We wuz robbed.
At about 2:40 Tuesday morning, our store (Ralph’s Comic Corner, in Ventura, CA) was broken into and robbed. The burglar(s?) came in through the ceiling, knocking out electricity in half of the store in the process. One of the shelves on our new comics rack was busted, our ECs and undergrounds in the large glass case were stirred around a bit (but otherwise unburgled), and the only things we appear to have lost were early Witchblades and Spawns, a handful of Spider-Man, and a couple recent variant covers.
Mostly, we’re pissed about the mess left behind than we are about the missing books. What a nuisance. There’s still a big pile of ceiling tiles and wiring around our graphic novel section and our toy shelves that needs to be cleaned up. Plus, we just had a lot of rewiring work done on that side of the store, which has all essentially been undone.
Yes, we’re still open for business, and new books are out for sale. The show must go on, as they say.
EDIT: Our intrepid local newspaper has the story on its site, so here are my corrections: there are two stores – Ralph’s Comic Corner (the store I manage), and Seth’s Games & Anime (the games and, you guessed it, anime store we lease out space to). The street address we use is 2379, the Ralph’s storefront, though I suppose I can’t blame them for getting that wrong…the space Seth occupies is technically 2343, but no one uses that address for anything.