Dan Webb, the original owner of Brainstorm, sold the store in January after more than 30 years, but the current owners, John Frazier and Michael Morgan, themselves former customers and employees, are also familiar faces to Gallaher.

“I worked for Dan for about 11 years, so I remember selling comics to David,” Frazier said. “We try to have events at the store as often as possible, but to have someone like David, who grew up buying comics here and now writes for DC [Comics] up in New York, it’s a really great opportunity.”

Gallaher, who was 12 on that fateful day in 1988, was born in 1975 in Honolulu, but bounced around quite a bit as a young child. A self-described Army brat, Gallaher’s first real sense of permanence came in 1985, when he was 9 or 10, he said.

“We moved to Frederick in 1985, and we lived off of Mount Phillip Road right off Route 40,” Gallaher said. “I went to Boy Scouts there, dated my first girlfriend. ... I went to West Frederick Middle School and later Frederick High. Then I attended Hood College, so a lot of my formative years were forged in the fires of Frederick County.”

While finishing his studies in psychology at Goddard College, Gallaher did an internship at Marvel Comics, where he worked for about three years. After Marvel, in 2001, Gallaher optioned his first comic, “Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar,” based on the CBS radio mystery program of the same name. The comic was published in 2003 and is rich with tributes to Frederick County.

“It was all about Frederick, it took place in 1950s Frederick,” Gallaher said. “The detective, Johnny Dollar, actually an insurance investigator, was investigating an arson at the Tivoli, which is now the Weinberg Center.”

Subsequent works, including “High Moon,” a Web comic about an Old West detective and werewolf hunter, also sprang (at least in part) from Gallaher’s time in Frederick and the interests he developed here, the writer said.

In 2013, Gallaher was approached by Dan DiDio, co-publisher of DC Comics, who asked him to pitch ideas for several of the company’s titles, including the Green Lantern Corps, Gallaher said. A few months later, Gallaher was offered the chance to write a limited series run of Green Lantern Corps for DC Comics’ big summer crossover event, Convergence.

“They called me on my birthday,” Gallaher said with a laugh. “It was like, ‘Hey, Happy birthday! You want to come work on this thing with us?’ It was the best birthday present I could have asked for.”

And while Gallaher has come a long way from the 12-year-old who discovered the world of comics on the shelves of Brainstorm Comics, he didn’t hesitate a moment when he learned Webb was selling his old shop, heading down to visit his friend and, eventually, agreeing to head back down for Saturday’s signing.

“So much of who I became as a comics writer and a comics reader was forged there in the shop,” Gallaher said. “I remember hanging out at the shop, sometimes skipping out of school to spend lunch break at Brainstorm ... if it wasn’t for [Webb] and it wasn’t for Brainstorm, none of this would have happened for me.”

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