to the United Kingdom.
Dave Gibbons, a trained architect, designed the staircase to the basement at the Berwick Street location (which historically had been a butcher shop) — he was paid in comics.
[3] Stokes and Landau were important forces behind the annual British Comic Art Convention, the so-called "UK Comicon," which ran, mostly in London, from 1968 to 1981.
[citation needed] The shop later moved to a much larger ground floor and basement premises in St Anne's Court off Wardour Street in Soho, at that point proclaiming itself "the biggest and best science fiction, fantasy, and comic book store in the world.
The shop was a key influence on three bookshops in Manchester run by David Britton and Michael Butterworth: House on the Borderland, Orbit in Shudehill, and Bookchain in Peter Street.
[12] The second issue of Moore and Kevin O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, volume 3 ("Century: 1969") features an homage to Dark They Were and Golden Eyed: a comics/science fiction/Forteana store named after another Bradbury short story "There Will Come Soft Rains".