Christiaan Mader hosts Out to Lunch at Gravy in Downtown Lafayette

If you’d made a list, ten years ago, of the brick-and-mortar businesses least likely to survive the internet, the comic book shop likely would have been on it — if for no other reason than every kind of mass market retail has suffered in that age.

And yet. Comic shops in North America rang up close to a billion dollars in sales in 2025. That’s up nearly thirty percent in a year, and the first time in fifteen years that comic shops grew faster than bookstores did. The industry as a whole set a record.

So what happened?

Part of it is Batman. Part of it is Pokémon cards. But a big part of it is something the internet still can’t sell you — an IRL community.

Case in point: when Lafayette’s oldest comic shop went up for sale. Some long time customers stepped in to buy it. Kristina and Chris Strong are co-owners of Stronghold Collectibles on Johnston Street.

Chris Strong, Co-Owner of Stronghold Collectibles. “It’s a wonderful experience to speak with the experienced older collectors….and the new people who want to know what’s good now.”

Chris grew up in New Iberia collecting comics with his two younger brothers. Kristina, who’s from St. Louis, married into the habit. The family had been shopping at what was then called Acadiana Comics since the late nineties. When the shop’s owner decided to retire in 2023, after nearly four decades in the business, she sold it to them.

The Strongs folded in the online comics operation Chris’s brother Jason had started during COVID, renamed it Stronghold, and nearly doubled the floor space. Today the shop carries more than twenty thousand comics and takes in up to two thousand new ones each week.

Kristina Strong, Co-Owner of Stronghold Collectibles. “There are more high level reading words in comic books than in many other forms of media. Kids can expand their vocabulary” reading comics.

The ownership group is three Strong brothers, their wives, and a longtime family friend, which makes Stronghold majority woman-owned. In the comic shop world, that’s rare. What’s not rare is the bustling community around the store.

Christiaan Mader, Kristina and Chris Strong, Out to Lunch at Gravy in Downtown Lafayette

Out to Lunch Acadiana was recorded live over lunch at Gravy in downtown Lafayette. Photos by Liliana Morgan.