The Beat: Rocketship Closes Doors

Heidi MacDonald follows up nicely on New York comics scene gossip to report that the well-regarded Brooklyn-based Rocketship has closed its doors -- whether temporarily or for good is as yet up in the air. Its owner says the shop is at the end of an initial, five-year lease and the owners haven't decided whether to press forward or not. It's pretty much all there in Heidi's post; I don't need to play parrot.

One thing that interests me, though, is that notion that five years of a retail establishment -- or any comics business -- may be all that the owners or managers or those otherwise involved want out of that specific endeavor. That may seem like fast-talk to some people, but something about it appeals to me and I think speaks to the way people tend to shift careers in the 21st Century. While one hopes for a model of countdown retail that involves something other than an ending with the doors locked and a lot of inventory inside you can see from the outside windows, I think the general idea could be pursued. The model whereby you need huge amounts of money and half a person's life before you even consider pursuing selling something seems to me horribly restrictive. My town wouldn't have a single bookstore, only one of its ten restaurants, a third of its coffee shops and half its mechanics if a similar restriction on retail existed in those industries. It reminds me when Kitchen Sink went under and Fantagraphics nearly collapsed, and there were people in the comics world that suggested that a multiple-decade run doing something as eclectic and odd as making art comics or underground comix was somehow a failure because it didn't go on forever. It may just be something in our superheroic DNA to expect this of our industry's businesses.

On a less abstract note, I hope things work out positively for those involved according to whatever it is they want to do.
 
posted 6:15 am PST | Permalink
 

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