The Wave of the Future

I get nervous in comic book stores that are well-lit.

I don't like when comic book stores have natural lighting.

Windows should be covered in posters or with palettes of longboxes stacked high.

When I see retailers making a point to cultivate casual customers, I feel jealous and unwelcome.

I want to feel when I walk in the door of my comic book store that I am entering a dark, wet womb which envelops me and protects me.

I like to be able to look around the shop and see isolated, sullen loners buying their comics.

I like feeling that the majority of people who buy comics have long ago ceased to love the hobby and instead regard it as a parasitic forces in their lives.

I like knowing that my fellow customers and the clerks in my store hate the hobby as much as I do, and hate it for the same reasons: I hate comics because of the person they made me.

I wish that all of comics had one single face so I could see it scream as I drowned it in a bathtub.

I don't like comic book stores that maintain kid-friendly reading sections, because children remind me of death.

And whenever I see a child with his mother I think of the fact this his mother had to have sex to make that child.

I like it when comic book stores do the bulk of their business with advance orders through Previews, because the formality of a catalog transaction reminds me of prostitution.

I like comic stores that have a large portion of their floor space devoted to role playing games because it reminds me that there are people in the world more loathsome than myself.

I like when comic book store floors are made of dirty linoleum, or at least industrial carpeting.

It's really hard to get industrial carpeting clean, best not to even try.

I like it when stores have promotional posters on their walls dating back to the Reagan administration, because it advertises to me that the store has a good sense of history.

Particularly if you have the old Adam Hughes' Vampirella promo posters from the early 90s Harris relaunch, those are probably the classiest pieces of comic art ever produced.

I like it when comic book stores use a cigar box for their transactions.

Extra bonus points if the owner still does not own a computer, either for the store or their own personal use.

Comic book stores should be clubhouses.

People who go to comic book stores on a regular basis desperately need to feel that they belong somewhere, because the alternative is to acknowledge that no one would care if they died tomorrow.

The price of every single back issue in the store must be updated at least every year to reflect changes in Overstreet.

Comics that are actually popular must be cycled through at least every month to reflect changes in Wizard.

The retailer reserves to the right to spontaneously reprice a comic, between the point when your selection is made and when the comic is purchased, to reflect changes in Wizard.

It's OK to call fags "fags".

Buying Black Panther makes you a racist.

Why is Kirby's OMAC getting a deluxe reprint when Byrne's OMAC remains criminally out of print?

I would sleep in my comic book store if I could, because I hate my house.

Comic book store owners reserve the right to blame their customers for downturns in fortune.

If I hear someone discussing anything related to comics, I have to interject my opinion.

If I cannot prove the strength of my opinion through reason, I will increase the volume of my voice.

If I cannot prove the strength of my opinion, it means I am less of a person, because this is all I have.