Dubai: For the entire month of April, mammoth bookstore Kinokuniya is offering online shoppers a discount on all comic books, presumably intended to coincide with the Middle East Film and Comic Con (MEFCC), taking place this weekend in Dubai.

As comic book heroes return to the mainstream thanks to huge, multibillion dollar film franchises like ‘The Avengers’ and ‘Iron Man’, the UAE has seen an upswing in the number of shops seeking to cater to the nascent, but passionate market.

Over six shops have opened in recent years, hawking everything from board games to figurines, comic books to costumes.

One such outlet, which opened in Abu Dhabi two years ago, is Back To Games.

Its proprietor is an unusual suspect: By night, Mark Azzam runs two successful board game stores in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, but by day, he is a pilot with Etihad Airways.

Azzam found that his first store in the capital was such a hit, he decided to open up a second in Dubai last year.

“It was something I was passionate about since I was child,” he told Gulf News, adding: “It’s been crazy how much it has grown.”

He says that the growth of his stores has been mirrored by the overall growth of the community; from new tabletop gaming societies to board game nights throughout the two cities, Azzam believes that people are ditching their computer games for actual games.

“We now stock over 1,200 individual games that we buy from seven different countries,” he said.

According to Azzam, the demand for Back to Games was so strong in Dubai that the move was a no-brainer. “Dubai residents were shopping on our online store, and they were pressuring us to open there,” he said.

Following the store’s successful launch in March of last year, Azzam says he is now targeting a new shop, potentially in Al Ain or Sharjah, sometime in 2019 or 2020, whilst in Abu Dhabi, he is in the process of moving his existing store to Al Wahda Mall.

This will allow him to double his space, he says.

Last year’s Comic Con in Dubai saw over 60,000 visitors, with exhibitors reporting increased sales.

According to local media reports, one company sold a life-size model of Japanese anime character Grendizer for Dh27,000 to an ­unnamed Saudi collector.

This year is anticipated to be just as successful, according to organisers, with exhibitors ranging from niche interests such as Geek Nation, to bluechips such as Netflix, Warner Bros. and Sony.

A senior buyer at toy shop Hamleys, located in Dubai Mall, said that the shop always saw a bump in interest around Comic Con.

“We see a spike in the sales of comic book toys, certainly, around this time of the year, because of the marketing and advertising, and the increased awareness, that Comic Con brings.

“But these action figures contribute a significant portion of our day-to-day business outside of the Comic Con weekend, too,” the buyer said, asking to remain anonymous because they were not authorised to speak publicly.

Hamleys says it will have a small kiosk at the event to display superhero figurines, in addition to models of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) characters, which it says, are also quite popular.

Not everyone is so enthused by the sudden interest in comic book heroes, however.

Omar Sharif Al Ali, the Emirati owner of the Geeky Lizard in Satwa, says that blockbuster movie hits such as ‘Deadpool’ and ‘Ironman’, both based on comic book characters, have changed the landscape of what was once a refuge for him and other like-minded fans.

“I was bullied at school for liking comics. And now students come to my store with difficult backgrounds, they are ostracised for being different. They feel welcome here, part of a society,” Al Ali said.

Now, he talks disdainfully about the booming industry that comic books, and specifically their accompanying films, have become, where large corporate interests drown out the essence of what attracted him in the first place.

“The sad part is people who don’t know the business are jumping into it,” he says, pointing to a popular ride-hailing app in Dubai that has invented a superhero for marketing purposes at Comic Con.

He and his friends call these types of opportunistic latecomers “hypebeasts”, he adds.

“It was niche, and now it’s so mainstream here. There’s such a huge demand for comics, and games,” Al Ali adds.

But the businessman has a warning for anyone looking to enter the space, seeking their own slice of the superhero fortune: “The market has a lot of potential, but you need to have the right heart, and the right investors for it.”