It’s Always Sad When One Of “Your” Comics Shops Closes

I note with this tweet that the current 45th Street in Seattle's U-District retail location for The Comic Stop is to close. That was my comic shop for a few years in its Zanadu Comics incarnation. It was alt-Seattle friendly: they sold David Lasky and Tom Hart mini-comics in addition to mid-1990s mainstream comics. Two contexts for that shop that don't exist anymore is at the time there were like a half-dozen comic shops within walking distance of that one: I'm not sure except for maybe Seattle, San Francsico, NYC, Chicago and LA that we have neighborhoods with multiple comic shops anymore, and we might not even in half of those places. Seattle's U-District neighborhood still has a few shops, definitely so if you include Comics Dungeon across the highway, but it's nothing like 1993 down there. That shop was also in a place where 20 years ago people would go to do a bit of pop-culture consumption more generally, hitting multiple music stores and used book stores at the same time they were out to get comic books. If you were lucky, you might stay in that general area and see a movie -- I imagine that's still possible.

As is the case with many places as I get older, I retain a physical sense-memory of the shop: where and how I stood to take in the new comics rack without it being overwhelming, exactly where I half-tossed my backpack before i shopped as the door slipped off my shoulder, how I shifted my hips and mid-section as I rounded a tight corner made by back-issues boxes. I remember the clerks, including the one that people avoided if they weren't in a mood to talk and the one who conspired with me thinking all I read were Marvel Comics.

I think it's possible we might lose more than a few comic book stores of note over the next few years. A lot of the best shops are being run by people near retirement age, and another group is run by people who about to hit that mid-forties age where doing something else in grown-up fashion as a job seems like a dwindling opportunity. It's a tough thing we ask them to do just in general, without the stunts and moves that would have to be potentially discombulating and where they're treated like we're doing them a favor. We also have strong anecdotal evidence that every comic book shop that closes is a last straw for dozens of fans who take that opportunity to wrap up their own engagement with the medium. Every good one's passing, no matter how generous our standard for good, seems worth noting.
 
posted 12:05 am PST | Permalink
 

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