By Odin Rasco
From the days when Iron Man was best known as a comic book hero to the utter domination of Marvel Studios on the media landscape, BaT Comics & Games has served as a shrine to the more imaginative facets of nerd culture.
Through three locations over just as many decades, the shop has provided Chico locals and college students a place to discover classic characters and sometimes even new ones that they’ll love the rest of their lives. In that way, BaT Comics mirrors owner Trent Walsh’s own experience in the world of turning pages.
“I didn’t really get into comic books until I was in college,” Walsh recounted. “As a kid, I would read one here or there, whatever I got my hands on now and then, but I really got interested the summer after my first year at Chico State. A friend back home had gotten into comics and let me read some, and it kept going from there.”
What comic book served as the catalyst for an interest that eventually blossomed into Walsh’s career?
“X-Men; I still read comics, though less often since the work keeps me busy,” Walsh said. “I like DC well enough, I do like Batman a lot; but I still feel most drawn toward Marvel comics, and still like X-Men the most.”
Not unlike many of the heroes gracing the pages that line BaT’s shelves, Chico’s comic and game shop started with humble origins, which are actually hinted at by the shop’s name. Before its impressive 2,500 square foot business stood at 218 Broadway, there was a stack of comic books owned by Walsh and his friend Benny marked for sale at conventions.
“At first, we were a convention store,” Walsh explained. “We’d do conventions now and then, and sell comics from our collection. That’s actually how we got our name; the comics in our collection we marked with our initials – B for Benny, T for Trent – and so we named the business BaT.”
Though Walsh went to Chico State to study business, running a comic book shop was far from what he had originally planned. He’d studied international business and originally had eyes on moving to a major metropolitan city. Things changed with the news headlines. Graduating in time for the mid-90s recession, Walsh was looking at a job market familiar to many these days, one where opportunities are few and even lower-end jobs are looking for experience.
“It was hard to get a job without prior experience, and since I was already doing the shop as a convention thing on the weekends, I thought I could open it up as a physical store for two or three years and use that experience as a manager and owner to help find other jobs later on,” he remembered.
The timing worked out perfectly for this move: A local shop was closing, so Trent and his partner (whom he later bought out) purchased their inventory and a mainstay in Downtown Chico was born.
By the time Walsh had hit his first few years in the business, he was in a relationship and had developed other ties to the community. He decided to stick around rather than head off to a big city.
BaT Comics’ connection to the community continues strong to this day, with the business donating to the local Boys and Girls Club, local high school programs, public events, Chico State fundraisers and local public radio. Another way Bat Comics stays tied to area neighborhoods is by highlighting the work of local creatives.
“We do a lot of events, and we have a nice area in the back of the shop where we host local artists,” Walsh noted. “They turn our event area into a mini-gallery type thing where they can display their art.”
Another reflection of BaT’s legacy is seen in how one current employee has been dreaming of working there since childhood.
“I’ve been working here about five months now, and I love it,” Amber Pierce explained. “I’ve been shopping here since I was a little kid, so it makes being able to actually work here all the more magical.”
Pierce added, “I’ve been coming in for years because of all the Dungeons and Dragons stuff they’ve had on offer.”
As Walsh navigates the shop through trends and economic cycles, he’s had to adapt to occasionally surprising shifts in customer tastes. Ironically, the slim weekly and biweekly comic books that once served as the bread and butter for shops like BaT for decades have seen a steady drop in sales for years, even as the same characters are used to launch films that gross upwards of a billion dollars.
“When we started off, new comics – monthly and weekly comics –were 40 or 50% of sales; now, they’re less than 10%,” Walsh observed.
BaT has been able to pivot, though, as graphic novels and manga have grown in popularity to fill that shift in the comics ecosystem. On top of that, though the “floppy” comics move less numbers than they used to, pop culture has adopted comic books, tabletop roleplaying games and other “nerdy” things wholesale in the past couple decades.
“I think one thing that’s really nice about this place is that there really is a little bit of everything for anybody,” Pierce explained. “It’s a fun shop, even if you just want to browse around and look at all the cool stuff we have on the shelves and walls. I love it here, honestly.”
One of the major missing links to being a nerd is comic-con that has even popped up here and in Oroville. When I was growing up the comic conventions in Chico were a bunch of collectors with all sorts of comic books for sale. Now there’s speakers, and artists, and people dressed up in different costumes. It’s a site to behold.