Worlds End Books
Brand, build, and run an online comic book store from scratch — including a full platform rebuild when WooCommerce hit its ceiling.
Role
Founder
Client
Worlds End Books
Stack
WooCommerce → Medusa.js · React · Python
Context
In early 2021 I started Worlds End Books — an online comic book store built around a simple premise: comics are better when you follow story arcs, not single issues. Most stores organize by publisher and title. I wanted to organize by story.
I’d been doing web work for clients for over a decade. This was the first time I was the client, the developer, the shipping department, and the customer service rep all at once.
The Problem
The early version ran on WooCommerce. It worked. Then it didn’t — not at the scale I needed, not with the inventory complexity I was dealing with, and not with the custom arc-bundling product format that was central to how the store sold comics.
WooCommerce wanted me to think about products the way WooCommerce thinks about products. I needed to think about products the way a comic reader thinks about story arcs. Those two things are not compatible at depth.
At the same time I was learning what it actually means to run a small business: cash flow, supplier relationships, shipping software, returns, customer communication. Every conversation I now have with a client about conversion rates or site reliability lands differently because I’ve been on the wrong end of a shipping error at 11pm on a Friday.
Approach
I rebuilt on Medusa.js — an open-source, headless commerce platform — with a custom React frontend and a Python inventory management tool I wrote to handle the arc-bundling logic. No off-the-shelf plugin was going to solve the problem I had, so I stopped looking for one.
The brand had been designed by a hired designer who I gave a deliberate brief: nothing superhero, nothing primary colors, nothing that looks like it belongs in a mall. The result was moody, a little old-world, with a nod to Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. It felt right for a store that takes the medium seriously.
Outcome
Worlds End Books is still running. The rebuild is stable. The arc-bundling format has become the thing customers mention most — it’s the reason people come back.
The bigger lesson isn’t about the technology. It’s that building something of your own, however small, changes how you do client work. You stop thinking about websites as deliverables and start thinking about them as businesses.