Death of a comic shop.

This past Saturday, June 26, 2005, All Star Comics and Games of Mishawaka, Indiana, closed it’s doors from the last time.

All Star has become a fixture in our life in South Bend. Comic geeks that we are, the selection of a local comic shop was one of the early agenda items when Amy moved here. At the time, it was All Star Comics and Cards, owned by John – and older (than us, by maybe a generation) baseball enthusiast and run with help from Darrin and Brian (comic and game enthusiasts much closer to our own age). Brian and Darrin have shown us excellent customer service from day one. They managed to learn our names before we got theirs. This was not a singular occurrence. I brought a friend in (to corrupt him by introducing him to the world of Mage Knight products). Darrin and Brian greeted him by name on his second visit. When we had been visiting weekly for only a few months, they, started setting aside books for us that they figured we would want. These were books that we never asked for, never mentioned, and often didn’t even know about. And their instincts were almost always right on target.

About three and a half years ago, John decided that, because of some health concerns it was time to retire. Faced with the choice of entering the ‘real world’ or taking their slacker comic-shop-guy employment to the next level, Darrin and Brian took over the reigns. In early January, 2002, All Star Comics and Games opened under new management in a new (better) location.

Over the past three plus years, our relationship has outstripped retailer/customer. We’ve become friends. Our weekly trips to the comic shop have turned more often into hour long visits (ended usually by one of our desires to put food in our belly). We are really going to miss seeing the guys on a weekly basis.

Sadly, with a mediocre economy, rising product pricing, a game market that bottomed out and no doubt numerous other unknown or unacknowledged causes, business has been struggling for the last year or so. And the guys have had to accept that the time has come to move onto other ventures.

We took some time Saturday night to help them box up what was left of the store (another shop is buying up the remaining stock) and say so long to a good run. We hung out a while, talking about the past, present, and future of the comic industry, the gaming industry, and the industry of our lives.

In memory of All Star, in vain hopes of maybe sparking someone’s interest in the comic book art form and storytelling medium, and inspired a bit by my good friend Curt’s movie reviews at http://curtflix.blogspot.com, I will be starting a second blog, devoted to comic reviews, both of individual books and the medium as a whole. Hopefully I will post to it with more regularity than I do here.

Please visit it (my first post should be up before July 1 hits) at www.comicbookreview.blogspot.com. And if you see a review that interests you, support your local comic shop. Before the go the way of Drive-In Theaters and Soda Fountains.