Desert Island Comics, the Brooklyn, N.Y.–based comics shop specializing in alternative, independent, and underground comics, graphic novels, art books, screenprints, and zines, launched a GoFundMe on October 6 to keep the store in its location for another three years in response to a rent hike. It exceeded its $79,200 goal in two days.
Among the donors for the store were acclaimed comics writer and Tiny Onion founder James Tynion IV, who donated $2,500. Neighbors, too, chipped in and expressed their support : "Neighborhood wouldn’t be the same w/out you!" wrote two joint donors, Marissa & Alex Gimeno; another, Emily Thompson, added:"Honestly would love to see you in new space with a supportive landlord for the long run."
“Are you kidding me?!” Desert Island founder Gabriel Fowler wrote in a post on Instagram on October 8. “YOU PEOPLE ARE AMAZING!!! 🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳”
The news comes less than a week after Fowler announced that the store was being priced out of its storefront on Metropolitan Ave. in the rapidly gentrified neighborhood of Williamsburg, which it has occupied since 2008. It is slated to lose its lease on December 30, per a letter dated September 26, after “someone approached our landlord and offered almost double what we’re paying in rent” with a price Fowler called “untenable for our modestly successful business, and frankly it’s too much for anyone to pay.”
The store has been a mainstay of New York City’s underground comics culture and scene since it was founded in 2008, by Gabriel Fowler, a former rock musician art handler, although it closed temporarily during Covid. The store publishes the quarterly comics anthology Smoke Signal and previously ran Comic Arts Brooklyn, a comic book convention held at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute, from 2013–2019. Fowler published Rescue Party, which PW's review called a “varied, hopeful anthology” of 140 one-page comics, with Pantheon in July.
Whether the store will be able to sign another three-year lease to remain in its location—which would cost it $201,600, per the GoFundMe— remains to be seen. Fowler noted, on the GoFundMe page, that “There is a chance that we could move to a new location, and in that case, these funds would finance the transition, build-out, and new lease.”
