Today we’d like to introduce you to Shannon Live.
Hi Shannon, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
“The journey of a lifetime starts with the turning of a page.” – Rachel Anders
One thing that every reader knows is that opening up a book of any kind is going to take you on an adventure. Whether it’s far off places with knights and castles or flying through time and space or simply having a meet cute at the local shop around the corner, books open up the world to us giving us the freedom to travel, to dream, to view the world outside someone else’s window. I spent most of my childhood wrapped in the pages of books. Science books to teach me not to be afraid of storms. Babysitter’s Club books to teach me how to take care of my younger siblings and their friends. Even Archie Comics, teaching me that it’s okay to be who you are…and eat ten thousand cheeseburgers while doing it. I always knew that every page would take me somewhere else, what I didn’t know is that it would lead me to where I am now.
As a kid, I was always taking care of my younger siblings and the easiest way to entertain them was to play school. I would make up craft projects, teach them all of the things I was learning in class, and of course, spend a lot of time reading to them. Everyone thought I would grow up to become a teacher. But when I went to college, I decided to get two degrees, one in English Literature the other in Public Relations. It shocked a lot of people that I didn’t go the teacher path. But the journey was only beginning. After years of retail, event planning, and marketing jobs, I suddenly found myself working in a school as a tutor in a middle school reading classroom. The students were struggling to understand the concepts they needed to pass the standardized test of the year, and the school was worried that they weren’t going to be able to grasp the concepts quick enough to succeed. So they asked my opinion as a reading specialist. My advice…give them something to read that they’ll enjoy. And they did. The school administration allowed me to build a curriculum for reading (and another for writing) based on pop culture. TV shows, Movies, Music, YA novels…all leading back to the main skills they needed to pass the test and the types of reading materials they would see there. It was no surprise to anyone that the students became engaged and suddenly could not only relate to what they were reading but could understand once foreign concepts. When the next school year came, I found myself working with elementary students who struggled with reading. This time I turned to comic books. And a whole new world opened up to not just them but me. Comic books provided everything they needed to learn to read, to learn to infer, to decipher deep seeded meanings and literary concepts. From the earliest reader to the oldest adult, there was something to be said for just how much comics could help with reading, writing, and emotional development.
I had grown up reading comics but had never thought to use them in classrooms. And talk about a game changer.
I spent a couple of years working in a comic store after that. Learning as much as I could about the massive world that I had always believed I knew everything about. Boy was I wrong. There were millions more adventures waiting to be had. A million concepts to discover. A million voices to be heard. I went from there to working in a local bookstore with their teen advisory board, listening to kids and teens talk about what was important to them, what their struggles were, and where they wanted to see publishing go.
And then in early 2019, a friend called me and my then boyfriend (now husband) and asked if we would be interested in helping him open a shop. The comic store I had previously worked with was closing, and he was taking over the remaining assets to build a new company. We, of course, jumped on the opportunity. We ran the shop as a delivery service for the first seven months, setting up at local Austin venues (like the incredible Posse East on Duval) to allow people to come meet us and shop our product and preorder future comics they wanted. We held book clubs in our apartment to build out the community. And eventually, we moved the shop into a house on East Cesar Chavez. Our goal was to not only develop the classic clubhouse feel where ANYONE could be comfortable sitting around talking about comics new and old, but also to truly develop the reading, writing, and emotional skills of children, teens, and adults through comics education. So, we set up our shop as a nonprofit organization. Since May of 2019, we have given out four scholarships to students pursuing degrees in arts and literature (with the application period for this year’s opening this week), we’ve donated books to classrooms and libraries, we’ve created curriculums for teachers to use in conjunction with comics, we’ve taught workshops on how to write your own comics, we’ve given free books to children who stop by the shop…and we have SO MUCH MORE PLANNED.
It’s been such an incredible journey that I never could have imagined would lead to where it has, but like the quote says, the journey of a lifetime starts with the turning of the page. And this has definitely been just that.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
You always want to say yes, right? That you’ve got everything under control and you nailed it on the first try. But in all honesty, there are two of us who do the day-to-day operations of a major undertaking. My husband and I run the shop during the regular business hours, but we also have to process donations coming in and going out, order all of the new inventory each week (since comics have hundreds of new releases every single week), take care of subscription-based customers while managing the in-store product, manage our cleaning, pressing, and grading services, oversee our social media and marketing campaigns, maintain the facilities inside and out, keep up with trends of things to come, and develop and manage the nonprofit goals all at the same time. It can definitely get overwhelming. How do you process 64 boxes that are donated…and where do you store them until you can? How do you develop the latest curriculum for the next set of books going to 3rd graders or high school seniors? When do you eat? There’s so much that goes into it that you don’t think about when you’re on the outside. For every well-oiled moment a customer sees, there’s a thousand fires that were put out to make that moment work. I am incredibly fortunate to have my husband here with me every day helping keep me focused on my tasks while I do the same for him. Sure, some things slip through the cracks, but you dive down and catch them the second you notice. We’ve also been able to develop some of the most amazing friendships that have led to some of the best volunteers you can ever imagine. Which has definitely been our saving grace!
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Bat City Comic Professionals is a non-profit comic shop on Austin’s Eastside. Our goal at Bat City is to build the next generation of superheroes through comics education. While we operate as a full-scale comic book store just like any other, offering weekly new releases, subscription service, back issue comics dating back all the way to the 50 and 60s (maybe even earlier at times), and cleaning/pressing/comic grading services, we are also an educational non-profit working to serve our community. At Bat City, we firmly believe that we have the chance to make a difference in impacting young readers. Studies have shown that students who cannot read by the end of 3rd grade are far more likely to drop out of high school in the end. But studies have also shown that reading comic books can improve young people’s love for reading, it can bridge the gap between picture books and novels, it can help English Language Learners and dyslexic readers understand what they are reading, and has been proven to teach more new, unique words to readers than even adult/classic literature novels. That’s huge! This is why we work with schools, libraries, and parents to put books in kid’s hands. We donate books to classrooms complete with a curriculum of how teachers can use them for reading, writing, or emotional development purposes. We host workshops in schools, at events, and soon to be on-site at the shop to teach students the basics of reading and writing through comic books. And launching this summer, we will be bringing even more kids programming to the table to encourage a new generation to not only fall in love with reading but to begin to understand the world outside someone else’s window, to use what they read to help them change not only their world but all of ours. When you shop at Bat City, your purchase goes towards helping us make that dream a reality. Each book or statue or action figure you buy helps us build another curriculum, donate to another school, or build another workshop.
Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
My husband and I have a motto, “Don’t hate, Educate.” We live in a time period where not knowing something often leads to incredulous comments and judgment from fans of the thing who end up becoming gatekeepers on what they love. We don’t ever want to do that. So, our personal motto that we’ve infused into everything we do in the store is centered around the idea of welcoming people to the world of comics. No one has ever read every single book or had the experiences of every person, so there’s always something we can learn about the books and each other. We want people to feel comfortable whether it’s their first time in a comic store or they’re at one every week. Comics have the ability to generate passion, we want to use that to make a difference in someone’s life every single day.
Also, for those adults who are interested in learning more about comics, we do a weekly live show on Sunday nights on Facebook called Wine Down Your Weekend where we discuss all the new books out that week while drinking wine and talking with our viewers in the chat! It’s a great way to hear about a ton of new books you may not have thought to pick up. Especially all those incredible new indie titles!
Contact Info:
- Email: contact@batcity.org
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/comicsaustin
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/comicsaustin
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/comicsaustin
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbEMz-X8Uo-e5zF7GgbQfaQ
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/bat-city-comic-professionals-austin
