ST. LOUIS — The St. Louis community continues to mourn the loss of the student and teacher killed in the deadly school shooting on Monday.
Comic bookstores across the city came together to encourage customers to be heroes for their community.
Proceeds from sales at five different comic book shops, all over the city, were collected throughout the weekend to directly benefit the families and victims of the Central VPA shooting.
A couple of the owners said this idea all started because of conversations both of them were having separately with their own customers this past week.
Many of them were parents, expressing hopelessness, about the whole situation.
That's when the owners, like Michael Petrowich with Comic Headquarters, realized this was something everyone could do together.
"We can't change what happened to those families, but I hope we can show them that, 'Hey, we care. We don't want you to struggle with this alone,'" he said.
Behind the bright colors, infamous villains and favorite superheroes that fill the shelves of Apotheosis Comics & Lounge, there's a father pleading for change.
The owner, Martin Casas, has a 12-year-old daughter.
"When we were driving to school this week, my daughter told me that she started bringing this metal water bottle to school, and she told me the reason why she did it was because if a shooter came to school, she could throw it at them," he said.
Casas described it as 'gut-wrenching,' knowing this is the America his daughter is growing up in.
"For the past 10 years, we've all heard about shootings in schools, and it finally came to our doorstep, and it's now affecting our community, and so everybody wants to know what we can do to help," he said.
Casas said he wanted to help fight these ultimate evils, like the superheroes he grew up reading about, and that's why he jumped on the opportunity to give back when Petrowich reached out to him.
After the CVPA shooting, Petrowich said, he felt like this was something the community could do together, as a father of two.
"I feel like it's really easy for a tragic event like this to happen to feel bad about it for a couple of days, and just nothing gets done," he said.
Petrowich wanted to change that narrative, so he asked his best four sidekicks to join him in dedicating a weekend of proceeds to CVPA victims and their families.
The other three shops that participated were All-American Collectibles, Altered States Comics and STL Comics Toys & More.
"I hope if anything, this inspires our customers and other businesses. If something tragic happens to St. Louis, let's do something. Let's get together, let's rally together," he said.
While they're doing what they can, both Casas and Petrowich believe, there's going to need to be a lot more heroes to rewrite this story.
"It's really hard, knowing that there's nothing we can do to stop this, so I hope we can figure something out," Casas said.
According to Casas, the real superpower we have right now is voting.
He is encouraging everyone, especially the younger generation, to get out and vote on Tuesday, Nov. 8.