Locust Moon, a popular West Philadelphia comics shop, is closing after six years. The 1,800 square foot store, gallery, and event space will cease retail operations later this month, but its publishing program and annual comics festival will continue.
Josh O’Neill, one of three cofounders of Locust Moon, said the reasons for shutting down the store were simple: “Retail is a tough business. We’ve always known that it wasn’t going to be our career. We’ve also had so much success with our publishing program, so it was just the right time.”
The first big project from the store’s publishing program was Once Upon a Time Machine, a 2012 anthology of indie comics published in partnership with Dark Horse Comics. The store's first big hit was 2014’s Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream, a $125 oversized hardcover tribute volume to the great comic strip artist Winsor McCay, which was awarded multiple Eisner Awards in 2015 and was published after a Kickstarter campaign raised more than $150,000.
This year Locust Moon Press published Prometheus Eternal, the first title in a collaborative publishing venture with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and announced a slate of new graphic novels and periodicals for the fall of 2015.
“We’ll also continue to use Kickstarter to fund our projects,” he said. "We try to pick the ones [to fund with Kickstarter] that have a good hook for a passionate promotional campaign. We couldn’t do this without crowd funding. It’s a way to fund projects but it really grows the audience for a book and encourages people to be a part of what you do. It’s a powerful mechanism.”
The three cofounders—O’Neill, publisher of Locust Moon Press, editor-in-chief Andrew Carl, and creative director Chris Stevens—have rented office space to house the new press and plan on expanding the line. The press’s latest project, The Lost Works of Will Eisner, is a Kickstarter-funded campaign to publish a book of recently discovered 1930s-era comics strips by the great comics artist Will Eisner. The Kickstarter campaign ends this week, but has already raised more than $44,000 (the original goal was $20,000) to publish the book.
O’Neill said the press plans to publish a sequel to Once Upon a Time Machine, in addition to continuing to publish Quarter Moon, a quarterly comics anthology. The store will have a “blowout sale” to clear the store’s inventory, O’Neill said. The group is discussion with local retailers and other organizations to “buy big chunks” of the remaining Locust Moon stock. And, O’Neill said, The University of Pennsylvania “may buy some of it for their comics collections.” The store is hosting a closing party on December 18.
Locust Moon also plans to continue the Locust Moon Comics Festival, an annual indie comics fest held over the Halloween weekend. “It may change form; we’re looking into partnerships now. But we’ll continue to do it though it may mutate in some ways,” O’Neill said.
