If you hold up the checkout line at the comic shop to denounce Patrick Stewart for his disrespect for Star Trek fandom, concluding loftily that you’d even rather have lunch with William Shatner, who’s crazy, then I will be forced to make fun of you after you leave. I’m not made of stone. I’ll also be forced to defend Stewart based on his impeccable Shakespearean background and smoking hotness.
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My irony detector must be on the fritz, because it’s taken me forever to snicker at the spectacle of Marvel actually turning its characters into shambling, cannibalistic, soulless corpses in pursuit of profit. It’s so meta that it’s almost daring.
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I was chatting with a friend, and we decided that there are certain instant indicators that let us know if we’ll enjoy our comic shop experience. If there are all-ages comics, collections of strips, and art books up front, all’s clear. If merchandise like that Emma Frost bust is anywhere up front, it’s “Think of England” time. It just seems smarter to go wide at the point of entrance and keep the more esoteric, potentially off-putting, fannish behind a few layers of innocuousness.
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On the subject of that bust, we couldn’t reach any conclusion as to what purpose those scraps of fabric were supposed to serve. My friend wondered if Frost practiced telekinesis in addition to telepathy, as she could think of any other way that they’d stay up. I thought they might be surgical dressing following a breast lift.
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The local library has started to carry graphic novels, though they shelve them according to the Dewey Decimal System, upstairs in the non-fiction stacks. That would explain why all of those volumes of Fruits Basket are so pristine, though not why Castle Waiting has been read within an inch of its life. Maybe somebody donated it after they’d read it to pieces and then bought themselves a new copy. That seems reasonable.
Anyway, it’s not a great selection, but it’s a start. The current holdings are a mix of popular manga, classics and stuff that they probably got for free.
