14-02-2025
Beloved Tacoma comic book shop known for its queer and BIPOC-friendly titles to close
Beloved comic book store Destiny City Comics in Tacoma will be closing its doors at the end of February after its rent has increased 'exponentially,' one owner told The News Tribune this week.
Located next to King's Books at 218 St. Helens Ave., the shop is advertised as 'Tacoma's Unapologetically Black and LGBTQ+ Friendly comic shop.' On Wednesday, shelves upon shelves of novels, graphic novels, comics, art and toys filled the walls.
Matt Nebeker owns the shop with his wife Stephanie Hagan and is known colloquially by his professional wrestling name 'ETHAN HD.' Nebeker said due to rent increases the shop close Feb. 28 after more than 10 years in operation.
Destiny City Comics was known to host monthly book clubs, artist and craft events, author events and a zine symposium. Nebeker and Hagan bought the shop from its previous owners in December 2019, he said. In the more than five years the couple has operated it, rent has gone up higher than the price of books, Nebeker said.
'We're just making less per graphic novel, but our overhead is going up, and especially with new books, new graphic novels, whatever the price is on that, we're kind of beholden to that,' he said. 'The cost of everything else we need to just exist as people going up, and the cost of doing business is going up, but the cost of the goods we sell isn't going up, and we're not necessarily in a position where we can mark those things up either.'
Nebeker said he and his wife reached out to the original owners to buy Destiny City Comics 'because we wanted to keep that going and be that conduit in the community for local artists and creators and people to find comics outside the beaten path of Marvel and DC.'
The couple wanted to highlight a wide variety of books by LGBTQ+ authors and authors of color and found a strong community and customer base, Nebeker said. Nebeker said he also sold wrestling autobiographies and toys, which brought a new crowd.
'Just from day one, so many people just loved us and supported us. And I feel like there's never been a time where we haven't felt that love and that support,' he said. 'We've always had people here to help us and prop us up, an absolute blessing from the community, like locally and kind of around the country.'
In his time as a local business owner Nebeker said he's been able to form bonds with customers and see them grow up and change over time. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Nebeker said, he watched a customer get married on Facebook Live.
'We've been there for parents who find out their child is trans or queer and [are] coming in to get literature on that, and kind of go on this adventure together,' he said. '[We've] seen people going through name changes, going through hormonal changes, staying up to date on what their pronouns are and new names and things like that. Getting to see people over time become their authentic self and be a part of their journey, even if you're only seeing them like, once a month or every other month, that's very cool.'
As someone who is Black and biracial, Nebeker said he wanted to stock books by authors of color that didn't just touch on difficult topics like racism.
'If you're a young Black kid, not every Black story you read needs to be about, like Frederick Douglas or John Lewis's march. Those books are important,' he said. 'But you know, having graphic novels like Colin Kaepernick's, where it's just being young and successful, having books by Miles Morales, where you just get to see yourself as a yearling, those are equally important.'
Nebeker said it was also important for him to be 'unapologetic' about the books they carry.
'We don't pull out our LGBT books for Pride, they're forward-facing year-round,' he said. 'Same thing, we don't pull out our Black graphic novels or Asian graphic novels [for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage] month, that stuff is always out there and it's always forward-facing. We're very quick online to point out social injustice when things like that happen as well.'
With the shop closing, Nebeker said there will be 'a bit of a vacuum' in Tacoma.
'But I think we're very lucky too where, like, our neighbors, King's Books, are very great about carrying a lot of queer and POC literature, and so I don't think it'll be necessarily this colossal vacuum. But, yeah, I think to a point it will be,' he said. 'I don't think somebody's going to necessarily pick up the slack where we're leaving off.'
Nebeker said it was 'a very hard decision' to close the store, and 'we probably went back and forth on it for about a year when our rent went up last year.'
'It sucks. This is something we genuinely love doing. There's never been a day where we didn't want to come into the shop or didn't enjoy being here,' he said. 'It's kind of a bummer. And I'll be honest, I don't really even 100% know what the next step is.'
Nebeker said he'll definitely be taking on more pro wrestling bookings. The shop plans to host a party on Feb. 28 to 'have one last hurrah and get a little bit of face time with people that we're not going to see as often,' he said. Destiny City Comics announced on Instagram Wednesday that everything in the store will be 30% off for the rest of the month.
Nebeker said comic books and graphic novels continue to get more people into reading and is an important storytelling medium to help kids understand complex topics and 'encourage kids to make art.'
Destiny City Comics will remain open from 1-6 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekends. The store also ships merchandise worldwide.
Address: 218 St. Helens Ave., Tacoma, WA 98402
