Berkeley’s Comic Relief, one of the best comic book stores in the country for the last couple of decades, closed its doors for good earlier this week. Rory Root, the shop’s long-time owner, passed away in 2008 and the shop has struggled along ever since.
Comic Relief is the only store to have carried every single book I’ve ever done, from my first mini-comic to my latest graphic novel. Many, many Bay Area (and former Bay Area) cartoonists can say the same thing. Rory and his crew ran that kind of store.
Comic Relief and Rory are both deeply missed. Tom Spurgeon has a great retrospective here.
