In high school, Chris Watton found herself in a bind. She had a favourite comic shop in Windsor, but it offered no place to sit and hang out, so she frequented a different comic store instead because at least there was a coffee shop next to it.
“I'd always wished the coffee shop and comic shop were one place,” says Chris. “You're talking about comics in the comic shop and you want to stay, but then you're loitering. There's always a time limit. You don't want to hang out for three hours, but you're not ready to go home yet.”
A few years later, when the aspiration she thought she had to be a professional artist took her to Toronto's Ontario College of Art and Design, she found herself doing the exact same thing: sitting on the back fire escape of a comic book store reading comics with no food or comfy chairs. Meanwhile, art school made Chris miserable – creating art in a vacuum – and if she was being honest, her real love was getting to know the regulars she met slinging coffee at her part-time job as a barista. “I just went to university because it seemed like the thing you were supposed to do," says Chris. "I hated it the whole time and didn't finish because it wasn't teaching me anything that I needed to know to do this.”
“This” was The Sidekick – the comic shop-coffee shop hybrid she'd yearned for as a teen, with an expertly curated collection of hand-picked titles and collectibles. It appeared just as the traditional comic store concept was undergoing a radical transformation – one with broader curb appeal for a wider demographic.
