Hits and Misses will feature comic retailers sharing what’s working in their shop as well as the roadblocks they’ve been running into.
Eitan Manhoff, the owner of Oakland, California’s Cape & Cowl Comics, always wanted his shop to feel welcoming to anyone who visited, and it’s clear he achieved that, even if he may not have expected the sheer number of customers the store’s been getting lately. 2025 was Cape & Cowl’s biggest year yet, and incredibly, 2026 is easily outpacing it, with the store up 30% through the first three months.
Interest in new single-issue comics has fueled much of the growth, as that category now represents 50% of the store’s sales, with graphic novels and collections taking up 30% and the rest covered by trading card games, toys, novelties, and more. Regardless of what they’re looking for, customers seem to be finding it at Cape & Cowl, and in increasing numbers.
Manhoff wanted to find a way to share his love of comics with a wider audience, but he long struggled to determine what that looked like, until one day it hit him while he worked a day job in construction.
“I knew exactly what my perfect comics job could be,” Manhoff said. “I could devote myself to getting other people as pumped about comics as I am!”
That originally manifested in a side hustle where he sold comics and toys online and at local events, but by the end of 2015, he had opened Cape & Cowl Comics. It’s grown significantly since then, expanding from 1,000 square feet when it debuted to around 2,000 today. It isn’t just physical growth, as sales have steadily risen, the store’s reputation was bolstered when it won the 2023 Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award, and it even launched its own comic convention in Cape & Cowl Con.
It’s easy to see that the shop is thriving today, but as is often the case, Manhoff has learned a lot since he first started about what it really takes to make a comic shop work.
Hit: Finding the Right Home
When Manhoff was first developing Cape & Cowl Comics, determining its location was a decision that weighed heavily on him. He considered the options available to him in a logical manner, but there was an emotional side as well.
“I love Oakland so much,” Manhoff said. “It’s amazing and full of life and unlike anywhere else on the planet.”
If it was just his heart guiding him, the answer would have been simple, but the difficult part was for all the upside, there were downsides as well.
“(Oakland) also has so many problems. There are some very nice areas of this town. But there are some extremely rough areas as well,” Manhoff said. “When I decided to put a shop in downtown Oakland, people were pretty skeptical.”
Manhoff believed a non-traditional location for a comic shop could work, and the decision to go that route is something he considers a win on multiple levels. One is obvious in that the business is booming, so clearly his intuition was correct. But he also viewed it as the right move for the same reasons others questioned it.
“This was where I wanted to be,” Manhoff said. “I didn’t want to be in a suburb where everyone who came into the shop looked like me.”
That was key, as the shop thrives thanks to a diverse audience that had previously been underserved, but it also fills Manhoff with pride to have delivered on his dream of giving downtown Oakland a home for its comic fans.
“In my most pie in the sky, almost embarrassing world view, rough areas deserve nice things, too,” Manhoff said. “I think we’ve managed to provide one.”
Miss: Not Sticking to the Shop’s Identity
Part of building an effective business is creating an identity that your customers find themselves reflected in, and by sticking to that approach, Cape & Cowl has seen plenty of rewards. The opposite has proven true as well, as deviating from it often results in misses.
“Straying from who we are never works. When I try to do something strictly for financial gain, it bombs,” Manhoff said. “If we get away from what we love and are passionate about, our customers sniff it out so fast it would make your head spin.”
Manhoff pointed to store exclusive variant covers as an example. It’s not that the shop hasn’t seen success with these, as exclusive variants have been an effective way for Cape & Cowl to celebrate comics and the shop itself while being a tremendous driver of sales.
“In 2016, we did a Black Panther #1 variant with Marvel that placed T’Challa over the Bay in Oakland,” Manhoff said. “It exploded. It was on the local news, NPR, in newspapers, everywhere. We sold out of 3,000 copies in one day.”
The problem was, they found so much success so quickly, both with that cover and some other big sellers, that it created the wrong idea of what would happen each time they produced one.
“We started doing covers for random first issues with artists we had no connection to and they bombed,” Manhoff said. “I have nearly full runs of covers in the basement that I should probably burn just to get them out of inventory.”
Cape & Cowl’s customers loudly said that they aren’t looking for just any exclusive cover, but ones that feel reflective of the store. While exclusive variants and any number of other tactics are levers you can pull to great effect, these covers helped Manhoff learn an important lesson about how crucial it is to stick to the shop’s identity when making plans.
“We can’t stray from who we are,” Manhoff said. “Our customers won’t let us!”
Hit: Making Connections
Cape & Cowl’s efforts on social media platforms like Instagram consistently impress, with posts calling attention to what they do in an often comedic and personal manner. It’s clearly effective, as engagement is high and the shop’s audience has grown significantly online, which is why finding a voice on social media and connecting with customers through those channels was a win in Manhoff’s mind. As with the products the store sells, it was important that whatever they did on those channels had to stay true to the shop’s identity.
“My philosophy about social media has always been that it should be about us and not about the products we sell,” Manhoff said. “We just want to reach out and remind folks that we’re here, they like us, and they should probably come hang out sometime soon.”
That doesn’t mean they don’t emphasize products, as Manhoff noted there’s a natural overlap. But because the posts feel organic and help followers better understand the people behind the store, it creates a sense of trust when Cape & Cowl’s staff is enthusiastic about a comic, something they’re good at depicting.
“If we’re really excited about something, we’re going to try and think of a fun way to convey that to the people who are following us,” Manhoff said.
Most of the time, though, they’re just trying to have a good time and stand out in a sea of shops. Whenever others zig by posting a still image of the week’s new comics, Cape & Cowl zags by sharing videos about the romance comics you can find in-store for Valentine’s Day or Superman and Spider-Man thumb wrestling to decide, once and for all, whose name should appear first on the cover.
While those aren’t explicitly sales messages, they play into the way social media algorithms work while creating a connection with current and potential customers who view the posts, something that’s proven to be a hit with Cape & Cowl’s audience.
Miss: Resisting Being the Boss
Manhoff always wanted a place to spread his love of comics, and Cape & Cowl offered him the chance to do it. Because it was a passion – and relationship-driven business, he focused his hiring on those same things, which was fun but came with downsides as well.
“For years I got away with only hiring friends or friends of friends or people who hung out at the shop enough that I knew them well before bringing them on board,” Manhoff said. “This made for a comfortable and probably overly casual employee/employer relationship.”
That worked for a time, but when the shop grew significantly both in size and customer base during the pandemic, it wasn’t as easy on Manhoff or his staff.
“Coming out of lockdown with a store double the size of what it used to be and a staff that was three times the size of what we had at any time previously, I was thrust into the role of being the boss,” Manhoff said. “I didn’t handle it super well.”
Manhoff admitted that he resisted his leadership role at first, and he let bad working relationships stand for too long, something that ensured everyone involved was miserable for a time.
“I didn’t feel confident enough in doing what I knew was right for the business and myself,” Manhoff said. “I was worried about the discomfort of hard conversations and decisions.”
Going through those experiences helped him learn that as much as he wants to be pals with everyone, giving his staff the space they need to be themselves and do their work is important, even if it means he’s sometimes on the outside looking in.
“I’d rather they be free and easy together and have the opportunity to vent about me if they’re so inclined,” Manhoff said.
While the path getting there was challenging at times, Manhoff learned important lessons from those experiences, ones that have helped him become a better leader now that he’s fully embraced his role.
Hit: Taking Advantage of Opportunities
As with any other business, 2020 was quite the year for Cape & Cowl, as the pandemic changed everything for them.
“On March 20th, 2020, we closed our doors for in-store shopping along with the rest of California,” Manhoff said. “We didn’t have customers back inside the shop for 496 days.”
They managed to make it work, finding solutions in the form of curbside pickup and online sales, amongst other things. The business continued to do well, even if the world itself was a scary place. Not everyone was thriving, though, including the hot yoga studio next door. The studio struggled and decided to break its lease, closing several months into lockdown. Some would look at that and think, “That makes sense” before moving on, but not Manhoff.
“I thought it was a bright idea to approach the owner about knocking down the wall between us and taking over that space,” Manhoff said. “After a couple months of negotiations, I had a new lease, and we started the process of expanding the store from 1,000 square feet to about 2,000.”
It was a bold choice given the state of the world, but Manhoff saw an opportunity that might not have presented itself otherwise. The shop needed more room, and short of moving, it might not get a better opportunity than this one. They took it, and it proved to be one of the smartest decisions they’ve made yet, as it helped the shop grow in physical space and in sales.
“Now I look at the store and it’s hard to imagine how we went five years in such a little space,” Manhoff said. “We barely fit in the 2,000 square feet we have now!”
Miss: Overcommitting
While Cape & Cowl is successful, even Manhoff remains bewildered by one of his earliest decisions about how he’d manage the shop.
“I still can’t believe my business plan for this store included, in writing, that I would work alone seven days a week for the entire first year of the store,” Manhoff said. “I really can’t believe that I showed this plan to multiple people, including small business mentor types, and nobody pointed out that maybe that wasn’t a super great or entirely possible idea.”
It was part of an early trend that found him overcommitting his time to the shop, something that was complicated by the fact that he and his wife had their second child three weeks before the store opened.
“I lasted about a month with that schedule before hiring someone for one day a week,” Manhoff said. “It was not an ideal time to be away from the house for 50 to 60 hours a week.”
While he figured it out, discovering what it’s really like to run a comic shop was a painful process, one he continued to pay for down the line.
“It took me years to crawl out of a completely ridiculous schedule, and I missed out on way too much,” Manhoff said. “I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever shake the feeling of needing to make up for lost time.”
While he still struggles with those emotions, he’s achieved a better balance at Cape & Cowl thanks to a staff he trusts and a more realistic view of how the business works. That allows him to let go more than he used to, so even though he still overcommits on occasion, he makes sure to save plenty of time for himself.
“These days, my weekends away from the shop with family and friends are sacred,” Manhoff said.
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Source: ICv2
