My Nexus Graphica co-conspirator Mark London Williams penned this moving, heartfelt appreciation of the late comic book shop pioneer Rory Root and his impact on Mark’s life and art.
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| And then came Comic Relief, Rory’s store, opening up near the top of University Avenue. It was crammed with mainstream, underground, foreign and "adult" releases, and was one of the first retailing spaces to get behind those collected, bound "graphic novel" thingies that are so au courant right now.
The irony was, I had already moved down the I-5 here to the Pueblo of Angels (where, NorCal ex-pat that I am, I remain while my sons do their own growing — though I’m not convinced the water will hold out, down here, but again, another column entirely). But I return to the Bay Area’s auld sod often, and I’d pop in to Comic Relief whenever I could. Rory was kind enough, in the early days of my Danger Boy books, to sponsor a signing for me at the San Diego Comic-Con, since the original Tricycle Press editions of the first two books featured covers by the Promethea art team of J.H. Williams III, Mick Gray, and Jeromy Cox. I can’t say we were overwhelmed by long lines of fans, in those earliest days of the book’s release, but I always appreciated Rory’s willingness to help another Berkeley brother out, even if he was writing prose with no interior pictures. |
