Purple Earth Comics in Huntington, WV, closed on April 22, 2025, WOWK reports. The store was originally Street Corner Comics, and in the early 1990s current owner John Horst, an employee at the time, purchased the store from the previous owner, Dale Bush. Jarrod Greer, owner of two Inner Geek comic shops in the area, posted on Facebook that he has acquired Purple Earth’s backstock and will be selling it at his own stores.
Mark Keller, owner Tabletop Treasure Games in Quincy, IL, has been playing tabletop games since he was a preteen, and he planned to open a store when he retired. He changed his mind after a trip to Philadelphia, the Herald-Whig reports: “I visited as many game shops as I could, and nearly all of them were horrible,” Keller said “Everything was like walking into a dingy, dirty basement that you weren’t sure you were going to make it out of alive. But there was one shop there that was really nice. It really gave me inspiration for what a game shop should look like… So that became my goal, getting gaming out of the basement, both physically and proverbially.” His new store opened in early April, and Keller says most of the customers he has seen so far are interested in Magic: The Gathering, Warhammer, and Dungeons & Dragons, but he’s hoping to open it up to a wide variety of board and card games as well.
Across the pond, locals are hailing the opening of Tabletop Dominion in the Worcestershire town of Broadway (just down the road from Oswaldtwistle), saying, according to Yahoo! News, “This was just what the town needed.” The store, which started out as an Etsy store carrying handcrafted dice boxes and other supplies, carries an array of dice, rulebooks, Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, and board games.
When Jamison Sacks and DR Hanson opened Common Ground Games in Dallas, TX, in 2013, the nearest big tabletop game store was over 20 miles away. In their first year, 1,500 square foot store had sales of $250,000. It has now expanded to 10,000 square feet and had sales of over $4 million last year, they told LGBTQ Nation, and they did it by living up to their name: “We create common ground for anyone, regardless of where they are in their gaming journey,” Hanson said. “So many people flocked to gaming, board games, and video games in high school because they didn’t find their tribe or their niche. And so because of that, they would protect it at all costs, to the point where anyone who came in that didn’t look like them or remind them of their personal small tribe was a threat to their safe space.” Common Ground, on the other hand, is a safe and welcoming space for everyone, including women and LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent people. Like other game retailers, they are concerned about tariffs and are ordering now for the end of the year. “It feels like everyone right now is just in Vegas playing a really high-stakes game of 21, and we don’t know if we should stay or hit … and that’s not a way to live or run a business,” Hanson said.
In other tariff talk, CBS News pays a visit to Phantom Comics, in Washington, DC, to talk to owner Jacob Shapiro about the effect of tariffs on his business. And Grant Mitchell, co-owner of Nirvana Comics in Knoxville, TN (see “Award-Winning Retailers Discuss Kids’ Comics”), also discusses how tariffs could affect his business.
Andrew Falkenhainer, owner of Cromulent Comics in Troy, NY, which opened in April, tells the Times-Union of his path to retailing: He worked at Albany’s Earthworld Comics for years, then participated in a local entrepreneur boot camp, winning a grant that enabled him to set up pop-up comic shops around town. “I learned a lot about what sells and what doesn’t sell to the general public, because that was not, specifically, a comic shop,” Falkenhainer said. “It was interesting to see what people liked (outside of a traditional comic shop). It really gave me an appreciation for what the general public sees in comic shops.” In addition to comics and toys, the new store has a video store that carries actual VHS tapes, with a classic TV and VCR so customers can watch right there, and special area for local creators to sell their handmade wares.
Noorullah Amiri, 29, of Livermore, CA, was arrested on March 27 in connection with the March 22 burglary of Crush Comics in Castro Valley, KTVU reports. Two people were caught on video breaking into the store and stealing merchandise; when police searched Amiri’s home, they found large comics, action figures, and 200 Lego sets, some of which were identified as being stolen in a separate burglary earlier that week.
Free Comic Book Day is May 3, and local news outlets are banging the drum. The Houston Chronicle talks to local retailers and lists 10 stores that are participating. In Manchester, NH, Double Midnight Comics will celebrate with a free comic con in addition to the free comics, Manchester Ink Link reports. Shana Porteen, owner of Black Ice Comics in Houghton, MI, explains the concept to the Mining Journal and invites everyone to check it out. Jeffrey Petryczkowycz, general manager of Time Traveler Comics in Berkley, CA, is celebrating his first FCBD in the store’s new location, and the store will be hosting three local creators as special guests, he tells the Oakland Press. And Choose Chicago has the deets on the local Comic Crawl.
Quick Links
The Daily Titan pays a visit to Nuclear Comics in Mission Viejo, CA, where owner Kenny Jacobs (see “Kenny Jacobs”) and some of the regulars talk about what makes the Eisner Spirit of Retailing-nominated store special, including customers that have been coming there since they were five years old.
TravelPortland takes a look at Portland Board Game Bars and Stores.
And the Dallas Observer checks out the Best Comic Shops in Dallas.
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