Search for Spider-Man and 4 Local Shops

In the quest to read all issues of Amazing Spider-Man (see this post for details) I had to make a trip to some comic shops.

As usual, this had its ups and downs.

Store #1: Mile High Comics (satellite store)

This store has a pretty good selection of back issues and trade paperbacks. It also has a selection of collectibles, such as the statue where the Punisher looks a little like he might have been a preemie.

This store suffers from what I call


Comic Store Problem 744Q: Surly Staff

I was there with friends, one of whom asked for an item that was in a case with a sliding glass door, the kind they use to lock up video games at Target and methods of birth control at Wal-Mart, which is a mistake in my book because I think that if people are either stealing condoms or not using them at all, that suggests a person who may not be prepared to finance a baby and should probably be given many, many condoms of all varieties.

The guy let out a big sigh, crossed the room to where the case was and where my buddy was standing, and then slid the door open without unlocking anything. Why he didn't just say, "It's not locked" is beyond me. OR he could have slid it open without the big sigh. Either way, he was doing the classic thing where someone pretends to be put upon because everyone else on the planet is probably too stupid to open a sliding glass door anyway.

Sadly, the Simpsons comic book guy is definitely more the norm than the exception to the norm. Oooh, train of thought: Have 5 kids named Norm, then one kid named Exception.

Store #2: New Genesis Comics

There was a time when the opening of a new comic store was just about the most exciting thing that could happen in my life. Fortunately, this also coincided with a time where a new comic store opened about every other week, so it was a very exciting time indeed.

Today, however, it's pretty unusual to see a new comic store of any kind open, so you can imagine my surprise when I heard there was a newbie in Fort Collins (home to two other shops, I might add).

I drove with glee to the new spot (with "happiness," not the soundtrack from that idiotic show), threw open the doors and was confronted with

Common Comic Store Problem 82A: STORE EXTREMELY SMALL

The guy working there had a huge afro, nerd glasses, and was very eager to help me out. The only problem was that, because I was looking for Spider-Man back issues in some form, I could tell that they didn't have what I needed the second I came in the door and had to spend 5 minutes looking around just to be polite.

When I say this place was small, I mean small. I live in an apartment small enough that you can plug the vacuum in once and cover the whole joint, and this place was small even by my standards. You can see the cover of every book from the doorway, and if you came in with a buddy the two of you would have trouble schooching past each other to get to the other side.

This is a fairly common issue with comic stores. You go in, see that they have relatively little to offer and immediately want to leave, but the one shred of niceness left in me wants to look around and at least see what's happening.

This might be a cool place if you buy new issues of shit, and maybe if they can hang in a couple years they can build up a little more selection, but for now it's just not for me.


Then it was on to Comic Store #3: Gryphon Games and Comics

This store has a pretty decent selection. Of comics.
Selection of staff...not so decent.

Okay, I have some respect for the fact that working at a comic store seems to be one of the few jobs where you can stand around the counter and talk to friends, play whatever the hell music you want, and basically screw around all day as long as you get done with the handful of things that need doing. In fact, if people never ever came in it would be my dream job because sitting around, listening to music and having asshole-y looks on my face is pretty much what I do at home, so to make a career out of it would be nice.

And I don't ask for much. I'm not a guy who goes out to dinner and is constantly waiting for the waitress to either perform well or suck it up, meanwhile I'm sitting and recalculating the tip in my head. I'm really not. I only need people to do a passable job.

A passable job, in this case, would have been a greeting of some kind. Wave, nod, word, anything would have cut it for me. But nothing.

Also, because this comic store is also a place where people play the kinds of games that involve bizarre dice and esoteric rules that come from various books with pictures of old-time hammers and axes on the cover, it has an odor. A distinct anxiety sweat that soaks into the walls and leaves the whole place with a light scent of old milk that was never aired out in any way. It's a smell I remember from young days, but not one I particularly like. Overall, this store had

Comic Store Problem 744Q: Surly Staff
Comic Store Problem 458J: Odors
Comic Store Problem 3777R: Combination of too many nerdy activities under one roof.


Finally, Comic Store #4: Halley's Comics

Aka, the Cat Store

This store is run by an extremely nice older woman and her less nice husband. I would call them ex-hippies except that in order to be an ex-hippie you have to stop being a hippie at some point. The upside is that the lady is usually pretty good as comic store workers run. The downside is that she is extremely nice in her taking in of pretty much every stray cat that comes by her rural home, and a good portion of these cats end up living part-time in the comic store.

Quickly, I hate when I go in a store and a animal lives there. That is so fucking stupid. Your dog doesn't need to come to work with you, especially considering that it mostly lays flat on the floor and doesn't fucking move for hours. That's normal dog activity, but it's not cool when you have to go to a store and feel shitty about nudging a dog so it moves so that you can look at the goddamn merchandise. I hate that shit.

Anyway, the cat thing is a problem because the cat odor ebbs and flows depending on the era, which cats are living there, how many, and so on. Because the owner seems to have no cat filter, no cat appearing to be too smelly, too angry, or the 47th, it can be pretty overpowering at times.

Fortunately for me, maybe because of the change of seasons, the cat smell was pretty tame. However, it was compensated for when the lady, a much older woman, had a long phone conversation describing how her underwear was visible in a recent picture due to long slits up the side of her dress.

Common Comic Store Problem #898ds: Clerk carries on without shame as though nobody is present.

Common Comic Store Problem # df89: House of commerce transformed into animal rescue remote unit.

Wednesday Comics

I want to start off this review of Wednesday Comics by letting you know that I am extremely excited to review John Byrne’s Next Men. But for the sake of posting something while I settle into some sanity, here’s a little something.

Every so often a comic book company decides to do things a little differently. Sometimes it’s awesome, like the Marvel Omnibus project which is reprinting damn near everything but the ads (which would make them PERFECT, by the way. I’m not a fan of advertising, but old comic ads are fantastic. I learned a shitload about OXY products in the 90’s that I would have otherwise missed). Other times, it’s well-meaning but kind of a waste, like Maximum Fantastic Four which reprinted the first issue of Fantastic Four with each panel blown up, sometimes taking up an entire page. The idea was that it would make readers slow down and enjoy the art and story, panel by panel. I would liken it to forcing someone to enjoy a movie by stopping it every 15 minutes and having someone come out and explain why what you just watched was awesome.

Wednesday Comics was a weekly anthology that came out in gigantic 14” X 20” broadsheet, like a newspaper comic book section. I read it in a complete hardcover volume, and I would say both were kind of idiotic in their own way.

The original, floppy printing was better as a physical object, but instead of printing an entirety of, say, Batman, each issue had on page of a story from each of the titles, 15 titles in all. So you got one page of Superman, one of Teen Titans, and so on. Just as long as you could keep track of 15 goddamn stories over a period of a year, you were set. People with human brains, like myself, found it a little frustrating.

Okay, so they learned somewhat of a lesson in the hardback format and printed the like issues back-to-back, so you could read the entirety of Metamorpho in order. However, they neglected to consider that a piece of paper this gigantic, when mounted on a hard shell, is almost impossible to read. If the page is almost two feet tall, that means the page is at least a foot away from where it would normally be in relation to your eyes. Imagine taking a full, unfolded newspaper sheet, mounting it on a rigid board, and then trying to read it. I’d rather blow my goddamn brains out, for which I would use a handgun as a shotgun would be long and unwieldly and difficult to shoot myself with. See! That’s all the thinking it takes!

I think I got about halfway before hitting this Wonder Woman story, seeing the number of tiny words on the page and saying Fuck It. Hell, look at the size of that fry box in relation. (Note: fry box may not be actual size, but is more representative of how I FELT about actual size. It’s an emotionally relative thing).

It would be nice to talk about the stories a little, but they were so tied to the format that it’s hard not to drag the idea of format into the whole thing. Some were cool, and Metamorpho by Mike Allred and Neil Gaiman was trying to do something different and had a very serial feel to it, which was appreciated. Batman by Azzarello was just a normal Batman story chopped into pieces. There was no reason for it to have been published in this format, and it’s kind of a waste when the publisher does something crazy and the creative team pumps out the same ol’ same. Thanks a lot, Bry Guy. Ever since you were not nice to me at ComiCon 2002 I’ve been waiting to get back at you, and it begins today, you writer of mill-running Batman tales. Also, you’re bald.

By the way, for fans interested in meeting this guy, here’s about what you can expect:

Hands in pockets, no smile. Google him, see how many pictures have him smiling. I’m not saying the dude’s got to be Mr. HappyAss all the time, but if you don’t want to meet people, don’t do the cons. Plus, it should also be noted that the woman in the picture is not a fan. That’s multi-Eisner award winner Jill Thompson, who seems capable of mustering a smile for the people who love her work.

Azzarello rant over. For now…

As is the case with most anthologies, whether it be literary or comic books or yet another collection of Power Ballads sold on TV for $800 bucks, I’d say the entries were 50/50 good and bad.

As an object, I’d call this one a failure. There’s just no good way to read it. You could buy all the issues and read them straight through, but then you have 15 storylines in your head. You could buy all the issues and read through, going story by story. But imagine folding and unfolding these goddamn things all day just for a shitty Batman story by a jerk who was a total…no, just imagine the paper part.

Final option, you could get the hardcover which they might as well use as the goddamn chart at the eye doctor. “Look through this lens and tell me, which makes Wonder Woman’s cleavage clearer. One, or two? One, or two?”

I appreciate anything that deviates from the norm a little, and weekly content is a plus. But Just because it’s weekly and different does not mean it’s good. See: Spider population in my apartment.

Astounding Wolf-Man's Astonishing Conclusion

So, apparently this is the last volume on this guy. Confession Time: I had no idea this was the last volume until I started reading the little added material at the end of the book, a commentary between Robert Kirkman and the artist, that started off with something like, "I guess this will be the last one of these."

The book had a little bit of a weird feel, but now it looks like that was because everything was busy wrapping up right under my nose. Maybe this feeling would have translated to more excitement if I'd known that we were heading to The Final Countdown, but as it was the thing felt a little bit confusing. In fact, I would almost suggest that these last installments were written in such a way that the writer not only SUSpected, but fully EXpected that readers would know they were getting towards the end. He can't be entirely wrong either. Comic fans are not exactly known for avoiding news about their favorite industry. But it felt weird, and I guess I prefer my stories be wrapped up in such a way that I feel a sort of inevitability about the whole thing, a now or never moment near the end. He went for it, but it happens SUPER late in the story, and the final confrontations don't feel much different from the other big battles throughout the book. Now, part of this is certainly due to the fact that Kirkman writes a story where change is the only constant and you expect characters to die, make big decisions, and so on. I've never read the wrap-up of a Kirkman series before, but it was a little disheartening, after reading other volumes which ended on climactic high points, to see it sort of fade out. In fact, I would say that, though the ending in this volume was perhaps the most satisfying, it was the least interesting of the four.

Okay, and here comes the nerdy part which contains spoilers.
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Part of the big issue in the book is the question of how you kill a vampire who is immortal and can turn to steam whenever he wants?

Well, it turns out that you just sort of decide to. You just pull out his heart really fast. That part pissed me right off.