Sometimes things are things and sometimes, to borrow some poetry from Don Draper, they serve as a time machine, bringing us back to a memory that we want to hold close. Those things are wonderful.
Anthony Marques is a success story – as a small business owner and in the comic book industry where he’s worked for years as a freelance artist and editor who has drawn everything from Batman to Back To The Future and the Ghostbusters – but he can remember a time when none of that seemed assured. Back before he got into the revered Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art as a student, when he was laboring in construction and tending bar, trying to figure out how to make a dream work.
Marques is sitting in his office while talking to me over Zoom more than 15 years later, waxing nostalgic about that more uncertain time, the power of gestures, and an art table that is to his right. “It’s a very basic cheap particle board, put together drawing board from Michael’s, but it means more to me than the fanciest thing you could pick up.”
Anthony hasn’t built his success alone. His wife, Jackie, is his partner in life and business, the two of them juggling work and life, raising two kids together. “I love working with my wife,” Anthony says. “She’s the best business partner you could have. You’re not going to find somebody that has a better drive, is as organized, or as smart as she is. She’s wonderful. You hear that expression, ‘If you’re in a foxhole, who do you want sitting or standing right beside you?’ Her. She will out-think anybody.”
Jackie bought in early, getting that desk and building it for Anthony in that more uncertain time – something that Anthony says signified, “that she believed I could actually do this.”
Anthony and Jackie own and operate The Kubert School now, taking it over in 2019. They also run Dewey’s Comic City, a Madison, New Jersey comic staple founded in 1991 by Dan Veltre. Anthony and Jackie bought Dewey’s in 2017 as Veltre was retiring, expanding into another side of the comic book industry after Anthony spent years as an artist and editor at Dynamite. With both Dewey’s and The Kubert School, they just couldn’t accept the idea that these places might go away. The risk involved with jumping into not one, but two distinct businesses wasn’t a deterrent.
“There’s risk involved in any choice that you make, right? But I think if you overthink it, you’re never going to do it anyway. So you’ve got to jump,” says Anthony, adding, “I think whenever you approach anything, you weigh out stuff but figure it out along the way as well. Don’t be afraid to make the move and then put it together as you’re going forward.” While Anthony is happy with the choice that he and Jackie made, it hasn’t come without challenges.
Six months. That’s the approximate space between when Anthony and Jackie brought The Kubert School into the fold alongside Dewey’s and the start of a pandemic that would shake up every industry and facet of life. By the summer of 2020, the two had made the hard choice to consolidate their operations, moving Dewey’s to the art store within the Kubert School building. While the familiar Madison location would shutter, the plan was always to return Deweys to its hometown. They just had to get through a moment of worldwide economic uncertainty.
Anthony is, from what I can tell after spending about an hour with him, a very happy and engaged guy. When he breaks down his daily schedule for me, it’s impressive for its precision and scope, mixing his work with the school, running a comic book shop, and continuing his art career with family time for him, Jackie, and their two kids. Despite his numerous obligations, he doesn’t seem like a worrier. But that doesn’t mean there haven’t been “gut check moments” along the way.
“You can’t panic. If you all of a sudden jump in one direction because of fear, or you get worried that changes the way you make your decisions. I think you can get yourself in trouble,” he says, explaining the steady mindset that helped keep his and Jackie’s business afloat while, at the same time, keeping focus on the bigger picture and keeping his two young children safe.
While the move to the art school (which is about 20 minutes away in Dover, New Jersey) stood as a change, the new location still served the large North Jersey comic book community that Dewey’s had cultivated over the years even during the past worst of the pandemic. Anthony and Jackie were still able to support and be supported by their team, taking out a PPP loan from the government. “We did that. But we did it the right way,” Anthony says. “It was meant to take care of your employees. You had to do things the right way. We made sure we covered all of those bases and treated everyone and kept everybody on payroll as long as we could and kept it going.”
In January of this year, a new Dewey’s Comic City opened up in Madison with the shop in the Kubert School remaining open for overflow and bargain comics and trades. Anthony tells me that the plan took longer than they expected, but they also weren’t going to rush things or wind up in the wrong space. “You don’t want to just be sandwiched in between a dry cleaner and a liquor shop. I don’t think that that sends the right message to people.”
Madison is the dictionary definition of a charming, somewhat upscale suburban village, filled with small shops that are big on character. The new Deweys (located at 6 Green Village Road) is right next to a rare bookstore, within walking distance from both the old location and the train station. “The building is gorgeous. It’s one of my favorite buildings in Madison. It’s in the historic area, wonderful storefront surrounded by great buildings, Anthony tells me before listing the shop’s proximity to local colleges and ice cream parlors. “Everything is right there. It’s a prime location.”
In keeping with Anthony’s diverse portfolio – with the shops, the school, and his career as an artist – the new Dewey’s is similarly rooted in the idea of providing something for everyone, with major comics from DC and Marvel, indies, YA titles, anime, and action figures. There are also art classes. All of this goes a long way toward creating a welcoming environment for comics fans of all ages and interests.
When we discuss the grand opening of the new shop, Anthony talks about the emotion of that moment, seeing faces familiar and new, and about the community. He also talks about fitting in the occasional late night at the shop and at a local diner talking comics with friends and co-workers. Despite all the varied projects he’s involved in, it’s clear how being a part of that community nourishes him – not just as a merchant, but as a champion for comics as a craft, as a hobby, and as one of those things that functions as an escape hatch back into the wonder and glee of childhood. It’s that big-eyed child-like appetite for everything that he identifies with when I wonder if he worries about anything. “You want to keep being a kid forever,” he says when talking about all the many ways he stays tied to the capes and cowls of superheroes. “I just want to do this forever.”
While Anthony surely couldn’t have predicted all the interesting twists and turns of his career(s) when he first sat at that participle board art table that Jackie lovingly constructed all those years ago, it sure sounds like he’s in exactly the right place.
