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Most comic-book stores would frown upon their customers sitting on their floor and reading, but Loot is not like other shops. Here its young clientele — who would not qualify for most amusement-park rides — was intently reading comics, discussing them or hard at work making their own.
The Brooklyn business is geared toward young and middle-school readers and has a monthly-subscription model that allows its clientele to binge on comics and take daily classes in writing and drawing their own stories. Think of Loot as less of a store and more of a book club and artistic retreat.
The space is the brainchild of Joseph Einhorn, a father of three and the founder of Fancy, a shopping and scrapbooking site. He had two goals: to get young readers interested in comics and to get them away from their screens.
“I felt that if we didn’t do this, there would be a whole generation of young people that would miss this medium completely,” Einhorn said. But he’s not anti-tech. His sons, he said, were into Fortnite, and he wanted to bring some of its comic-style art and social networking into the analogue world. And so Loot surrounds its members with comics, drawing supplies and regular art classes seven days a week.
Opened in July, Loot has a striking display of around 400 comics, perfectly aligned in multiple rows, which burst with colour against the stark white walls. “It’s like Pinterest in real life,” Einhorn said.
The US$30 (920 baht) monthly membership fee pays for the art materials and instruction and entitles the young subscribers to borrow one comic at a time.
It costs $5 to keep one. The focus is currently on single issues, but the library will soon add graphic novels.
The collection, which began with Einhorn’s personal stash, has been growing with donations. Other contributions have come in the form of sponsorships. The online eyeglass retailer Warby Parker and Louis Leterrier, the French film director whose latest project is the Dark Crystal series on Netflix, and others have paid for 100 yearlong memberships, which have been earmarked for two local state schools and the Red Hook Initiative, a community non-profit.
“Comics shaped my life and career,” wrote Leterrier in an email. “They taught me story and how to look at my life through various prisms.” He added: “Creativity is a real superpower, and I wanted to share this passion.”
Einhorn thinks of the space’s young audience in two groups: those interested in discovering comics and those who want to create their own. “We meet a lot of kids who already make their own comics at home,” he said.
Long gone are the days when comic books were seen as a bad influence on young readers. Last year, annual sales of comics and graphic novels in the United States and Canada reached just over $1 billion, according to estimates by ICV2, an online publication that covers pop culture, and Comichron, an online resource for comics research. Part of the $80 million increase from 2017 was attributed to sales outside of comics stores, which includes chain bookstores and major online retailers, with sales of graphic novels for young readers the biggest factor.
“Graphix, the imprint from Scholastic, has really turbocharged that part of the market,” said Milton Griepp, the chief executive of ICV2. The Graphix library includes Bone by Jeff Smith, Dog Man by Dav Pilkey and the memoirs of Raina Telegemeier. Her latest, Guts, about tackling 4th Grade and coping with anxiety, has an initial print run of 1 million copies.
Another significant factor, Griepp said, are libraries, which have added more graphic novels to their collections over the years. “We in the comics business owe a huge debt of thanks to the librarians who have helped make this possible.”
Paul Levitz, a former president of DC Comics, has seen the industry go through many changes. Last weekend, he happened to be dining downstairs at Frank’s when he learned about Loot and ventured to the second floor to take a look.
“Loot isn’t really a comics shop — at least not yet,” Levitz wrote in an email. “It’s more of a great art experience. With arts education in state schools fiscally challenged, it’s great to have folks like this stepping up to fill the gap.”
Since stepping down from his role at DC, Levitz has been teaching graphic-novel courses at colleges. He said he was impressed by some of the material on offer for Loot’s cartoonists in training, including a binder of instructions for drawing facial expressions. “I wish I had some of those tools for my college course on writing graphic novels,” he added.
Some of Loot’s budding cartoonists are putting the educational materials to good use. Mae Lower, eight, wrote and drew a comic (with colours by Joan, four, her sister) about a girl named Ekua who is being bullied in school. Ekua learns to adapt and prospers over 16 pages. Mae goes by the pen name Stella Rojo, and her story concludes with a note to readers: “If you have a question, I won’t be far to answer it.” (The young graphic novelists have the option of adding their work to the library of comics available to their fellow subscribers.)
Then there is Leo Hutchinson, seven, who stopped by with his mother, Kara Pfaffenbach. “I’m one of those kids who likes military and fighter jets,” he said. One of Leo’s comics is about a Swat team. Another is about Ace, who is a spy.
“He wakes up on Saturdays and wonders if it is time to go to Loot,” Pfaffenbach said of Leo’s new fixation. “He always knows he’s going to get along with whoever is here,” she said. “They have a shared language.”