It’s going to be a short run this time around for Norman Witty, proprietor of Omega Books in downtown Northampton.

The comic book and movie poster emporium will be replaced at the end of July by a new tenant in the storefront of the three-story building at 213 Main St., owned by Witty, a downtown fixture in one guise or another since 1972.

We stopped by Witty’s surprisingly orderly, lightly stocked shop not long ago to talk about the book and poster business with him, because Witty has a track record with which many of the newer downtown habitués and entrepreneurs are unfamiliar.

He’s mellowed with age, not as curmudgeonly as I remember him when he first opened Omega used books 30 years ago; I used to browse his shop, never presuming to engage the dour-appearing proprietor in conversation.

Even though he has difficulty hearing and it is necessary to shout questions at him, Witty’s responses are sharp and funny; it’s clear he is extremely knowledgeable about his fields of endeavor.

As for his store, which is open only four days a week, Witty says with a grin: "I was looking forward to it, but as soon as I opened I’m looking forward to getting out of it."

He says one the reasons he closed his book and comics store in 1980 was that he finds it difficult to hew to the retailers’ credo that the customer is always right.

He is using the shop, located in the space vacated by Peaceworks which went out of business recently, to unburden himself of boxes and boxes of comic books for which he has no need, and little affection. He also is selling some expensive movie posters from a collection that he has built up over the last 35 years.

Let’s go back to 1971 when Witty was living and working in Los Angeles; he had wound up after graduating from Northwestern University where he studied film and literature. A native of Boston’s Dorchester section, Witty was born in 1941.

In Los Angeles, among his various jobs he worked as a researcher for the David Wolper company, a firm that produced television documentaries. He also spent time working at a newly-opened used bookstore that is still operating on LA’s Wiltshire Boulevard. Witty began acquiring books for his own collection, along with comic book and movie memorabilia that fed his personal tastes and interests.

"I laugh more and more when I think that they were selling movie posters then for 75 cents. Of his relentless purchases, he says, "I don’t know if I understood it was a business."

He was not buying for speculation but he bought what touched his fancy. "In Los Angeles I was paying 15 cents for old comics I liked," and when he would come back east he found that each of the same comics were selling for at least $1.

But, he observes either jokingly or with complete honesty: "The fact is I have exquisite taste and foresight in all of these things."

By 1971, he decided to return to this region and, based on an examination of a map of New England picked out three communities that appealed to him for their size and proximity to Boston and New York - Northampton, Montpelier, Vt. and either Brattleboro or Burlington - he says he can’t recall.

Not long after, during a cross-country trip he drove down I-91 late one night, he saw the Northampton exit and wound up on Pleasant Street where the Globe Theater marquee was advertising Eric Rohmer’s "My Night at Maud’s," one of Witty’s favorite films. Across the street he peered into the window of Sheehan’s bar. "It looked fabulous," he recalled. "Ah, this was nice. I like it." Next day he talked to the Raymonds about real estate, and they said they had the perfect spot, a building he managed to purchase. "Real estate prices," he says with a grin, "were fairly reasonable in those days," reflecting the reality that many Main Street storefronts were boarded up and the downtown was nearly moribund.

During those early years, he worked long hours, for a time living in the rear of the shop until he was able to renovate the upper floor for living and rental space. This was accomplished by builder "Billy" Turomsha, says Witty, who in exchange for free rent did most of the renovation work over a long period of time.

Slowly the book store added more comics to its stock, and Witty began offering movie posters for sale, even though there was little market for them in those days.

The only person, he recalls, who ever bought the movie posters was a high school student who was working across the street at what is now Thornes Market. That would have been Ken Reed. At $35 a poster it was a stretch for Reed, Witty says, "but he never complained about the price." Some of those posters are worth thousands of dollars today, he says, such as the Bogart-Bacall poster for the movie "The Big Sleep."

 By 1980, Witty concluded that he like to get out of the used bookstore business. "I got out early because Ken Reed said he wanted me to help him" get into business, by renting him the bookstore space for what would become Main Street Records, a downtown mecca for the young and not-so-young fans of music and comics scene for 15 years before it closed in 1996.

With income from a tenant for the storefront, Witty turned more to peddling his comics and posters at the big fairs in this country and in Europe, especially in England, France and Italy.

"I love the movies," he says showing me around his shop and pointing out some of of his favorites, especially one illuminated by spotlight at the rear of the store for the 1953 film, "The Sun Shines Bright."

Stopping in front of poster for the Robert DeNiro classic film, "Raging Bull," Witty says: "I have great confidence in what I like," and thus what he buys. He recalls buying a few of the DeNiro posters for $5 each. When he found out the seller wanted to unload his entire stock of 200, Witty bought them for 50 cents apiece.

"I can sell them to a dealer for $125 each," he says and they sometimes go for as much as $300 each at auction. A poster from an early Dracula or Frankenstein horror film might fetch $100,000. "I’ve never owned one," Witty laments. Also highly collectible are posters from early science fiction films.

As with comic books, movie posters and lobby cards were printed in small numbers originally, which keeps the resale prices up. Originally, the posters were not made to be kept and thus fewer were printed, maybe only 5,000 for a first run movie, he says. Today for movie like "Star Wars," the poster run might be in the tens of thousands.

The same was true with comic books, but in the late 1980s and early 1990s the comic book bubble burst because of what Witty calls "hype" and greed. The publishers were cranking out millions of comics for a teen audience that had the effect of flooding the market. "I was appalled by what I saw," he says. "I was shocked and horrified."

Which is a factor in why the comics in the cartons arrayed in his store today are pretty cheap and why Witty is happy to unload his inventory.

In the areas of his interest, he says "I try to keep my personal collection tight. It’s bad for business to be a collector," although one suspects Witty’s personal collection is not small by any normal measure.

Meanwhile, Witty says he will continue each year to do about a dozen of the biggest book, comics and poster shows here and abroad.

Witty’s Omega Books continues its limited engagement only through July.