Eugene shop in the running to be named best comic retailer in the world

Andréa Gilroy was stepping back from lunch into Books With Pictures Eugene, the comics shop in 5th Street Public Market that she owns and runs, when she saw one of her employees jumping up and down.

“No, no, no, she’s just back in,” events manager Rhae Olson said into the phone. “Hang on!” 

Then, Gilroy got the news herself: Books With Pictures Eugene was one of five finalists worldwide for the 2026 Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award, a prize that’s considered the gold standard for a comic book shop.

The award is the retail store category of the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, which are considered the Oscars of the comics industry. The winners for the artistic categories and the retailer award will be announced this Friday, July 24, at San Diego Comic-Con.

That global recognition comes four years after its sister store, Books With Pictures in Portland, took home the prize in 2022 and six years after Books with Pictures Eugene opened.

To Gilroy, it’s validation of Books with Pictures Eugene’s mission that “comics are for everyone,” and a sign of the community strength that has kept the store open for six years. She opened the doors in March 2020, just 10 days before COVID-19 precautions shut down physical retail spaces. 

 “Frankly, that we survived at all is really a sign that people responded,” she said. 

One of the world’s best comic shops, in Eugene

In practice, serving everyone has taken many forms. 

It meant planning free community events like the Comics Art Festival of Eugene, Dungeons and Dragons nights as well as welcoming comics creators into the store to meet fans, such as a session last August with Patton Oswalt and prominent Oregon-based comic artists for a meet-and-greet signing. 

It also looked like making the physical store layout more accessible for people who are not longtime comic readers: The store separates titles by genre like a traditional bookstore — not by publishers, such as Marvel or DC, as is common practice in comic book stores. 

That genre split is fitting for the store’s selection: single-issue comics for the “Wednesday warriors,” as Gilroy called them, who are loyal readers of ongoing series, along with larger graphic novels, a huge selection of Japanese manga, local zines and everything in between.

Jack Sager is one of three people working at the store. He’s been a customer since it opened, and he joined the team in 2021. He started shopping at the store because it had more of what he was looking for, small print zines and a broader community mission.

He said that the award was just recognition of the daily work of building the store as a place that’s purposefully open to every kind of comic customer. 

“This is the kind of comic book store I wish I would have had when I was a kid,” he said.

That wide taste isn’t what Gilroy expected when she started the store with business partner Katie Pryde, who owns and operates the Books With Pictures in Portland. Portland is an epicenter of the American comics industry, with enough shops per capita that Gilroy noted each is able to dial in to niche audiences.

But in Eugene, the wider generalist approach has won out: Gilroy said the Eugene comics audience is into obscure European translated graphic novels and “a lot of manga.” The wide selection hasn’t alienated hardcore traditional readers, either: traditional single-issue comic sales make up about 40 percent of its overall sales.  

The difference between the Portland and Eugene comics readers also means that Gilroy and Pryde are able to complement each other across the two shops. 

“Some of the things that work for me don’t work for her,” Gilroy said. “Some things that work for her don’t work for me. Sometimes that means like, she’s like, ‘I bought 20 of these and I can’t sell them. You want some?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, I can’t keep them in stock.’”

The Eisner nod means that now, the two Oregon stores could both take home the title of “best comic shop in the world.”

“I will always feel like the little sister,” Gilroy said. “That’s just inevitable. But it is fun to kind of feel a little bit like I’m coming into my own.”