By Shaenon K. Garrity
My favorite story about Rory Root, owner of Comic Relief in Berkeley: one night around 10:00, Rory and one of his hapless employees were closing shop for the night. As they were at the door, about to leave, the employee turned and asked, "Hey, Rory, what do you think about the current state of comics?"
They were there until sunrise.
There's also the story about Rory holding court in his apartment in an uncomfortably short bathrobe, but we won't get into that one.
Comic Relief is widely and rightly regarded as one of the best comic book stores in America. I've been to a lot of the other top contenders. Some are better at promoting comics as great art, like Quimby's in Chicago. Some have a hipper vibe, like Isotope in San Francisco. But Comic Relief is the country's finest model of a straight-up comic bookstore. You want comics? They will sell you comics. They will sell you all the comics in the world.
Comic Relief became the best because Rory loved comics. When most people say they love comics, what they mean is that they love a particular genre or style or aspect of comics that scratches some lizard-brain itch. But there are a few mad souls who just love the medium in all its incarnations. Scott McCloud is one of them, and Rory, in his own way, was another. When manga first started to take off, he didn't dismiss it as a fad or come up with excuses not to stock it, as most retailers did; he read up on it and started a manga section in the store, a good one. He stocked shelf after shelf of comic-strip collections. He stocked Tintin and Uncle Scrooge. He stocked porn. Comic Relief has every superhero comic you could ever want to buy, but superheroes aren't front and center. Rory liked to brag about how he arranged his store so the material at the front was the material most likely to attract walk-in traffic from non-fans. At the time of his death, that meant graphic novels, all-ages comics and art books.
And Rory loved cartoonists. Struggling creators in the Bay Area could always count on getting their work into at least one store, and it happened to be the biggest and best store in the area. Rory stocked minicomics when most comic stores wouldn't touch them. He figured that the zinester of today could be the bestselling graphic novelist of tomorrow, with a little support, so why not start supporting her now? At the end of every Alternative Press Expo, you could see him making his slow, regal procession across the floor, buying new books from cartoonists no one had heard of. He even bought my books. He loved hosting release parties and book signings, especially for Bay Area artists. He loved it when local boys and girls made good.
When my friend Jason Thompson was working on his doorstop reference
Manga: The Complete Guide, Rory let him spend hours in the back room of Comic Relief, reading all the manga Jason couldn't find elsewhere. I spent sunny afternoons back there with Jason, bending Rory's stock out of mint condition. When, at long last, the book came out, Rory hosted a release party where Jason made an enthusiastically rambling speech and handed bad manga out of a duffel bag to people who tried to stump him with trivia questions. Rory, watching with a gap-toothed grin from behind the counter at the back, was clearly pleased as punch.
He was also a ruthless salesman. That's how he kept the store alive. Back when Viz Media had an on-site warehouse, Rory used to stop by every week to pick up the latest releases and chew the fat. At the time, I was the front-desk receptionist at Viz, and sometimes he'd say hi. One weekend, at Comic Relief, I was disappointed that the store had sold out of the latest volume of Carla Speed McNeil's
Finder. (Clue #1 that Comic Relief is a good store: it stocks
Finder. Clue #2: it regularly sells out of
Finder.) Rory apologized profusely, even though I insisted it wasn't a big deal. A few days later, at work, I came back from lunch to find the book sitting on my chair. Rory had stopped in personally and left it at my desk. He accepted payment, graciously, the next time I was at Comic Relief.
He kept doing conventions when his health was at its worst. He could talk for hours about Jack Kirby or the Eisner Awards or
American Born Chinese as his back and legs screamed. He loved comics and cartoonists so much. We all loved him back.
Jack Kirby said that comics will break your heart.
I last saw Rory at Free Comic Book Day. He was at his best, in his element, lording over the free-comic-book assembly line he'd devised, enjoying the crowds of customers and endless flow of comic-book chatter. He pointed with pride to the store's newly expanded manga section. When Andrew and I asked about the release date for Lynda Barry's
What It Is, he leapt at the opportunity to look it up. He was in better health than he'd been in years, eating better, avoiding cigarettes. He was the happy ruler of a little empire built in his image, Doctor Doom or Soglow's Little King.
He died this week. He leaves a funny-shaped hole in the world that no one else can fill. I've talked comics with him for hours. Anyone who came within a ten-foot radius of him did. I wish I could've talked for hours more. I wish I could've talked through a hundred sunrises.
l to r: Rory Root, Andrew Farago (curator of San Francisco's Cartoon Art Museum), Scott McCloud
Previous:
The Boys of Shojo Manga
Next:
#16, FCBD 2008Image credits:
Top: from the Comic Relief website,
http://www.comicrelief.net/photos/Middle: from The Comics Reporter,
http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/go_look_comic_relief_photos1/Bottom: courtesy of Andrew Farago
Shaenon K. Garrity is a manga editor at Viz Media and is best known for her webcomics Narbonic and Skin Horse.
All the Comics in the World is © Shaenon K. Garrity, 2008
