Where Have All Staten Island / New York City’s Comic Shops Gone – Collectors Confessions

Where Have All the Comic Shops Gone?

By Chad Farley

A large portion of my paper-route money found its way to County Coin on Forest Avenue, where I bought plenty of comics growing up. I also regularly visited Jim Hanley’s Universe and Star Base 1 in Port Richmond.

There were other names longtime Staten Island collectors will remember: Krypto Comics in Midland Beach, The Comic Shop on Van Duzer Street, Collectors Paradise and Comics Unlimited.

All of them are gone.

More recently, we had Comic Book Jones, which became much more than a comic shop for many of us. It was a gathering place and, for some customers, almost a second home. I still speak with people who worked there.

Now, after the closing of Hypnotronic Comics, only JHU Comics remains.

So what happened?

The answer is bigger than Staten Island.

Comic shops have spent the last several decades surviving one industry challenge after another.

The Speculator Boom

One of the biggest turning points came during the early 1990s.

For a brief period, comic books were being treated less like entertainment and more like investments.

Collectors and casual buyers flooded shops believing that practically every new comic might someday become the next Action Comics #1 or Amazing Fantasy #15.

Publishers responded to that demand.

Variant covers multiplied.

Comics came sealed in polybags.

There were foil covers, embossed covers, die-cut covers, glow-in-the-dark covers and chromium covers.

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If publishers could find a new way to make a comic look collectible, chances were they tried it.

Few comics symbolize that period better than X-Men #1 from 1991, which was released with multiple covers and sold millions of copies.

There was only one problem.

Everybody had one.

Collectors were purchasing multiple copies and carefully storing them away, expecting their values to soar.

But scarcity is one of the most important factors in collectible value. If millions of people own pristine copies of the same comic, there is very little scarcity.

The books were being preserved specifically because everyone expected them to become valuable.

That expectation helped ensure that many of them did not.

When the Bubble Burst

By the middle of the 1990s, reality caught up with the market.

Speculators realized that stacks of mass-produced “collector’s editions” were not becoming retirement funds.

Demand collapsed.

Comic shops that had expanded during the boom suddenly found themselves with too much inventory and fewer customers.

Publishers were hurt as well.

Marvel famously filed for bankruptcy protection in 1996.

The comic industry survived, of course, but many comic shops did not.

That crash left scars that can still be seen today.

Some casual readers walked away from comics entirely. Others felt publishers had placed gimmicks and shocking events ahead of storytelling.

The lesson was simple:

Printing the word “collectible” on something does not make it collectible.

Comics Disappeared From Everyday Life

Another major change came as comics gradually disappeared from places outside specialty shops.

Older readers will remember when comics could be found in supermarkets, pharmacies, convenience stores and on newsstands.

A kid who wasn’t already a comic collector could see Spider-Man or Superman sitting on a rack while shopping with his parents and decide to give one a try.

As publishers increasingly concentrated on the direct comic-shop market, those casual points of discovery became far less common.

That gave comic shops an important role, but it also created a problem.

If you weren’t already going to a comic shop, how were you supposed to become a comic reader?

By the 2000s, comic books had increasingly become a specialized hobby.

At exactly the same time, entertainment options were exploding.

Video games became bigger.

The internet changed how people spent their free time.

Streaming eventually changed entertainment again.

Digital comics gave readers another option.

Online retailers made it possible to buy graphic novels without ever entering a comic store.

Comic-book movies became some of the biggest movies in the world, yet translating those audiences into weekly comic readers remained surprisingly difficult.

Millions of people might know who Iron Man is while never having purchased an Iron Man comic.

That disconnect remains one of the strangest realities of the modern comics industry.

The Cost of Running a Comic Shop

Then there is the simple economics of running a small business.

Rent goes up.

Utilities go up.

Insurance goes up.

Payroll goes up.

Customers have more places to spend their money.

And unlike many other retailers, comic shops frequently have to predict what their customers will want weeks or months before books arrive.

Order too few copies and you miss sales.

Order too many and those books become inventory sitting in a box.

Independent retailers are constantly walking that line.

Staten Island comic shops faced those same pressures.

The difference today is that when one closes, there isn’t necessarily another one two neighborhoods away.

Then Came COVID

As if surviving the 1990s crash and decades of changing consumer behavior wasn’t enough, comic shops then faced the COVID-19 pandemic.

Stores closed temporarily.

Distribution was disrupted.

Customers stayed home.

Independent businesses everywhere faced enormous uncertainty.

Some comic shops survived.

Others never recovered.

When you consider all of those events together—the speculation crash, disappearing newsstands, digital competition, online retailers, rising operating costs, and a global pandemic—it becomes easier to understand why so many comic shops disappeared.

What becomes harder to understand is how some managed to remain.

Which brings us back to Staten Island.

JHU Comics Is Still Here

Today, JHU Comics on New Dorp Lane is Staten Island’s remaining dedicated comic shop.

And I think that deserves recognition.

JHU traces its roots back to Jim Hanley’s Universe, which has been part of the Staten Island comics community since the 1980s.

Think about what that means.

The shop survived the speculation boom.

It survived the crash.

It survived Marvel’s bankruptcy era.

It survived the decline of the newsstand.

It survived Amazon.

It survived digital comics.

It survived COVID.

It survived decades of changing tastes and changing customers.

And it is still selling comic books on Staten Island.

You don’t survive that long by accident.

I shop at JHU at least once a week, so I get to see firsthand what has helped keep the store going.

The first thing is simple:

Good customer service.

That sounds obvious, but it matters.

A good comic shop gets to know its customers.

The people behind the counter learn what you read, what you collect, and which books you might be interested in before you even know they exist.

That personal connection is something an online retailer cannot easily reproduce.

The second part of the formula is selection.

JHU doesn’t simply stock Batman, Spider-Man, Superman, and the X-Men.

There are independent comics, graphic novels, manga, children’s books, collected editions, back issues, art books, and plenty of titles outside the traditional Marvel and DC universe.

That variety matters because today’s comic reader isn’t necessarily reading the same books as the collector standing next to them.

A successful comic shop has to serve both.

Why Local Comic Shops Still Matter

There is something else that gets lost whenever another comic shop disappears.

A comic shop is not simply a place where products are sold.

It is where recommendations happen.

It is where collectors meet.

It is where you argue about whether Batman could beat Captain America.

It is where someone discovers their first independent comic.

It is where a kid walks in for Spider-Man and leaves interested in something they never knew existed.

For many collectors, a good comic shop becomes part of their weekly routine.

New Comic Book Day is not simply about buying comics.

It is about going somewhere.

Talking to people.

Looking at covers.

Digging through back issues.

Finding something you weren’t looking for.

That experience is difficult to replace with a cardboard shipping box sitting on your front porch.

An Industry That Keeps Changing

Comic collecting isn’t disappearing.

If anything, the hobby continues to evolve.

Collectors today have access to more information about comics than any previous generation.

Prices can be researched instantly.

Grading has become a major part of collecting.

Independent publishers have built devoted audiences.

Back-issue collecting remains strong.

Variants and incentive covers are still everywhere.

And yes, speculation still exists.

Some things never change.

But today’s collectors are generally much more aware of what happened during the 1990s.

A shiny cover does not automatically make a comic valuable.

A limited print run does not automatically make a comic desirable.

Ultimately, comics that maintain interest tend to do so because readers care about the characters, creators, and stories.

The same principle applies to comic shops.

A store survives because people care enough to keep walking through the door.

Support the Shops That Remain

When I think back to Staten Island in the 1980s, it is remarkable how many choices we had.

County Coin.

Star Base 1.

Krypto Comics.

Collectors Paradise.

Comics Unlimited.

The Comic Shop .

And others.

Today, those choices are memories.

For younger collectors, the idea that Staten Island once had comic stores spread across the borough probably sounds strange.

For those of us who lived through it, the strange part is seeing only one left.

That is why JHU Comics deserves a tremendous amount of credit.

In an industry that has repeatedly found new ways to make survival difficult, they have continued to adapt.

They are still there.

Every Wednesday, new comics still arrive.

Collectors still come through the door.

Back issues are still waiting to be discovered.

And conversations about comics are still taking place across the counter.

Maybe the bigger lesson in the disappearance of Staten Island’s comic shops is that we should appreciate the ones we still have.

Because history has shown us something very clearly:

Having a local comic shop is never guaranteed.

So if you’re lucky enough to still have one, stop in.

Buy something.

Ask for a recommendation.

Dig through a back-issue box.

Have a conversation.

Because once a local comic shop disappears, getting it back is a lot harder than keeping it alive.

Banner Image: JHU Comic Shop. Image Credit – Collectors Confessions