Kapow:

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Beyond its official offerings, the shop serves as a place of community and fun for hobbyists and collectors.

“Everybody's welcome to come here,” Diehl said. “Everybody, we don't care. There's no discrimination, there's no judgment, there's nothing.”

A niche offering

Customers are greeted with packed shelves of figures, comic books and graphic novels. To the right of the main sales floor is a sprawling space dedicated to a Pokémon league, tabletop games and an upcoming corner for retro video games.

Diehl said he targeted comic books when he opened the shop, and the neighboring expansion was added for games to maintain a quiet reading and browsing space.

Each week, Kapow hosts Dungeons and Dragons, Werewolf and Warhammer games. The first Sunday of the month is reserved for painting and building miniatures, and Tuesdays and Wednesdays mark comic book release days.

Diehl said the shop’s busiest days are Saturdays, which are dedicated to its Pokémon league of over 100 members.

“It is whole families coming in here, mom, dad, their kids, their nephews,” Diehl said. “They've created a community to themselves to come in here and play Pokémon … It's not like any Pokémon league anybody goes to.”

Diehl said Kapow does not charge for its card and tabletop games as much as other stores in the industry, and the shop aims for price to not be an obstacle to participation.

Adults are asked to purchase a $5 store gift card to play Dungeons and Dragons, and Magic the Gathering Commander players aged 13 and older contribute $5 to a prize pool.

“We just prefer you to come in and have a good time,” Diehl said.

The Kapow comeback

When Kapow opened in 2012, Diehl said he had less than $200 in the cash register and $1 in the store bank account.

“It was kind of spooky,” Diehl said. “The store was packed full of product. I had $172 in the cash register, and I said, ‘Well, we'll see if this works.’ I had zero working capital, and I was doing it by myself.”

The shop’s niche product offerings and loyal community kept the business growing. But in 2017, Diehl said a fire had destroyed $300,000 in inventory in the shop’s back room at a previous location.

After recouping losses from the fire, the shop closed at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Diehl said he had no intentions of reopening.

“Then we saw a void in the community that said they wanted the store here, somebody’s store, so I looked at it again,” Diehl said. “We started the same way again over here. We started off a little smaller space to see what the community would bear, and it was just huge.”

Moving forward, Diehl said he plans to dedicate the back wall of the shop to anime, manga and Japanese pop culture. He also hopes to expand the store’s selection of T-shirts.

Now, the shop has four employees, and its success has enabled Diehl to open its dedicated space for games.

“We're trying to make this the one-stop nerd shop,” Diehl said.

Kapow Comics is located in Suite 108 at 540 Lake Center Parkway in Cumming. The shop is open from 11 a.m.- 7 p.m. Sunday-Thursday and from 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday and Saturday.