User:GRuban/James Welborn

James Welborn (1973-2011) was an American webmaster, software engineer, and comic book store founder who committed suicide with poisonous gas.

Early life
Welborn was born July 4, 1973, in Las Vegas, and grew up in Henderson, Nevada. He graduated Basic High School in 1991, with honors, including a distinguished scholar diploma, and was awarded the Millennium Scholarship to attend the University of Nevada at Reno. He went for three years, studying towards a bachelor's degree in journalism, and holding assorted positions at The Nevada Sagebrush student newspaper, from production assistant to editor-in-chief. In 1995, he joined the staff of the Las Vegas Sun as a graphic artist for several months, then quickly moved to be a webmaster for the startup Vegas.com, where he wrote their first content management system. He spent a total of 27 years in the state.

In 1999 he was hired by Akamai Technologies as a systems engineer, and moved to Massachusetts. In 2003 he married, and in 2004 had a son.

Hub Comics
In January 2008, Welborn fulfilled his teenage dream by opening Hub Comics, an independent comic book store near his home in Somerville, Massachusetts. He wanted to appeal to a different audience than the typical comic book store, focusing on independent, local, and alternative comics for more mature audiences, "a comics shop for NPR listeners." He was planning to keep his job as a software engineer for Akamai, and said he would be happy if the shop merely broke even.

By October 2010, however, the store was in trouble. Staff blamed comic book sales being down all over the country, and customers who preordered merchandise but never returned to buy it. Diamond Comic Distributors, the main distributor of comic books, suspended the store's account, and Welborn appealed to customers, who rallied around the store to buy existing stock.