The first time I ever walked into a comic book store, it was a religious experience.
Got the sarcasm out of your system yet? I’ll wait. Better now? As I was saying . . .
I grew up in a microscopic town that checked every stereotypical little town box. It was the proverbial “don’t blink or you’ll miss it” kind of place. A small farming town, it had more churches than schools, the hockey arena was more important than town hall, the public library was a broom closet populated by thirty and forty year old books and it was 99.9% white.
In short, it was the absolute definition of boring.
My imagination was the safe ground I could always retreat to when the boredom and the bullies and the collective small town narrow-mind became too much to bear (and narrow minded may be too generous a term). I grew up during the heyday of Saturday morning and after school cartoons-which were really just half hour commercials to sell toys, video games and candy (even the Rubik’s cube had a cartoon)-and I was perfectly OK with it. But other than those animated marathons, I had little else to sustain my overworked imagination. Comics books were on my creative plate, but unless it was something I could get from my local convenience store (a pretty limited selection outside of Transformers, Wolverine and anything with a bat on the cover), I was ignorant to the larger world that comics offered.
Or in my case, the titanic life raft they could offer an over-imaginative nerd in a claustrophobically small-minded little town.
But after a friend of mine made a few runs to a store “in the city” (I swear to Bill Murray, Baby Jesus and Batman that was the actual description), I managed to convince/bribe/beg my irritated parents into taking me for a little reconnaissance of my own. And I’ll never forget how fast and how far my jaw dropped the first time I walked into Comic 1 Books.
The walls were covered in vibrant, electric colour. Books starring every super hero I’d ever heard of and plenty I hadn’t lined the shelves. Untold years worth of adventures were stored in dozens of back issue boxes, waiting to be discovered. Posters promising every kind of story hung from the ceiling and books by Stephen King, Anne Rice, Arthur C. Clarke, R. A. Salvatore, Margaret Weiss and Tracey Hickman lived next to ones by JRR Tolkien, Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle, Mary Shelly and Bram Stoker on the spinning racks. There was even a selection of toys you couldn’t find at Toys R Us (which were also pretty rare trips for this country boy as well).
It was a buffet of pure imagination and I’ll never forget that first, surreal moment. I was euphoric. Forget feeling like I was home, I felt like I was in heaven.
Soon I was saving every penny I could get my hands on and using every trick I could think of to convince my parents to take me as often as possible. I treated every bag I left with like it was treasure earned at the end of some fantastic quest.
I fell out of comics after I moved to Ottawa for school, and I managed to stay away for years. But their gravitational pull proved more savage and powerful than a Black Hole and I was pulled back in. When I returned, the industry was undergoing seismic changes as a new creative renaissance was emerging from the ashes of a near collapse (Marvel Comics spent the better part of the 90’s bankrupt, all the major publishers were guilty of some horrendous decisions and good storytelling took a distant backseat to flashy artwork and missed ship dates. Major media outlets were keeping an obituary for the entire comic book industry at the ready as a result).
After the two small neighbourhood stores I relied on to feed my addiction disappeared, I became a customer at The Comic Book Shoppe (the Bank St. location in particular). And it wouldn’t be wrong to compare my first visit there to my first trip to Comic 1 all those years ago. While I have fond memories of the first two Ottawa stores I frequented, neither could compare to the Shoppe in size, selection and pure nerd magnitude.
There were racks and shelves and boxes full of comic books, glass display cases were filled with specialty toys and prestige statues, there were more board, role playing and card games than you could shake at and this mouth watering Nerd sundae was stopped off with mountains of apparel, anime, manga, toys and any other kind of merch you could want (or didn’t even know existed). They even had a section reserved for locally produced stuff, something you’d be hard pressed to find most other places. It was a drool worthy paradise for a dozen kind of fans.
But now the Comic Book Shoppe, which has been there for Ottawa’s Nerd community for over three decades, is in trouble. A few weeks ago store founder and owner Stevens Ethier posted a letter detailing the Shoppe’s struggles on the GoFundMe page he set up as a final Hail Mary to save the business.
He was candid about the personal failures at the root of the Shoppe’s problems. Ethier admits that business is good and sales aren’t problem (he reveals that the years between 2013-2016 were record breakers) and that the various industries the Shoppe caters to are more than healthy. He fully concedes that the problems lie with him.
Long story short, a failure to properly file tax returns has snowballed into a financial catastrophe that threatens not only the Shoppe but also Ethier himself (who mortgaged his home in an attempt to stave off bankruptcy). While the Shoppe’s taxes have been paid, the interest, penalty fees and other associated costs are threatening to close the Shoppe down. It’s death by a thousand financial paper cuts.
There’s plenty that can (and has been said). The fault is Ethier’s (which he has been pretty up front about) and Clyde St. location manager Aaron Kurtzor has stated that ownership has learned some valuable lessons if the Shoppe survives this near death experience. Both Ethier and the various Shoppe’s themselves (Clyde St., Bank St and the AnimeStop in Nepean) have been raked over the coals on Reddit and other social media (which is why they disabled the comments section on the GuFundMe page and deleted some of the comments on their Facebook page).
But the critics and haters ignore that the Shoppe has enjoyed rare success until now. Very few small businesses make it past the five year mark and recent years have seen no shortage of large, multinational retailers and corporations throw in the towel (Target, Sears, Future Shop and American mainstays like Toys R Us and Radio Shack). The Shoppe, meanwhile, has grown from a single store in 1987 to three (AnimeStop opened in 2006) navigating a constantly shifting marketplace, restless social and cultural trends and enduring numerous recessions (including the global meltdown of 2008). The Shoppe hasn’t merely persevered, but thrived as well.
And most long time customers and former employees have had nothing but good things to say about the business and ownership.
The headlines are often filled with news of big banks and multinational corporations getting billion dollar bailouts from taxpayers; now Ottawa’s Nerd community has a chance to save something local by either donating a few dollars to the Shoppe’s GoFundMe page or by stopping by to spend a few extra bucks (they’re having a huge multi-store sale as we speak).
Not only has the Shoppe’s plight has gotten attention from Global News and Bleeding Cool, but some other local businesses have gotten on board the rescue effort as well. This is the very definition of a grass roots movement to save something an entire community cares about (or should). Because while I don’t mean to take away from the hard work or significance of other stores in Ottawa (like Heroes, Myths and Legends and Comet Comics), who will fill the void left if the Comic Book Shoppes and AnimeStop close their doors? Where will the gamers who have used the Shoppe’s space for years (often for free) go? Who else will offer such a range of product? Who will be that one stop experience?
Capitalism is unforgiving and, unless you’re a car manufacturer or a bank or something else deemed “Too Big To Fail,” it never grants a second chance. But the Nerd community has a chance to avoid the blame game and give something that has been there for it since 1987 (and currently employs around two dozen fellow nerds) a second chance. A chance to keep a pillar that has been here for longer than most of us can remember standing. And standing strong.
Because at the end of the day, after all the rhetoric and hand wringing and even finger pointing, we would all benefit. And some of us will still have some safe Nerd ground to retreat to when the tedium and small mindedness of the real world gets to be a little too much.
To donate to the Comic Book Shoppe’s GoFundMe, click here.
