Quick Take
Downtown Santa Cruz's comic hubs are rolling out the red carpet for Saturday's national Free Comic Book Day, including an appearance by cartoonist Mike Kunkel of “Herobear and the Kid” fame at Atlantis Fantasyworld as it and Comicopolis celebrate the industry's day in the sun.
Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s … a stuffed polar bear that comes to life and is also a superhero?
Then it must be Herobear, the title character in the two-time Eisner Award-winning comic series “Herobear and the Kid” by cartoonist Mike Kunkel.
The onetime Disney animator will be signing copies of his books at Atlantis Fantasyworld this Saturday, May 2. It’s part of the downtown Santa Cruz shop’s celebration of national Free Comic Book Day, when participating comic stores hand out free comics from a variety of publishers.
Kunkel said Atlantis is a shop he’s loved since he first stepped through the door in 1998.
“It’s one of the shops where you walk in and think, ‘This is what a comic shop should feel like,’” he said. “It’s welcoming, easy to navigate and has sections, which I love.”
Free Comic Book Day started in 2002, the brainchild of Joe Field, owner of Flying Color Comics & Other Cool Stuff in Concord, California. He said he noticed how movie franchises were cashing in on characters and stories based on comic books and thought it would be a great way to bring people back to the shops. That inaugural year, more than 2,000 stores participated, and that participation level has remained steady.
“It’s nerd Christmas,” said longtime Atlantis employee Nate Brand. He’s been working at the Cedar Street shop since 2010 but started as a customer in 2004. “Everybody comes to visit us.”
Over on Front Street, Comicopolis co-owner Troy Geddes said he’s excited for all the new titles coming out this summer, many of which will be previewed on Saturday. Geddes mentioned “Dungeon Crawler Carl,” based on the widely popular sci-fi-fantasy book series of the same name by Matt Dinniman.
“There are also a lot of titles we don’t get because they don’t fit our clientele,” he said.
Two years ago, Comicopolis made local news when it took to social media to let the community know it was struggling financially. Like many small businesses across the country, Comicopolis never fully recovered from the 2020 COVID lockdowns. However, Geddes said the business has been doing better since then, at least until March of this year. Geddes said a combination of a sputtering economy and higher gas prices from the Iran war made customers tighten their budgets.
Geddes hopes this year’s event will follow previous trends, which saw an increase in foot traffic, doubling and sometimes tripling sales. However, he’s still worried about the economy, he said: “I don’t expect it to be super huge with the war going on and gas prices crazy.”
The comic industry has boomed in recent years. Along with interest from legacy franchises in the Marvel Cinematic Universe such as The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy and Spider-Man, D.C. Comics launched its Absolute line in 2024, which has collectors in a frenzy. First prints of books like “Absolute Batman” #1 have sold for hundreds to thousands of dollars.
According to OXZO Comics, a comic brokerage and buying service, the industry is currently “navigating a period of unprecedented structural transformation.”
In 2025, the global comic market was valued at $17.69 billion and is expected to reach $27.1 billion by 2034. Industry analyst ICv2 recorded a 27% increase in sales in 2025 compared to the previous year, noting that many of those purchases were made by Gen Z consumers.
Back at Atlantis Fantasyworld – which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and has participated in the comic book event since it started – owner Joe Ferrara said he’s prepared for a full day of free comics and plenty of people wanting their Herobear books signed. The most recent time Kunkel did a signing in the shop was 2001, when Atlantis celebrated its 25th anniversary and Kunkel had just released his first issue of “Herobear and the Kid.”
“Mike is everything that Atlantis is all about,” Ferrara said. “He’s dedicated his life to bringing happiness and joy to other people through his creative endeavor. Whether that’s working in animation or creating ‘Herobear.’”
Kunkel’s filmography lists a number of fan-favorite animated films such as “The Pagemaster” and “Once Upon a Forest” along with some Disney classics such as “Hercules” and “Tarzan.”
He’s excited to be back at Atlantis for FCBD, as Ferrara was one of the first people to see the early stages of “Herobear.” Ferrara also helped Kunkel along the way by giving advice on the retail side of the business, and even once helped Kunkel sell books at a convention when the lines became overwhelming.
“I tell everybody Joe is my godfather in comics,” Kunkel said. “One of the things I always admired about him is he was able to cultivate good staff and people that would be with him for a long time.”
People like Trisha Wolfe, who’s worked at Atlantis for 20 years. What started as a weekend job while she attended UC Santa Cruz became a career, proving that not all heroes wear capes; sometimes they wear smocks. She loves the interaction she has with her regular customers and the opportunities to meet some of the biggest authors and artists in the industry.
“If you work in comics, you never leave even if you move around in the industry,” Wolfe said. “I’m always learning something new, even 20 years in.”
Fellow Atlantis employee Bambi – who uses they/them pronouns – agrees. They’ve been at the shop for three years but moved away for nine months. When they returned to Santa Cruz, they immediately went back to working for Ferrara. When asked why, they laughed.
“Why? Is that even a question?” Bambi said. “There was no other place I was going to be.”
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