West Seattle comic book store broken into twice in 6 weeks

SEATTLE — A West Seattle comic book shop is reeling after a group of thieves broke in Saturday morning and stole thousands of dollars worth of merchandise. The owner of Tails to Astonish comic book store, Shaun Duff, said some of the comics stolen were incredibly high in value.

“Lots of first appearances. Lots of early amazing Spiderman books,” Duff said. “Several that were signed by Stan Lee, which I will never get back.”

He said this is the second time his store has been hit in six weeks. The first time thieves came in from the back, and now they broke through the front door.

“It seems like they’ve got it out for us. I don’t know what else to say,” Duff said.

Duff’s security cameras caught a clear picture of the people who broke in. He said not only were the comics stolen valuable, but quite frankly, vital for his business.

“Half of our business that we did was back issue sales and three-quarters of our back issue value was probably on these walls,” Duff said.

After the second break-in, he decided to not only beef up security but will no longer have comics worth more than $100 on his shelves. He plans to keep these sorts of comics elsewhere. Yet, even with these changes, the owner tells us this is not going to be an easy road ahead.

“I’m not going to lie to you, it’s going to be really tough to keep the doors open,” Duff said.

But despite the setback, Duff is holding onto hope as he is thankful for the West Seattle community for embracing his store.

“We still have new comic books every Wednesday and people are still going to come in here and buy their new books and hopefully we can make it until insurance possibly gives us some money,” he said.

Duff said Seattle police are investigating the break-in.

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