Socked by virus, comic book biz tries to draw next panel

She holds up issues one by one, usually for $5 or $10, and takes down addresses from buyers. It’s a way to get by but helps keep the shop’s community spirit alive. The show has a warm, thank-God-we-haveeachother feel to it. Sometimes she sips a Modelo or vents about a difficult day. She calls it “What We Do in the Comic Shop.” Long a repository for tales of world-threatening cataclysms and doomsday dystopias, the comic shop in the coronavirus era now finds itself drawn into a fight for its very survival. The crisis, felt across retailers, poses a particular threat to comic book shops, a pop-culture institution that has, through pluck and passion, held out through digital upheaval while remaining stubbornly resistant to corporate ownership.

Even as the pandemic era takes on the appearance of a comic — desolate urban centers, masks everywhere — the inkandpaper industry is at a standstill that some believe jeopardises its future, casting doubt on how many shops will make it through and what might befall the gathering places of proud nerds, geeks and readers everywhere. It won’t go — insert “POW!” bubble — without a fight.

“I’ve put so much into this shop. I’m going to go down swinging if I’m going to go down,” says Blanch, who also writes comic books and graphic novels. “This place is important to people. What are you going to do but keep going?” Saturday would have been Free Comic Book Day, an annual nationwide event intended to bring die-hards and newbies alike into stores.

Instead, stores are closed nationwide and new print issues haven’t been released since late March, when the industry’s primary distributor, Diamond Comic Distributors, shut down.

Normally, some 6 million extra comics are distributed for the day and around 1.2 million people flock to stores. For some shops, it dwarfs even Comic-Con, the annual San Diego convention (cancelled).

Joe Field, owner of Flying Color Comics in Concord, California, who came up with the holiday, calls it “the single biggest retail day in the comic book industry.” The stoppage, says Dan Gearino, author of Comic Shop: The Retail Mavericks Who Gave us a New Geek Culture, comes as the industry — despite being a pipeline to massive billion-dollar blockbusters — isn’t in great financial health. “We’re going to come out of this with fewer comic shops, but there will be enough that survive that this industry will continue,” Gearino says. “The question I’m asking is: How big will the culling be?”

Tate Ottati has run Tate’s Comics in Lauderhill, Florida, for 27 years — long enough, he says, to see people who first came in as teenagers return with their own kids.

“There’s cool stuff every day where you go, ‘Oh, my God, look at this great comic book,’ or, ‘Look at this amazing statue,’” he says. But while his faith in the store remains strong, he’s had to constantly improvise. “I was just going to reinvent the store, and then the coronavirus hit,” Ottati says.

Writers and artists have rallied to support shops. Kami Garcia, Brian Michael Bendis, Gwenda Bond, Sam Humphries and Phil Jimenez organized a five-day Twitter campaign, #Creators4Comics.

They launched with 150 creators auctioning art, comics and experiences. By the time it was over, they had more than 600, including Frank Miller and Neil Gaiman. It raised more than $433,000.