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Luis and Janet were good friends of mine when I lived in Queens. Their store was an oasis for collectors and readers alike. Clean, bright with everything a comic fan, reader or collector would want. They bent over backwards to accommodate their customers and killed them with kindness. Upon one visit I watched quizzically as a customer went through 10 copies of a single comic to find the ‘perfect condition’ issue. I looked at Janet and she just shrugged it off as this customer was VERY particular. (Peculiar?) As I said, I would still be a customer there today if I didn’t move away. I am truly saddened and I wish them well along with their sons. Buenas suerte!

What was their outreach like? I’ve lived in NYC all my life, went to high school in nearby Queens, and have tried to frequent as many comic book stores as possible, and even I thought this place closed years ago. NYC is not dying for comic book stores (hell, we have 3 different Midtown Comics megastores). You can’t just have a comic book store and wait for people to come in. Did they do FCBD? Did they make a big deal about it? In stores? Did they promote beyond “the big two’?

Honestly, if it’s not a rent issue, then I don’t see a reason why this has to happen beyond “We didn’t try and get new customers”.

Their comic shop locator profile shows them as “kid friendly” and a participant in Halloween Comic Fest. They state they participated in Free Comic Book Day, but there is no FCBD stamp on their profile.

Their store (and the previous location) are near the LIRR station. It’s a 10-minute walk to the nearest subway station. (So the location might be a problem.)

Their website: http://www.comicden.com/
It’s functional, but doesn’t have a good e-commerce portal.
(Also, they need to update their location information…although that’s moot now.)

Their Facebook page has TWO posts, both promoting Free Comic Book Day in 2013.
“39 people like this”

Google rates them 4.4 on five reviews.
Yelp: 4.0 on three reviews.
One review from September mentioned that there was not a decent selection of graphic novels, which could have hurt sales. Not many back issues as well, according to reviewers.

Montasy is 1.5 miles away. Royal Collectibles is also nearby, but not as accessible.

‘It’s like a dying hobby’, the store owner says… How the heck can you have any type of long term expectations for pamphlet sized stories priced over $2, w/ads, and based on stories that could not leave the realm of homo-erotic power fantasy fulfillment, christian/conservative-extremist ‘red scare’ censoring via the CCA, and speculator bubbles based mainly on brands, trends, and nothing to do with quality sequential story telling. Disney, Time/Warner, and other foreign entities need people to go online, since the data mining, and predictive analytics tracing our online activity is more valuable than having anything to do with sequential; the market is more about ‘comic books’ and merchandising, than it is about sequential art/writing, characterization, respect for continuity, or keeping readers. The marketing structure needs to be rebooted if you really want to gain new readers, instead of just making Captain America ‘black’, or having Wolverine be a ‘woman’, or go on the radio like Axel Alonso did when he was promoting his ‘hip hop’ covers, and said that people with read hair are gay, so that is why he made Rawhide Kid homosexual -do you think then that all those outcast red headed comic book fans at your comic conventions like it when they are called homophobic slurs just because they read ‘comic books’? Yaaay, Alonso has pride in making the Hulk Korean, since he is ‘part Korean’, as he his wife is from Korea. Is’nt that great, guys? Minorities are just like regular white folks in this fake country, as everyone gets off obsessing how they are ‘different’, and how to charge something that is over priced and full of advertisements…

At 01:55 :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4qpblNikGY

Isnt that great how red hair means that you are gay, according to Alonso? Isnt that great the decision making process for large foreign multinational corporate entities that have access to everywhere we shop?

This is my local store. It’s right up the block from where I live and I have to say I feel kinda bad about it closing. I rarely frequented it because of the size of the store and it’s small selection but Janet is always very nice and accommodating when I did go there.

I work in the city and Jim Hanley’s Universe is literally right across the street from me. So every wed morning I walk over there and pick up my comics. Ugh. Now I feel terrible about not supporting my local store. But too late now I guess…

I lived in NYC from 2006-2011. I made it a point to try and visit every shop in the City (except staten island) and I never even heard of this place.

Torsten’s comment makes it seem like they did no outreach or social media of any kind. So….. sad, but not surprising right?