New Brunswick comic shop looks to fans for help

NEW BRUNSWICK - Comic Sanctuary, a local hot spot for geeks and die-hard fans, has found itself in a financial bind, so the Morris Street store is tapping into the community for help.

The store owes just shy of $6,000 to Diamond Comic Distributors, and they've set up a GoFundMe to pay off the debt.

For what exactly? The owners don’t know.

But a shipment was made by the distributors some time in the spring of 2017, not picked up by the owners and returned to the warehouse, where it sat unpaid.

“I still don’t even know what’s in that shipment, but apparently it got sent back,” said Bryan Coe, one of the owners. “We can’t get an answer out of what was even in it. I don’t even know if it was stuff we actually ordered.”

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Coe owns the shop, which is in the Rockoff Hall building, with his girlfriend and co-owner, Jackie Fellin.

The Hillsborough couple opened the store in 2015, which was originally on the second story above a restaurant on Easton Avenue. The original owners had moved out shortly before.

Coe and Fellin said the new ordeal has been a major roadblock for the business. With the money not paid, their account with Diamond has been frozen for nearly a year.

And with the account frozen, they can’t buy any new comics because they said Diamond has exclusive purchasing rights with all the big-name comic and graphic novel publishers, such as DC, Marvel and Dark Horse.

“There’s big event after big event with Marvel and DC comics that we get calls all the time for, ‘Do you have this new book, do you have this,’ and we don’t, so it’s like we’re turning away so many customers,” Coe said.

The GoFundMe added: "Getting regular comics back and getting them back quickly could make the difference between just staying open, and having a brighter future."

With the Diamond account frozen, the two owners haven’t been able to view the invoice for what they owe. A chunk of the debt comes from unpaid interest.

The two were initially told that their account was frozen along with a dozen other such businesses because of a technical glitch, but a month later, that changed to them owing money. Then at the start of this year, Coe and Fellin were contacted by debt collectors.

“It’s come down to communication, because if we had known about the shipment, we could have worked out, saying like, ‘oh, we’re so sorry, we’ll pick it up next week,’ and it could have been ironed out,” Coe said.

Fellin said there’s a possibility that Diamond sent the store something they hadn’t ordered, which isn’t uncommon. Orders could get mixed up, sent to the wrong person or destination, not include everything purchased or simply not delivered.

In the meantime, the two have gotten by and able to keep the business out of the red, but nothing more.

“We’re huge into Magic the Gathering, we buy old comics, selling what we already had,” Coe said. ”Luckily, Magic the Gathering and Dungeons & Dungeons have really carried us, but losing half our potential income, losing that other half of the store, sucks.”

Comic fans are hard-pressed to find that many other comic book stores in the immediate area: there’s Fallout Shelter in Highland Park and Main Street Comics in Milltown.

But Comic Sanctuary, the owners pointed out, is within walking and busing distance for the tens of thousands of Rutgers students. Moreover, the store is a stone’s throw from several bus routes and the New Brunswick Train Station.

However, that momentum of local patrons has just “evaporated,” according to Coe.

“We’re still getting people who live in the building, who come for Magic, D&D, who come for back issues, older stuff,” Coe said. “But we’re leaving money on the table. We’re not getting everything we could.”

While the chance of Comic Sanctuary shutting its doors for good is still just a distant possibility, the two have said they continue to be left in the ditch.

For now, they plan to continue marketing toward the gaming crowd and vintage collectors.

To help, visit https://www.gofundme.com/comic-sanctuary-needs-help.