Miami’s oldest comic-book shop faces its biggest foe. Can it beat the coronavirus?

A&M Comics and Books, the oldest comic book store in Florida, has fought off a veritable league of supervillains over its 46-year history: Hurricane Andrew, Sept. 11, two national financial crises, the digital revolution, even a fire.

But the store, which sits on the western edge of a nondescript strip mall at 6650 Bird Road in Miami, may have finally met its kryptonite: The coronavirus pandemic.

“Sales have dropped 80 percent,” said Jorge Perez, who has owned A&M Comics since 1990. “No new comic books have been printed since March 25, the first time that has happened since World War II. And now, publishers like Marvel Comics are offering streaming services for $20 a month that lets you read as many comics as you want online. So we’re not even getting the casual buyer, because everyone is staying at home.”

Since April 15, Perez, 55, has been paying the $1,900 rent on the 1,000-square-foot shop using his own savings. He pays another $1,000 per month in utilities. He applied for a $5,000 small business loan with SunTrust but hasn’t heard back.

His staff, all of them part-time high school and college students who make $7 an hour in rotating shifts during the week, is staying home until the shutdown order is lifted.

Perez is offering curbside pickup and postal mail delivery for customers who order a minimum of $30. He is also opening the store by appointment for customers who want to browse.

A pop culture museum

There’s a lot inside the small, rectangular store to explore. Aside from its inventory of 100,000 comic books, the shop is a virtual museum of pop culture treasures and obscurities. There’s something to see in every nook — including the ceiling, because the shelf space is all taken. The stock includes 1,500 toys, 300 T-shirts, 1,000 trade paperback collections and 300 statues.

The dustier the item, Perez jokes, the more vintage it is.

Among the thousands of items in stock: Funko Pops of Trinity from “The Matrix,” Videl from “Dragon Ball Z” and a glow-in-the-dark Pickle Rick from “Rick and Morty.” Vintage paperback collections of “Little Lulu” and “Peanuts” and Mad magazine. Rare James Bond movie paraphernalia. Two sealed copies of the discontinued Marv electric chair figure from “Sin City” (so rare they are not for sale, but you can make an offer). A blood-splattered shower curtain from the Bates Motel, where Anthony Perkins did very bad things in “Psycho.”

The two most valuable items currently in stock: Copies of “The Amazing Spider-Man” #1 ($25,000) and “The Uncanny X-Men” #1 ($15,000). Those are kept inside a bank vault, not at the store.

Another draw for browsers is Perez himself, a friendly, chatty fellow with an encyclopedic knowledge who can tell you the history behind any item in the store, from the Spider-Man life-size bust that sports a “DO NOT TOUCH” sign to the best story arcs by famed comic-book writers and artists. (The Chris Claremont/John Byrne run on “The Uncanny X-Men” is a personal favorite of his.)

For Perez, the store isn’t just a business: It’s a passion. He started collecting comic books as a kid and kept them at his parents’ summer home in Key West. When he was 14, his mother decided to sell the house to get out of paying two mortgages. But the sale included all the contents inside the property — including Perez’s 1,000 comic-book collection.

Undeterred, he started again. He began shopping at A&M Comics, a family-run business launched in 1972 by Arnold and Maxine Square, a married couple who had relocated from New York.

Their original location, on NE 163rd St., burned down in 1974. The couple expanded to two locations, one on NE 125th St. (which was eventually closed after the roof caved in) and the other at its current home on Bird Road in 1974, where Perez was a regular customer.

In 1984, Perez’s father passed away and the 19-year old comic fan realized he could no longer afford his hobby.

“I came to the store to cancel my subscriptions because I had to help my mom with bills and Arnold gave me a hug,” Perez said. “He told me that he had just been diagnosed with cancer and asked if I would run the store for a few months while he did his chemo at Sloan Kettering in New York.”

Sadly, Square never recovered. Perez was too young to run the business himself, so the store was bought by the couple’s business partner Michael Goldstein, who kept the doors open. It was sold again three years later to another loyal customer, Tony Ortega. Perez bought the store from Ortega in September 1990 for $20,000.

A personal passion

Perez broadened the store’s stock to include every conceivable kind of memorabilia and toys, as well as the extensive catalog of back issues, because the margin of profit on new comic books isn’t enough to keep the business going.

“A new book costs four dollars, but we get a 50 percent discount,” he said. “Then we give our monthly subscribers another 20 percent off. So on a $4 book, we make $1.20.”

Despite the dramatic drop in business, Perez remains hopeful. The first wave of a large batch of brand-new comics is scheduled for release on May 20, and he expects his loyal customers to return when the closure order has been lifted. New releases also bring in foot traffic, which helps sell the other merchandise in the store and rekindles the collectors’ habit.

“By the third or fourth week in July, we should be back to normal,” he said. “But some people are saying this will continue until September or maybe until the end of the year. I do not know what will happen at that time. I do not know if I can go six months of not having sales and dipping into my savings. Because my savings were for my retirement, and like a lot of people with the stock market, it’s becoming very scary, the future.”

This story was originally published May 11, 2020 at 6:00 AM.