San Francisco Blog

Al Kizziah of the eponymous Al's Comics on Market Street is facing the BIFF! SOCK! POW! of the current economy, suffering from a bad bout of Kryptonite, or any other comics cliche you can toss his way.

A longstanding problem with some bad debt has formed a tag team alliance with the new (non-) economy and put the not-quite-20-year-old store on life support. And yet, just as they have before, fans of Al's store have banded together and donated their time, effort, and money to keep him in business. Hey, that's what Super Friends are for. 

"Al is the quintessential comic book guy," says longtime customer Mike Monteiro, who designed "Save Al's" t-shirts and claims he taught his son to read via their weekly trips to the comic book store. "His store is packed with comics from the floor to the ceiling and he yells at his customers -- 'This is not a library,' 'You are devaluing the comic when you pick it up,' 'Please do not bring drinks into my store.' He does all the stuff that makes it a great environment."

Actually the "Save Al's" shirts were for his last bout with an economic cataclysm when, in his words, he was "almost evicted, almost sued" by his previous landlord in the Mission. Three years ago he moved into his Market and Octavia digs and has had no drama with his "sweetheart" landlord. Yet there's been no shortage of drama. Al's been in a bad way financially with some folks who don't appreciate it, including Diamond, the only comics distributor in the entire nation. That makes it hard to restock. Last year, he says, it actually took a personal plea from then-Assemblyman Mark Leno to get the state Board of Equalization to accept a debt repayment schedule he could live with.

Now, with the situation even more dire, artists, musicians, and comedians have organized a "Save Al's" $10 sliding-scale fund-raiser, to be held on Sunday, March 22 at Cell Space (for more info, send a letter here). Al notes that the woman handing his case at the Board of Equalization is actually waiting to see the gate from the fund-raiser before determining his latest repayment schedule -- so he'd love if you can drop by.

"I've been up against the ropes before and people have always pushed me back in," he says. "I don't want to be too mushy about this, but the acknowledgement that schlepping comics has a valuable theraputic meaning to people -- I've almost broken down from that."

After all, the goodwill he has engendered "Is certainly not because of my personality." 

Photo   |   Sizemore