For the past year, I have been ordering my comics through a mail service. It’s a really good discount, and when I switched, I felt bad for “abandoning” my local comic shop. To alleviate the guilt and to continue to support a small local business that I had been loyal to on a weekly basis since 1996, I kept my pull list open and had them reserve a small handful of books.

It had always been a shop I’d gone to on and off through the years, but there were closer stores to where my parents lived or my high school or my jobs. In late ‘96, the comic shop right next to my parents’ place closed up, so I started going to this store, which was right across the street from my art college.

Over the years as a customer and a couple year stint as an employee, the shop has honestly become the worst place to buy comics in the area. It’s mostly become a “Magic: The Gathering” shop and the comics section has fallen into what can only be called a state of disrepair. The place is filthy, most of the employees are rude or ignorant, and the good ones are so beaten down by the poor management and constant stream of awful Magic customers, they no longer care. It is not a good or healthy environment for comics or anyone really.

Unless you love Magic. In which case, go fuck yourself.

For the last couple years, pretty much the only reasons I continued to shop there were out of loyalty to two of the employees (the good ones) that I consider friends. One in particular, Jason Young, is someone I think of like a brother. He and I do a podcast together, we hang out all the time, drawing, eating, making fun of Magic players, watching movies and talking about comics.

Jason has worked at this shop since he was 14 years old. He is now 36.

Think about that.

And as of today (July 20th, 2013), Jason will no longer be working at this store. He recently got the opportunity to take a position teaching and utilizing art to help developmentally disabled adults adjust to society. Or some bullshit like that, whatever. Either way, he is no longer going to be doing God’s work – selling comics.

Joking aside, I’m super proud of him and happy that he’s taking this new job. He’s been miserable at the comic shop, and this is a great thing for him. I will miss the Magic horror stories though, and our podcast is going to lose a major segment.

And so, back to me and ignoring my friend’s happiness, as of today, I am officially no longer a customer of my local comic shop.

I bought the last two books there that I will ever buy. Jason rang them up for me, as he has done since 1996, for the final time (I bought Avengers Assemble # 17 and Scarlet # 7, in case you care). There are still a couple books to be released that I do not get through my mail order service, but I can purchase those at many of the other comic shops in the area until my orders catch up. I had Jason close up my file, and I still had some credit at the store, and told him to randomly buy me something tomorrow on his last day.

And I don’t feel bad. The store is falling apart, the customers are not great people, even the comic folks. The bad ones are the worst comic fan stereotypes that exist. The store and its customer base cannot and will not support independent or creator owned works. Hell, it will barely support non Batman or X-Men comics from DC or Marvel.

But still, it’s an end of an era. My friend is leaving the store as an employee after 22 years, and I am leaving it as a customer after 17. Like I said, I no longer feel bad about not supporting the store, but there nothing there anymore for me to want to support.