The owner of Alpha Comics is cleaning up after thieves smashed their way into his store and stole over 500 comic books early Thursday morning. The break-in happened at about 2:25 a.m. and the suspects ignored the cash register and went straight for the books on the shelves cramming them into a garbage bag. Some first edition comic books are highly valued and the owner of the store, Chris Humphries, says the comics that were stolen are not that pricey but the thieves stole a lot so that number adds up. “There was some really cool comics that got stolen, that were written and created by people who are trying to make comics better,” he said. “The dollar value of the individual comics is not very high, actually I sell comics in this store here at the suggested US retail price so per comic it’s not very expensive but they took a lot.” Humphries says the thieves would have been more careful with the merchandise if they were serious about reselling the stolen comics later, as the value drops if pages are bent or ripped. “It happened in January so I thought, great again, so this time was way more harder what they took, it was really cool comics is what they took,” he said. “I viewed the surveillance and they were scooping the comics from the shelves and putting them into a sack, which would damage the comics.” The culprits packed away hundreds of comic books, which total several thousand dollars, and Humphries says unloading them won't be easy. He posted a list of the stolen comic books online in hopes that other comic fans will come forward to help track them down. “They are not Superman and Batman comics, these are comics that a lot of people haven’t ever heard of so if they pop up people will say, hey, I heard this Black Science comic went missing from Alpha Comics on Facebook, hopefully we can get a description or even better they walk into a comic store to sell these and they get caught on film. That would be ideal but I just want the word out there on what's been taken hopefully we find the people that did it, I know others want that too,” said Humphries. Police are also trying to track the comics down and say they take the crime seriously. “We do have resources in place that look at Kijiji, that look at things like pawn shops, we do have investigators that's their specific function,” said CPS Constable Matt Forest. “I wouldn't call it a small sub set by any means, we do have things like comic-con that comes to the city and they draw thousands and thousands of people so I think these kinds of items are, like I said, they’re high value items to people.” Police say Humphries is doing the right things to keep his store safe, like using surveillance cameras and a security company to monitor the area, and that those tools can help them track down a suspect. Click HERE to see an approximate list of the comic books that were stolen. (With files from Chris Epp)
