On March 13, 1982 Lindsay Chu opened Comics And Da-Kind in San Francisco's Sunset District to the public. For nearly 16 years Lindsay created a space for
everyone to come and enjoy the hobby of collecting comics. During his stewardship, Comics And Da-Kind had monthly customer birthday parties, annual t-shirt design contests, Thanksgiving Day Sales, Day After Christmas
Sales, and huge promotions like Heroes For Hope and the Deathmate Image/Valiant crossover. He also created Peli-Con, a comic book convention that generated income for charities. On January 1, 1998 I took over the store
and owned it until June of 2001. During my ownership the comic book industry was in decline. The sudden emergence of Valiant Comics as a viable publisher was short-lived. Image Comics, despite its
enormous wealth of talent, could not bring product to the market place in a timely manner. DC Comics chugged along but didn't produce anything of note during this time. Marvel had gone public several years prior,
and while it showed initial growth, it started to wane and eventually filed for bankruptcy. Collectors and readers became tired of the constant embossed glossy covers to generate speculation and spur sales. The
comics all looked pretty but the content felt like we'd all "been there and done that". Comic sales had declined precipitously from the previous years of speculation, and all the independently owned comic book stores
that sustained the industry began looking for other avenues of growth. Magic the Gathering and Pokemon cards were still selling strong, but new comic sales (the product with the greatest margin) continued to be slow.
It wasn't until Marvel purged its editorial staff and reached out to well-respected writers (who previously left Marvel for greener pastures) to return and reinvigorate characters who seemed destined to disappear into
oblivion. Writers like Kevin Smith came in to write Daredevil, J. Michael Straczynski wrote Spider-Man, and Brian Michael Bendis started on Avengers. It was at this time when I moved on from comic book retailing and
began my passion as a stay-at-home Dad.
T-shirt art
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1996
Reunion Dinner - Shari's
3/7/19
Ran, Brian, Lindsay, and Kevin.
Channel 7 News - Spider-Man #1
In June of 1990 Marvel Comics debuted Spider-Man #1 drawn by fan favorite Todd McFarlane. McFarlane had worked on the Amazing Spider-Man title for some time and was considered by many to be the definitive
Spider-Man artist. His desire to start a new Spider-Man title with multiple covers for its first issue to drive sales was an incredible success. It caught the eye of the general public, so much so, that the
local media wanted to do a story on it.
July 30, 1990
Articles
Overstreet Comic Book Price Update
In the 1990's the comic book market was exploding. It can be argued that it all began with Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man #1 in June of 1990 (2.5 million copies sold). A few months later Clark Kent
proposed to Lois Lane in DC's Superman Vol. 2 #50 (Oct. 1990). In June of 1991 Marvel's X-Force #1 (5 million copies sold) premiered created by Rob Liefeld. X-Men #1 by Jim Lee followed in October of that
same year and sold over 8 million copies. As this volatile marketplace was changing the comic book retailing landscape, the annual Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide wasn't accurately reflecting the rapidly
changing prices of back issue comics. In an effort to stay on top the near constant changes, Overstreet decided to publish updates with more precise back issue prices. In the August/September 1991
Overstreet's Price Update, Comics And Da-Kind was asked to provide an article in the issue's "The What's Hot - What's Not" section.
Overstreet Price Update 8/9 1991
Sunset Beacon
Sunset Beacon Sept. 1996