Multiverse Philly wants to be a welcoming space for anyone interested in fandom

Calling all lovers of fandom, your new favorite spot is about to open in Chestnut Hill.

Multiverse Philly, a speculative fiction bookstore, is set to open on Friday, Oct. 13.

Owners Gralin Hughes, Jr and Sara Zia Ebrahimi Hughes share a love for speculative fiction and have dreamed of creating a space to celebrate fandom.

Sara said she recalls feeling intimidated to go into comic book stores as a young woman and admit she didn’t know certain things about comics. She said it felt like she already had to be “in the know.”

The Hughes have been going to Comic Con and other conventions together for over a decade. Sara said she wants the store to feel like “the best of” those conventions and wants people to feel comfortable coming into the store with the intention of learning, no matter how they identify or what their experience level is.

“I wanted to create a space where we can connect writers and artists through the books and comics and then also through the other apparel and crafts and other items that we have with new artists that also help those audiences expand their fandom and things that they know about and learn about new things,” she said.

Sara said the couple has been thinking about opening a store like this for six years, but the pandemic inspired them to take a risk. She said that everything in terms of their family situation, finding the right space and getting financing lined up perfectly for them to take a leap.

Philly has a lot of spots that already celebrate fandom or have comics, but there isn’t this specific type of bookstore in the northwest part of the city, Sara said. She and Gralin announced this project around the same time Amalgam Comics closed down last year.

The store has books for adults, young adults and tweens in the speculative fiction genre, including fantasy, science fiction and horror. The store will also carry manga, comic books, board games, role-playing games (such as Dungeons & Dragons), game accessories, Pokemon cards, Magic: The Gathering cards, apparel and other fandom-related items.

Sara’s favorite things in the store are art pieces of fictional national parks from fantasy and science fiction stories. Gralin’s favorite thing is a book called “The Other History of the DC Universe.”

Gralin said he is excited to actually interact with customers, he said he loves the idea of “getting to geek out with people all day.”

Once the store becomes stable, Sara said they hope to host events, including game nights, and classes for both children and adults related to games and art.

Gralin said he also would like to host performances.

“I am a multidisciplinary artist, and one part of my creative practice is creating audio soundscapes using modular synthesizers. Inviting other sound artists to create ambient, cinematic, and sometimes otherworldly music as an in-store performance would be fun,” he said.

Sara said she would love for the store to become a place where authors stop on book tours.

She said they are also talking to local artists about collaborating for limited edition items.

“For both of us, speculative fiction has been a way of finding joy and surviving hard parts of our life and it can be an escape, it can be entertainment. For some people, it’s almost the equivalent of religion,” Sara said. “[It] gives people opportunities to feel part of something larger. And so we wanted to create a space where people could have that opportunity to feel connected and build community around the shared love of the stories.”

Sarah Huffman is a 2022-2024 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism.