Dark Horse Comics Unexpectedly Closes Down Retail Stores
- David Baker
- Jun 1
- 2 min read
After 46 years of selling comic books, graphic novels, POP! figurines, geeky t-shirts, and many other popular fan collectibles, Things From Another World (sometimes known by the acronym TFAW), sadly for us comic book nerds, is no more.
Things From Another World, the beloved comic book and collectibles chain that operated under the Dark Horse Comics umbrella for 46 years, is closing all of its remaining retail locations. The stores in Milwaukie and Beaverton, Oregon will go dark on June 30, and the flagship location at Universal CityWalk in Los Angeles, which has been a destination for comic fans and tourists alike since 1993, will follow on September 30. Dark Horse offered no specific explanation for the decision beyond the kind of carefully worded corporate statement that says everything and nothing at the same time.
For a certain generation of pop culture enthusiasts, Things From Another World was not just a store. It was a place where you could spend two hours looking for a back issue you had been hunting for years, walk out with three things you did not know you needed, and feel entirely justified about all of it. The flagship CityWalk location in particular became one of those rare retail experiences that felt like a destination rather than a transaction. Rare comics, movie memorabilia, collectibles, and toys occupied the kind of sprawling, densely packed space that online shopping has never quite managed to replicate, no matter how good the algorithm gets.
The closure did not arrive entirely without warning. Things From Another World quietly shut down its online store in April 2025, which in retrospect looks less like a strategic pivot and more like a canary in the coal mine. Dark Horse is framing the retail closures as part of a broader modernization effort under its parent company, Fellowship Entertainment, and is simultaneously announcing a new initiative called Dark Horse Games aimed at expanding its properties into interactive entertainment. Whether that pivot succeeds is an open question, but the pattern is familiar: a beloved physical retail presence winds down while the corporate entity bets its future on digital platforms and licensing.
What gets lost in that kind of transition is harder to quantify than revenue or foot traffic. Comic book retail at its best has always been as much about community as commerce. The knowledgeable staff, the regulars who show up every new release Wednesday, the browsing culture that leads a reader from one discovery to the next, none of that migrates cleanly to a website or a gaming platform. Things From Another World survived for 46 years because it offered something that the internet still cannot fully replicate. Its closure is a reminder that surviving is not the same as being protected, and that the things we value most in retail culture are often the last things the market moves to save.
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