I Like Comics owner goes big with inaugural I Like Comic Con

People hungry for comic books are people hungry for justice. They’re folks who wish they could beam up from this morally messy planet to someplace cleaner and clearer. So says Chris Simons, the owner of downtown Vancouver emporium I Like Comics.

“I wanted to escape into a world where there were good guys and bad guys, and the good guys were willing to sacrifice a lot because that’s what it means to be a good guy,” Simons said of his own early comics explorations. “It was a just and fair world, for 15 minutes at a time. That was magic.”

The magic didn’t enchant Simons’ workaday world, at first. He thought he’d found his calling as a teenager working for a comics shop in Medford, Ore., but then his family relocated and he “put away childish things,” he said. The grown-up Simons climbed as high as world travels and a six-figure salary in upper management at freight shipper DHL, he said.

Then he, and 35,000 other DHL employees, got laid off. He was the 40-year-old father of two, and properly desperate. But he still couldn’t force himself to keep a job-interview appointment at a Chuck E. Cheese’s restaurant, he said. Instead, he answered a Craigslist ad offering a trove of 1960s comic books for $1 each. It was a whim, he said, and he spent his last $400 on it.

“My wife must have thought I finally snapped from the pressure,” he said, but what was really snapping was Simons’ brain. He studied the comics business and resold the books, turning that $400 into $2,000. After that, his lark of an enterprise took big leaps in single bounds: from his kitchen table to an eBay store to booths at shows. Simons started buying out other Vancouver comics shops and absorbing their collections; a couple of years ago, he moved his own store from Fourth Plain near Clark College to 1715 Broadway.

His most dedicated customers — the ones who maintain in-house subscription mailboxes for regular deliveries — seem motivated by morality, he said: police officers, firefighters, active-duty military, teachers. A few flippers seek quick appreciation of their investment, he said, but many more earnest readers yearn to see their heroes busily righting wrongs.

He likes Vancouver

Success in this unlikely niche has amazed Simons, who says I Like Comics has grown into the largest comics shop in the Pacific Northwest. “Every day I feel like I’m going to get caught, and have to go back to a real job,” he said. “Like it’s not OK to make a living this way.”

It was Simons’ friend, Dan Wyatt, owner of the Kiggins Theatre, who challenged him to do something special with his business to boost his hometown. Simons hatched the idea of a local comics convention, the I Like Comic Con.

“This is my city. It’s where I’ve raised my children,” he said. “I really feel a need to give something back. I want this to be my legacy and my gift to Vancouver.” (But, he found, the only affordable venue was the Clark County Event Center at the Fairgrounds in Ridgefield. Close enough, he said.)

Famous nerds

Now, Simons is biting his nails over convention expenses and ticket sales. Given that this is his first attempt, the lineup of creative writers, artists and other celebrities he’s booked is impressively deep. All Simons needs now is 8,000 to 10,000 ticket buyers, he said.

“We didn’t go small and safe,” he said. “We’re flying in 20 different artists and writers, and putting them up at the Hilton. We spent a lot up front.” In addition to celebrity guests, the I Like Comic Con will have an Artists Alley for local comic book creators; exhibit space for publishers, studios, retailers and gamers; and a 7 p.m. Feb. 10 costume contest, otherwise known as the Cosplay Night of Champions. That begins just after the sales floor closes.

Nearly all guests booked to appear are those “famous geeks and nerds,” Simons said, without whom comic books wouldn’t exist: artists and writers.

The guest of honor is Jim Steranko, who belongs on “the Mount Rushmore of comics,” Simons said, and whose sophisticated artworks and stories are credited with driving the “Silver Age” of comics in the 1960s. (The “Golden Age” was the era of Superman and Batman, the late 1930s through 1950.) Steranko, one of the architects of Marvel Comics, worked on projects like The X-Men, Captain America, The Hulk and Superman. He’s also worked with filmmakers like George Lucas and Steven Speilberg, and designed the swashbuckling archaeologist Indiana Jones.

Also on hand will be David Anders, who stars in the TV show “iZombie,” based on a comic book series about a gravedigger in Eugene, Ore.; and Deep Roy, a sci-fi character/creature actor with a vast resume of roles you didn’t realize were played by people — including gorillas from the “Planet of the Apes” and Oompah Loompahs from Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory. Roy has even been featured in “Star Trek” and “Star Wars” films; in the former he was engineer Scotty’s alien assistant and, in the latter, he was Jedi master Yoda.

There are many more special guests; check the www.ilikecomiccon.com page for all the details.