Super

T.J. Pitts is co-owner of Omega Frog Comics, 1180 Scheels Drive, Sparks, 470-8081. It’s the friendly neighborhood comic book store with the prime location across from the IMAX movie theater in Sparks’ Legends shopping mall. For more information, visit omegafrog.com.

How long have you been in business here?

This store opened at the end of June, so a little over six months now. … This is my third comic shop. I opened my first one back in the late ’90s in San Antonio, and then I had one in the early 2000s in Oregon. Then I went and sold my soul to corporate America for about a decade. Accomplished a lot of good while I was there, but ultimately wanted to get back to being an entrepreneur again.

Omega Frog—what’s it mean?

I’ve had an almost life-long fascination with frogs. You know how it is, you offhandedly mention to one relative that you like something, and then you never get gifts that are anything else ever again? … I kind of went that way with frogs about three decades ago. When I was looking for a name for the store, I was looking for something with a good comic book ring to it, and the word “omega” gets used in so many comics, whether you’re talking about omega level mutants in the Marvel Universe or DC has Darkseid’s Omega Beams. It’s a good comic book word. And the domain name was available.

This is a great location—right across from a movie theater.

Thank you. It was very intentional. … I would not be surprised if I’m the only comic shop in the country that’s 50 feet away from an IMAX theater. Most movie theaters have their own parking lots sprawling a quarter mile in every direction.

Are you focused primarily on superhero books?

All sorts of comics. The superhero stuff. Image is currently putting out a lot of great horror titles. We carry all-ages titles like My Little Pony. You name it. A little bit of everything. Slightly over half of the comics we carry our superhero, but it isn’t 90 percent like a lot of people might think. … Digital has actually helped save the pamphlet form of the comic books. You have a lot of people who fall in love with a particular title initially in digital form, and then they decide they want to collect the paper editions, collect the hardcovers, the trade paperbacks. It helps drive the sales of the printed form. And publishers are more willing to embrace titles they might not have been willing to greenlight before, because if they can sell 8,000 or 10,000 copies a month digitally, there’s virtually no overhead for that, and it helps to prop up the minimum threshold that they need to justify printing a book. So they’re more willing to take chances on titles—which is part of why you’re seeing more horror titles, more adventure titles, occasional Westerns, steam punk—all sorts of things. … It might come as a bit of a surprise, but our customer base is about 45 percent female. Our walk-in traffic is over half female. One thing that has disappointed me about the comic book industry nation-wide is there are still an awful lot of comic book stores around the country where [The Simpsons character] Comic Book Guy is still the real person behind the counter. It’s unfortunate. There’s a lot of misogyny. There’s a lot of condescension behind the counter. … We make every effort to make the store friendly and welcoming for everyone.