Hefty rent hike spells the end for Astro Books

After 31 years peddling comics and used books and dispensing wry humour, Astro Books is finally packing it in, victim to surging rent, high taxes and road construction.
The owners of what is one of the largest comic retailers in Canada, on Ste-Catherine St. a couple blocks west of Guy St., were informed in January that their landlord had sold the building three months earlier and the new one intended to raise the rent from $3,500 a month to more than $9,000.
Astro Books had already been struggli