Aw Yeah Comics Gets New Partner

Aw Yeah Comics at 4933 Oakton St., and its owners Art Baltazar, Franco Aureliani and Marc Hammond, have a new business partner, Comic Book Resources reports. The comic creators, who opened the business in 2011, have teamed up with Mark Waid, writer of "Davedevil" and "Indestructible Hulk", who also co-owns Alter Ego Comics in Muncie, Indiana. According to Waid, things started when Hammond and Franco visited Alter Ego and asked to invest in the store. The Alter Ego team instead came up with an offer for the two stores to invest in each other.

"We'll still maintain our individual identities -- one store isn’t being absorbed by the other -- but we can pool our resources in unique ways," Waid wrote on his Thrillbent blog. "We can design an Aw Yeah Comics!-branded, kid-friendly 'boutique' into Alter Ego that mirrors the Skokie setup. Conversely, we can build more Thrillbent promotion and outreach into the Aw Yeah Comics! storefront. We can meld print and digital in double the locations and strengthen both the stores and Thrillbent," Waid said in the publication.