Help Josh Start River Monster Comics!

Hi, my name is Josh Church and I have been a lifelong comic book and fandom nerd. From those early days of Masters of the Universe, Batman 1989, Ninja Turtles, and Amazing Spider-Man. I fell into those pages and into those films/cartoons and it became everything to me. It was a blanket, a safe place, a distraction from what was bad in the world. 30 plus years later and it still plays the same part in my life.

I still remember my first comic shop. It was in Williston, FL and I was about 7 or so years old. The moment I stepped in there, and even though it was a small shop, I was hooked immediately. I always felt out of place and alone, but there I was surrounded by MY people. I bought cards, comics, toys, anything I could afford and kept coming back. Years later, after I grew up, came back from my time in the Navy I moved to FL again and stepped into 7th Inning Stretch in Dunnellon. Jim was the owner and we hit it off immediately. We'd have many talks until he revealed that HIS shop was the one in Williston I had gone into all those years back. I felt like I was home again. And that shop WAS home for so many people locally.

Eventually, Jim decided he had been running his business for many decades and it was time to hang up his cape. We all felt happy for him but we missed that place. While I wanted to jump right in and open a shop then, I held back. It wasn't time yet.

I was a teacher in Marion County for about 8 years. I started with Middle School in Ocala and moved to High School a few years ago. The one thing I heard over and over again in my class was that my kids felt like they had no place to go. No place to call home, feel like themselves. My class was that place for them, a place where they could feel nerdy without judgment. I shared with them my desire to open a shop, and was always met with positivity and declarations to be customers. However, teaching was destroying me. I've dealt with anxiety and depression all my life, but teaching challenged me more than anything I had ever faced. More than watching my Mother's coffin be lowered into her grave, more than the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Every day I walked into that building and wanted to scream, throw my lanyard across the room and quit. I felt empty. Teaching had it's perks. Great kids made my day great. Support from my co-workers and staff helped me survive. The problems were a lot. Teaching is lonely. You are in there by yourself. You don't get celebrated for what you DO in the room, and often the structure of education itself is designed to overburden and stress out everyone involved. ONE bad student can also ruin a room. And if you have 30 plus students, the odds of having more than one of them is very high. It often makes you feel like nothing you do matters. I was gaining weight, not healthy, and overworking myself. It was killing me.

During those years I scratched my pop culture itch by painting and drawing. I would go to conventions to sell my wares and make connections. To feel that community again. My work grew and grew, and several very kind people took chances on me. I was supported by so many other amazing artists and business people who gave me shots drawing cards, comic covers, coloring pages, and doing illustrations for artbooks. I met people I never thought I ever would. I got tips from industry pros that still felt like they were given to other people. Art gave me an outlet, a connection to those things that I loved all those years ago. But that dream of opening my own shop never left me.

So here we are. The big ask. I've decided to leave teaching, a stable job with insurance and a retirement plan for something that won't fill me with dread and anxiety. This is a huge step. Everything in my life has been built by me scratching and clawing my way towards something resembling success. I've fought and sacrificed so much to earn everything I have and I hate asking anyone for help or for a hand out. I've been trying to do everything by myself and to prove that I am worthy of it. This time, the mountain is too high for me to do it alone. I've put together a few thousand and funding and am sacrificing my collection of about 15000 books towards this venture, as well as numerous collectibles and more. I want to open a shop for the people of Dunnellon, for all those kids that wanted a safe place. I want to turn my classroom into a retail space for those kids like me that just wanted to belong. To re-light the torches that Jim lit in me all those years ago and keep it burning for the next generation.

I want you all to know that I don't expect much. There is no pressure whatsoever for you to donate. If you can, any little bit counts. If you can't, I appreciate you reading this and your support (monetary or not) is absolutely appreciated. If you can, that's amazing and I promise that every last bit will be used to make this shop successful. It will be used to buy display shelves, decorations, inventory, rent, and signage. Anyone who donates more than $50 will be added to a "Founders" plaque in the shop, as a thank you from me for taking a chance on me. Thank you for taking the time to even look this over, hope to see you soon at River Monster Comics and Collectibles!