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jasonderoga86So remember how I was writing about sharing my personal journey as hobbyist-professional comic book creator/graphic novelist a few hours ago, right? How I'm going to present some of that story tomorrow at our art class at my job?
Well, that's gonna be a little harder now, given what I just read online a few minutes ago. And this news really breaks my heart in more ways than one.
The very first bookstore to carry consignment retail copies of my first graphic novel -- Lil' Hero Artists: The Original Series, published under my fledgling franchise OmniLegend Tales after me and my co-creator Nick Vollmer left our former publisher Alterna Comics on good terms -- was called A Great Good Place for Books, located in the same shopping plaza where I worked my first job as a grocery clerk/bagger. In fact, some of the money I made from my grocery clerk job was used for obtaining drawing supplies, Adobe Photoshop add-ons, flash drives, and other materials to eventually compile the completed book by the end of 2009, and then to order proof copies from the first print-on-demand press I could find online, Lulu Press (along with other online venues, my direct Lulu storefront is at this link, where all currently available volumes thus far of Lil' Hero Artists are listed). After getting a slightly disappointing rejection from local comic book stores over marketability, A Great Good Place for Books (GGPBooks for short) was the first store to openly welcome my book to their shelves. The consignment deal was much more agreeable, too: 60% of the profits went to me, while the remaining 40% went to the store. And Lil' Hero Artists: The Original Series was surprisingly successful; over the course of about four to five months, all 10 or so retail copies of the book sold out. The final copy was purchased by a professional photographer I met at the local 1-hour photo developer years prior; when I told her I was the one who single-handedly wrote, illustrated, lettered, and published the graphic novel, my acquaintance decided right then and there that she was buying that last copy. And after the cashier rang it up, the pro photographer turned to me and requested that I sign the copy to close the final sale. To say that I was humbled in that moment would be major understatement.
Notice though, that I said the local bookstore WAS called A Great Good Place for Books... because after more than 20 years of bringing joy to our neighborhood and sharing the joy of the written word with people of all backgrounds, all ages, all faiths, and all genders, GGP Books is closing its doors for good. The store's owner, Kathleen Caldwell, made this difficult decision last Friday on May 1, citing several health issues (cancer, sepsis and kidney failure) as well as how the post-Covid economics eventually lost their sustainability -- yes, to any numbskull MAGA idiot out there, Covid-19 is STILL dogging us in America. You can thank the off-the-toilet crack cocaine sniffing, raw-sewage swimming, dead carnivore carcass hustling, anti-vax bioterrorist RFK Jr for exacerbating this calamity on our soil. According to a local news article from KTVU 2 News, Kathleen details part of her dedication to GGP Books's mission to bring the joy of reading to all, even during lockdown due to a once-in-a-century pandemic:
"During the COVID-19 pandemic, [Kathleen] quickly pivoted from in-store sales to online orders, personally delivering books throughout the neighborhood.
"I spent two days a week driving all over Montclair delivering books," she said. But she said customer traffic never fully recovered. "The crowd never came back after COVID," Caldwell said. "Montclair just didn’t come back."
"Montclair just didn't come back" is right. Even my old workplace, the local grocery store only a block away from A Great Good Place for Books, is woefully understaffed. There are basically no grocery clerks/baggers; now the cashiers are saddled with ringing up the orders AND bagging the them up. Add to that there's only one check stand open at a time unless a line of customers exceeds 6 people -- when back in my day, there were always at least 3 check stands open at the minimum and a grocery clerk/bagger for each one -- and soon you have angry customers (unreasonable enough) which leads to irate cashiers/employees (bad signs) and verbal conflict (now everyone just wants to get the hell out of there). It's a depressing sight to witness how the economic collapse precipitated by the Moron-in-chief has destroyed the liveliness of the local plaza... honestly, sometimes it feels like the ghost towns in those "Spaghetti Westerns".
A final GoFundMe page went live over the weekend to help Kathleen transition into retirement. As someone in eternal gratitude to her for her amazing support and her general honest friendship -- Kathleen told me once that I was one of the few self-published local artists/writers that she believed deserved to be on her shelves, and even refused to send unsold stock back to me after the original 30-60 consignment deal ended out of pure faith my book had what it took to succeed; not out of patriarchal business savvy, but out of genuine appreciation for my commitment to my franchise -- and for the care she gave not just my own consignment books, but many of the recent orders I bought through GGP Books' online website (Jeff Smith's Bone: Black-and-White One Volume Edition, along with John Lewis by Raymond Arsenault and White Poverty by Rev. William J. Barber and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove to name a few), I'll have to stop by that site sometime this upcoming weekend to donate. It's the least I do for such a champion of the agenda that still believes that Reading Is Fundamental.
This really hurts. Too many symbols of service to others and persons of service disappearing as ignorance and arrogance take hold on society with its scapegoating and shielding of criminals in suits with fat cigars claiming the buck stops with them. And Kathleen closing up shop for good feels like a knife being wedged in my soul right now.
And as if this godforsaken nation of corporate greed and social murder couldn't drive the knife any deeper, some punk named "squeezyscorpion" on a Reddit posted this in response: "saw this coming a mile away. the owner kept making gofundmes (for the business, not for medical bills or anything). if you need a gofundme to operate your business, your business should not be operating at all. also i don’t really mourn the loss of this neoliberal book store."
"Neoliberal book store"...? Tsk. So "Squeezy" here is okay with grifters like Jeff Bezos exploiting Amazon employees to undercut authors (like my late friend Steven Weatherford Jr. for a good long time back in late 2023) on Amazon.com so books can be "cheaper" there? The same Jeff Bezos who is now announcing more mass layoffs at Amazon warehouses to make way for the Great AI Replacement, because machines will never get tired, never get hungry, never ask to be paid, demand healthcare benefits, and never demand to be treated like human beings because THAT would be too "neoliberal"?! Kathleen was a staunch opponent of capitalism, corporate greed, and all the "-isms" killing this country... and even though she's White, she ABHORS White supremacy with a PASSION. Hell, she de-listed ALL of Doug TenNapel's books from the GGP Books site following his little dip in the Comicsgate alt-right conspiracy campaign that almost got my friend, Alterna Comics CEO Peter Simeti murdered in a swatting incident back in 2019! But she NEVER took up verbal arms with the MAGA-nuts in her circles. NEVER. Compare that to all the "anti-woke" hillbillies and bimbos out there who still want us to believe drag queens kill more kids than guns and right-wing demonization of public schools, and the Christian nationalists who believe in corporal punishment upon their children with blunt objects like effing crowbars for "disobeying" the Ten Commandments. Miss ME with that rot. "Squeezy" here is just part of the problem.
Hey smart one, maybe you'd like to throw yourself on the floor of corporate mouth-breathers and see how "great" establishment retail chains are? Not only do you know nothing about Kathleen's health struggles, but clearly you don't live with her -- so coming from you, declaring she made GoFundMes for the business and not medical bills all willy-nilly like you're someone important reeks of ignorance. "If you need a GoFundMe to operate your business, your business should not be operating at all"? Buddy, you posted this comment like what, 9 hours ago. Did you even READ the goddamned article? 20+ YEARS. You gotta spend money to MAKE money, prick. But you wouldn't know that because judging from your smarmy self-aggrandizing tone here, you probably don't know HOW to run a business. But you know how to cosplay as a right-wing troll by trash-talking a woman who's been at this for more than two decades, AND who led this "neoliberal book store" to a major economic victory during the Covid-19 pandemic, a catastrophe YOU probably thought was just a manufactured Democrat hoax while you dinged N95 masks as part of some radical left conspiracy.
Hey smart one, maybe you'd like to throw yourself on the floor of corporate mouth-breathers and see how "great" establishment retail chains are? Not only do you know nothing about Kathleen's health struggles, but clearly you don't live with her -- so coming from you, declaring she made GoFundMes for the business and not medical bills all willy-nilly like you're someone important reeks of ignorance. "If you need a GoFundMe to operate your business, your business should not be operating at all"? Buddy, you posted this comment like what, 9 hours ago. Did you even READ the goddamned article? 20+ YEARS. You gotta spend money to MAKE money, prick. But you wouldn't know that because judging from your smarmy self-aggrandizing tone here, you probably don't know HOW to run a business. But you know how to cosplay as a right-wing troll by trash-talking a woman who's been at this for more than two decades, AND who led this "neoliberal book store" to a major economic victory during the Covid-19 pandemic, a catastrophe YOU probably thought was just a manufactured Democrat hoax while you dinged N95 masks as part of some radical left conspiracy.
"Squeezy", buddy... why don't you try setting up a business so you can understand the concept of motherfucking start-up capital before you come off slandering anything "liberal" as dangerous to MY neighborhood. And if you can't, then keep your mouth shut and stay in your grandma's cobweb-infested attic with your smartphone, you prick. The nerve of people like you... that's why I'm venting here and not with you on that Reddit page, even though I really, REALLY want to tell you off -- because frankly, getting into it with people who hide behind computer screens and talk shit under fictional usernames ain't worth my time or my energy.
Anyway, I gotta head off to sleep. It's getting late, and I gotta prepare for the first part of my presentation tomorrow. Peace and love to y'all, and peace out. ✌🏾
Nana
--"Jason Deroga"
SOURCES: 'A Great Good Place for Books' in Oakland to close after more than 20 years' Henry Lee, KTVU Reporting -- May 1, 2026
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Date: 2026-05-05 09:29 pm (UTC)