Sacramento Once Banned Crime Comics for Kids. Today Comic Shops Face a Different Set of Challenges

Inside Comics & Collectibles, a
shop at the busy intersection between Sacramento’s Freeport
Boulevard and Fruitridge Road, all three walls and even the
ceiling are plastered with superhero posters, cartoon decals and
other brightly colored imagery. Between boxes and shelves stuffed
with back issues, figurines and other collectibles on display,
staff and customers browse, chat or play board games as if at a
second home.

Sacramento’s comic shop scene is
a friendly one, but the city hasn’t always been a friend to comic
book shops. Earlier this year, on Feb. 3, the
Sacramento City
Council repealed a
1949 ordinance that limited the selling and distribution of comic
books to minors. The ordinance, Section 9.12.010, specifically
referred to comics featuring crimes, which cut off most of that
era’s most popular series, including Action Comics (home of
Superman), Detective Comics (Batman), Wonder Woman and many
others.

The ordinance hadn’t been
actively enforced in decades and is now officially off the books,
leaving Sacramento’s children and teens free to peruse the aisles
of superhero comics at local stores like Empire’s Comics Vault,
Comics & Collectibles and JLA Comics. But local shop owners and
artists say that there are still plenty of challenges in the
comic world.

One comic shop owner in
Sacramento who is very familiar with these realities is Ben C.
Schwartz, who opened his Arden Arcade store, Empire’s Comics
Vault, in 2003. While
he’s a lifelong comic fan and loves his work, he says that it’s
not something to be taken on lightly.

JLA Comics owner Lecho Lopez reads a copy of “Geiger,” at the
main counter, 374 Florin Road. (Photo by Jacob Peterson)

“One of the things I think people
don’t understand is that there’s a romanticized version of what
it’s like to run a comic book store,” Schwartz says. “At the end
of the day, it’s still a job, and it’s actually more than just a
job because you own your own business.”

Schwartz says one of the biggest
challenges to running the store was keeping people engaged,
getting them in the store and getting them to come back. Arguably
the most difficult aspect is managing his store’s inventory to
meet customer demands.

“If people come in and they
consistently can never find what they’re looking for, then
they’re going to go somewhere else,” Schwartz says. “And if they
go to the other shop and they find it, they might not come back
here.”

One of the biggest changes shops
worldwide have had to deal with came when major publishers like
Marvel, DC and Image chose to stop working with Diamond Comic
Distributors in 2020. JLA Comics owner Lecho Lopez, who opened
his store in the Pocket-Greenhaven neighborhood in 2024, says
that while it was more work to deal with multiple distributors,
it was still an improvement compared to his experience with
Diamond.

“They were the only game in town,
so when we let them know, ‘The 1-in-50’s messed up, the
1-in-100’s messed up,’ they would say, ‘Here’s a refund for it,’
but we would still have a customer who requested them here,”
Lopez says, referring to the variant copies that retailers can
request for 1 or 2 percent of their order, usually featuring
alternate covers done by different artists. “When I had the
chance to work with someone other than Diamond, I took it
because, yeah, they were a little more expensive, but all my
books were getting here on time.”

Pam Farley, owner of
Comics &
Collectibles, says her
shop has had to routinely make adjustments to its offerings.
Comics & Collectibles originally opened in 1986, but Farley and
her husband, Gene, who died in 2023, took ownership in
1998.

Photos: Not Just a Hobby: Amid a
surge in card collecting, a few shops still survive in the
Capital Region

In the near 30 years since,
Farley says they’ve survived by making the necessary changes when
times get tough. “When we first bought the store, Beanie Babies
and Pogs were still around,” Farley says. “You have to go with
the needs of the marketplace, go with the opportunities that are
open to you.”

Building a community
around comics

In terms of what comics are
selling, all three owners noted that one of biggest changes in
recent years has been what books are being bought and who is
buying them.

Schwartz of Empire’s Comics Vault
says that while the majority of readers he sees are in their 30s,
he recently noticed an uptick in younger readers. He credits this
to parents who read comics sharing them with their kids and notes
that nearly 75 percent of these young readers are girls.

“The girls seem to be reading
more,” he says. “Some of it is superhero stuff too, but a lot of
it is just slice-of-life, which a lot of them gravitate
to.”

Comics and longboxes on display at JLA Comics.(Photo by Jacob
Peterson)

Independent titles and those
outside of the superhero genre have also seen an increased
presence on store shelves. Farley of Comics & Collectibles says
that while Marvel books still make up the biggest portion of her
store’s book sales, independent titles are selling very
well.

“There’ve been a couple of new
books this month from Image that sold out instantly, ‘White Sky’
and ‘D’Orc,’” Farley says. “It sounds funny, but it came out
yesterday, and I went to reorder it, and it had already gone to a
second printing the day it came out.”

Beyond selling books and
merchandise, Farley, Schwartz and Lopez each say they want to
build a community around their stores that feels welcoming to
anyone who steps inside.

Farley says that in addition to
hosting events, she has also reached out to local schools about
donations and fundraisers. “We’ve kind of evolved into a third
space for the community, which is something that has been really
important to us,” she says. “We love our neighborhood, we grew up
here, and want to be a part of and give back to this
community.”

This relationship goes two ways
as well. When Farley’s late husband was struggling with cancer
before his death, she says it meant a lot to both of them when
their customers came together to support the couple during the
difficult time.

“My husband was always surprised
that people were sending him letters,” she says, remembering that
he said, “‘I just thought I was the comic book guy.’ He was here
six days a week for a million years, and he built a community and
he built a legacy.”

Collaborating with
creators

Comic book stores also create a
place for writers and illustrators of the future to find their
path. Manuel Martinez, a freelance illustrator who moved to
Sacramento in 2020, says he first realized he could become a
professional artist by going to his local comic book shop,
Atlantis Fantasyworld in Santa Cruz.

“The guy who owns that spot, Joe
Ferrera, I can officially call him a friend,” Martinez says.
“Years later, when I wanted to be an artist, that same guy took
me around to different editors that he knew because he had been
in the business so long.”

Schwartz of Empire’s Comics Vault
has also collaborated with various creators who’ve come to his
store, publishing comics through his own publishing label,
Continuum Press. He says it was after opening the store that he
was inspired to pursue creating comics.

“When I finally opened the shop,
I met a ton of people, there were local artists and writers,”
Schwartz says. “I was like, ‘Why am I not doing this now, why are
we not putting this together?’ And so I hooked up with a bunch of
writers and artists, and we started building something.”

The comics industry as a whole
goes through its fair share of ups and downs, but for whatever
difficulties they face, all three owners also flatly reject the
idea that comic books or comic book shops are dead or
dying.

“There’s always the doomsayers.
‘Print media is dead,’ I’ve heard it for the last decade,”
Schwartz says. “But it’s not, because there’s nothing like
holding a book in your hand. There’s so much more than just
looking at the picture and reading the words.”

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