Here's proof that a visit to Baltimore's Geppi’s Entertainment Museum can fulfill a comic-book fan’s fantasy:

Last Sunday’s Season 6 premiere of the AMC show “Comic Book Men,” spotlighting the adventures of writer-director-comic geek Kevin Smith and the staff at his Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash comic store, included a stop at the museum adjacent to Camden Yards and a visit with its owner, Steve Geppi.

While at the museum, store manager Walt Flanagan enjoyed a close encounter with a rare copy of “Action Comics #1, issued in 1938 and featuring the first appearance of Superman. With Geppi holding the book open (“I don’t know if these hands are worthy to hold it,” Flanagan says), Flanagan waxes poetic on the smell of 78-year-old comics pages.

“It was the smell of a million wildflowers,” Flanagan says, as his fellow comic-book geeks laugh approvingly.

Says Geppi, who flew in from San Diego, where he was attending Comic-Con, to film the spot: “It isn’t often that I’m making somebody’s dream come true.”

— Chris Kaltenbach