That Fresh New Comic Shop Smell…

By Tom Spurgeon

So I'm walking down the street the other day from Northwestern's Ryan Field to the place I'm staying in the Edgewater neighborhood of Chicago, when what do I come across but a new comic book shop in the neighborhood. Third Coast Comics opened up three weeks earlier than the time of my visit, meaning four weeks ago now, in the 6200 block of North Broadway. This is an unassuming part of a major north-south thoroughfare about four blocks west of Lake Michigan and three blocks south of Loyola University. I used to live two streets over.

I love comic book shops. Although I'm happy to criticize their excesses, argue against what I might feel are delusional statements from their owners and hammer the system that encourages both, my simple standard for why comic book shops are terrific is that if they didn't exist and then suddenly existed, I'm pretty sure the day they sprung into being would be considered the greatest day ever for comic book fans. Comic book shops have the comic books in them. I like the stinky ones and the awesome ones, the successful ones and the clubhouses, the ones where I can send my Mom and the ones I'm sort of scared to go into. I want an industry that encourages the great shops but a culture that allows for the ones that are less than great. I try to give individual shops the same leeway I give individual comics creators. I wish I had one in my town.

What I never get to see anymore is a brand new comic book shop, all pink-faced and stubby arms flailing in the air. It may be as long as ten years now since I entered a shop whose past history was marked in days rather than months or years. Here are a few pictures of the new Chicago retail establishment taken by my brother Whit, accompanied by some notes from my visit. I hope if you're in the area you'll consider stopping by.



These are two of the owner-operators: Thad Doria and Terrence Gant. (A third partner, Joey Gerharz, wasn't at the store the day CR stopped by.) I dealt with Gant. I liked him because he had the gift of gab, which I appreciate in a comic shop owner; he seems to be working his ass off while enjoying the experience, which some of my retailing friends tell me is key; and he knew local retailing history, such as this shop's location around the corner from the legendary Larry's on Devon space, now closed, which delights me as a industry wonk. He made me laugh with a couple of stories about Larry's, a shop he used to travel across town to visit as a kid. He talked about how grumpy Larry (at least I assume the owner's name was Larry) could be with his customers and claimed that when Larry's was split into two retail locations side by side, with separate front doors and the two fronts not connected inside as far as anyone could tell, local fans compared the set-up to something Batman villain Two Face would run because one side was light and airy and mostly clean; the other was dark and cramped and seemed sort of dirty.

Another thing that was interesting about Gant is that he said he moved into this location after a few years of selling comic books on-line as a virtual retailer. This is the second time I was made aware of a new Chicago retailer had come into opening a brick and mortar store. Could that be a trend in the making? Could this be a way for retailers-to-be to gain experience and test demand in an under-serviced area? And to be honest, I don't think I'd ever met a comic shop co-owner that was black, so I imagine that has to be a good thing, too.

*****



This is the storefront, with pen and ink (I think) drawings of various cartoon characters around the glass portion of a space Gant described as "falling into our lap" when I asked him why Third Coast set up in this exact location. To the question itself he responded they wanted something north, but not as north as the Evanston-bordering Rogers Park (distance and parking issues) and not right on Loyola's campus, either (too great a dependency on student traffic). North Broadway in Edgewater is an interesting area in that the neighborhood has gentrified since the early 1990s, but hasn't thrived in the way you might expect for the number of people choosing to live here. So while things have steadily improved, for example a lot of the restaurants have cycled out two or three times and many of the services-type places have changed hands. Still, there's parking all around, a number of livable blocks within biking and walking distance, and it'd be easy to access the shop from the Granville stop on the El (in fact, it's probably a little shorter distance than you have to walk from the Belmont stop to Chicago Comics). So I can understand Gant's satisfaction.

*****






Above is a walk around the store's main racks. Generally, going clockwise and starting to the left as you walk in: books about comics, manga, high-end alternative, two big periodicals racks, a smaller periodicals rack, alternative and superhero trades, the main desk and then I think maybe kids books or other accessible titles. There are also two stand-alone shelves in the middle. That's not exactly everything the store offers, and I might have goofed up a rack or two, but that should give you a rough idea of what they have on hand. The key to place can be summed up as follows: it's a full-service comic book shop in terms of breadth of coverage, perhaps not depth. Heck, there's one full row devoted to the Ignatz books. I probably wouldn't make the trip from if Chicago Comics were closer, but I'd kill for this in my hometown.

*****



This is going to sound silly, but if you live in a town without a comic book shop, as I do, you can forget how powerfully appealing certain items can be when you see them in person. I spent an entire day last week looking slack-jawed at art books on the shelves at Chicago Comics. In Third Coast, I was struck by the Marvel Omnibus editions once I saw them on the shelves here, and nearly bought one. Gant says that sales thus far have been split between periodicals and books about 50/50, and that he plans to expand both manga and collectibles offerings to reflect what's being asked for by his potential customer base.

*****



This is the back wall above a little sitting area where, among other things, the store apparently hosts its own podcast.

*****




Finally, stepping through the back, here's a physical plant advantage the shop plans to exploit: a courtyard in which to hold meetings of the monthly club as weather allows (they've done one so far) and to expand the space with which Third Coast can better host various in-store events. They haven't done a signing yet, but Gant says they plan to work their way into doing so as they're able to bring in local and visiting cartoonists and comic book makers. I have to imagine you'd be treated well if you did one here and it couldn't hurt to give them a ring if you want another Chicago location.

I don't know if this shop will make it. Running a comic book store is rough even when everything goes right. Chicago has one of the great destination stores (Chicago Comics) and one of the great alt-focused stores (Quimby's), while Evanston has Comix Revolution about five miles away; there's also a sign in the window of an empty retail location about eight blocks south of Third Coast that indicates a location of the Graham Crackers chain may opening there before too long.

Still, Chicago used to be maybe the great market for comics and as such I think has the potential to carry a lot more retail. There's a store about five blocks down from Chicago Comics on Clark that seems to do just fine (it's been there a while), so readers are happy to support stores other than a single-destination shop. I personally can't imagine anything better than walking past a comic book shop of interest on a Saturday when you've nothing better to do except a bit of around-the-neighborhood shopping. I hope it all works out and hopefully some of you out there will include this shop in your general plans regarding Chicago as a comics destination. I think you'll like it, and I wish the new owners the best of luck with establishing their own place in Comics Chicago.

photos by Whit Spurgeon

*****

* Third Coast Comics, 6234 N. Broadway Chicago IL 60660, [email protected], 847-863-7450.

*****
*****
 
posted 8:10 am PST | Permalink
 

---

 
Daily Blog Archives
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
 
Full Archives