Fat Jack’s Comicrypt struggling amid rising operational costs, increased online competition

As a comic shop owner for the last 40 years, Mike Ferraro has seen it all: the reboots, the crossovers, the movie tie-ins, the glow-in-the-dark poly-bagged hologrammed variant-cover number ones. Lots of highs. Only a few lows.

But these are dark times for our hero.

His two shops, both called Fat Jack’s Comicrypt — one at 20th and Sansom, the other on White Horse Pike in Oaklyn — are dealing with many issues of the financial kind.

“Increased cost, increased rent, increased health insurance — everything’s going up and we’re not really seeing an increase in sales,” says Ferraro, who opened his stores 42 and 40 years ago ,respectively. In those days, he relied on back issues for some 90 percent of his sales. Thanks to eBay and sites like it, that number is down to about 20 percent, he says. Factor in the rise of digital comics and it’s getting harder to keep the lights on.

That’s why Eric Partridge, who manages the Center City store, set up a GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign in late December. In college, he wrote his thesis on Captain America, so he jumped at the chance to work at a comic book shop. That was more than 25 years ago. He says he stepped up because Ferraro’s too proud to start a campaign himself. “I just knew Mike was stressing and struggling,” says Partridge. “He’s been such a strong and stand-up guy. I knew we had to save his legacy.

The money will go to operational costs like bills, rent, and employee health care. The campaign has a lofty goal of $50,000 and, at press time, had so far raised just $7,600. But that’s not the only way to measure its success. “We’ve also had customers who heard about it that we haven’t seen in a long time, that just showed up and spent some money in the store,” says Ferraro.

“Fat Jack’s is a cornerstone of the city’s geek pop culture and needs to be protected at all costs,” says Jamar Nicholas, creator of Leon: Protector of the Playground, a graphic novel geared at children. He remembers discovering the place as a kid, back when he thought “the only place to buy comics was the spinner rack at 7-Eleven.”

Scott Cohn worked at the now-closed Fat Jack’s location on City Avenue. “The manager, John Melbourne, who had been with Fat Jack’s for years, was very encouraging, letting me display art I’d drawn to promote forthcoming comics. For a 15-, 18-year-old with no forum, that was everything.” Cohn has gone on to illustrate professionally for DC Comics, Netflix, and others.

Perhaps the biggest gesture of support so far has come from Nick Barrucci, a longtime Fat Jack’s customer who founded Dynamite Entertainment, an independent comics publisher in Mount Laurel. When he heard Fat Jack’s was in peril, he offered to match $2,000 in donations to the GoFundMe campaign. (He’s is also raising money for William Messner-Loebs, a once-prominent comics illustrator currently down on his luck in Detroit.)

To raise the money, Barrucci announced that his treasured copy of X-Men #1 would be placed on the auction block. “It’s one of the most expensive comics I have,” he says. He knew selling such a high-profile comic would help draw attention to the campaign. A pristine copy of the 1963 comic sold for $492,937.50 in 2012; Barrucci’s slightly more weathered copy will likely sell for less — he estimates $2,500 to $3,200.

“Mike and his employees have one of the best stores in the country. I don’t want to see them go. I want them to get back to doing well and bringing comics to fans for years to come,” he says. “And Mike’s like a second father to me.”