According to ICv2 Gary Edson Arlington, who founded the San Francisco Comic Book Company, passed away on January 16, 2014. Arlington was a comic pioneer opening in 1968 the San Francisco Comic Book Company at 3339 23rd Street in the Mission District. The store is thought by many to be the first comic book store in the United States.
Nearly one year ago Arlington, who was 73 at the time, was profiled by the San Francisco Chronicle after Bay Area-based Last Gasp published a book of his art titled I Am Not of this Planet. The article quotes an Art Spiegeleman passage from the book: “San Francisco was the capitol of comix culture in the ’60s and early ’70s; and Gary Arlington’s hole-in-the-wall shop was, for me, the capitol of San Francisco.”
