Ashley Metzger, Centretown News
Silver Snail Comics on Bank Street closed on Sept. 13.After 25 years of business, comic book store, the Silver Snail, will be ending its final chapter this month.
Kin Jee, the owner of the store since it opened in 1990 admits he will miss running it.
“My initial reaction was to send Kin an email saying I can’t believe this is happening and thank you for everything,” Philippe Leblanc, a regular customer since 2008, says of his reaction to the store’s closure.
The Silver Snail closed due to financial reasons on Sept. 14. The decision to close came from the owners of the location in Toronto.
It’s never easy to see a store close because the comic book industry is changing and technology is making it more obsolete, according to Rob Spittall, the owner of the Comic Book Shoppe on Bank Street.
“Any time a store shuts down in this industry it hurts,” says Spittall. “It hurts the whole industry overall.”
Nonetheless, people like Jee and Spittall who work in the industry are enthusiastic about the future of comic books.
“I think the medium is going to hang around for a long time because the people who really love comic books will work hard to keep it going,” says Jee. “That goes from the creators to the people that sell it.”
According to Spittall, Hollywood is making it trendy to like comic books because of the surging popularity of superhero movies. He believes that they will always be important and of public interest.
“We sell the fantasy. We want to believe that we are Superman. We want to believe that we are Wonder Woman. We sell the fantasy of ‘Hey plummet yourself and pretend that you are this character as the story is going on’,” he says.
Jee says the comic industry is constantly modernizing and evolving. He uses the example of the Archie comics and how they become darker in content. Now there are additions like zombie characters.
Whereas before there was only clothing style changes, “That kind of change really excites me. That’s why I’m still reading them and I’ll be 60 in December. I just love the medium,” Jee says.
The Silver Snail was a place that encouraged people to expand their tastes and discover what they like according to Leblanc. He says that the employees would suggest new comics based on their creative aspect. So if you liked certain creators or writers, they would provide suggestions similar to your preferences.
Leblanc initially believed the closing of the Silver Snail would be the end of the road for many of the store’s regulars, until he heard about an employee opening up her own store nearby called Comet Comics.
The employee, Heather MacDonald, has asked Jee to work alongside her as a fellow employee. They hope to incorporate Silver Snail’s feel and look.
Jee believes that many of his customers will transition to MacDonald’s store.
“When we first announced that we were closing on Aug. 4 a lot of our customers didn’t know what they were going to do. They did not want to shop at the competition, but now they have an option,” he says.
Comet Comics will be located at 1167 Bank Street and Jee says it is expected to open by the beginning of October, if not earlier.