The AXE COP television show premiered last night. If you didn’t watch it, stop coming to this blog.
Watched the movie Stay Hungry for Gutter Trash. Episode coming soon.
178. Axe Cop: Night Mission
177
This was an experiment. I had read something about how Stuart Immonen (my favorite mainstream comic artist) used a black coloring pencil to draw “Superman: Secret Identity”. I wanted to try it out for myself, see what would happen.
I saw Pacific Rim again last night. Still incredibly good, think I liked it better, actually.
This morning I saw The Wolverine. I am one of the two or three people who actually enjoyed X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but I am also fully aware that it’s not a good movie. The Wolverine is a very good movie and I enjoyed it a lot. It’s a very loose adaptation of the classic Claremont/Miller Wolverine mini series. There are stakes, tension, drama, humor and tons of action, including one of the best actions scenes I’ve seen since The Raid (not better than The Raid, just good, solid and breathtaking). It’s definitely the best sci-fi/action/crime drama/samurai movie of the last two months.
174. James
Lars from yesterday was an accident, James is on purpose. I needed to round out the other half of the metal duo called “Metallica”. You can try to argue that there are other members of the band, but you’re wrong. There hasn’t been since Cliff Burton died. And if you think Kirk Hammet counts, you’re so wrong you should probably just never communicate with anyone else in the world by any means that have ever existed. Just stop. Become a hermit. A Hammet Hermit. Because Kirk Hammet is the worst.
173. Lars
It’s a happy accident that what I drew sort of turned into Lars Ulrich. It’s a happier accident that Lars has aged himself to look like a toad.
171. The Watcher
Oh, Uatu the Watcher. Vowed never to interfere, except for all those times he interfered, which was all of of the times.
Friday night, I watched Sharknado. You generally think you know what you’re getting yourself into when you watch a SyFy original movie called “Sharknado” done by the Asylum production team. But sometimes, it’s worse than you expected. Sharknado, ladies and gentleman. Worse than you could have expected.
Last night, a group of us had a party celebrating Jason Young‘s retirement from working at the comic shop he’s been employed at for 22 years. A good time was had by most. When I say “party” I mean a subdued and quiet affair with italian food, fancy soda, nerd cookies, and a card game. Jason starts his new career in a few days and I am super proud of him and wish him the best of luck.
Goodbye, Local Comic Shop
For the past year, I have been ordering my comics through a mail service. It’s a really good discount, and when I switched, I felt bad for “abandoning” my local comic shop. To alleviate the guilt and to continue to support a small local business that I had been loyal to on a weekly basis since 1996, I kept my pull list open and had them reserve a small handful of books.
It had always been a shop I’d gone to on and off through the years, but there were closer stores to where my parents lived or my high school or my jobs. In late ‘96, the comic shop right next to my parents’ place closed up, so I started going to this store, which was right across the street from my art college.
Over the years as a customer and a couple year stint as an employee, the shop has honestly become the worst place to buy comics in the area. It’s mostly become a “Magic: The Gathering” shop and the comics section has fallen into what can only be called a state of disrepair. The place is filthy, most of the employees are rude or ignorant, and the good ones are so beaten down by the poor management and constant stream of awful Magic customers, they no longer care. It is not a good or healthy environment for comics or anyone really.
Unless you love Magic. In which case, go fuck yourself.
For the last couple years, pretty much the only reasons I continued to shop there were out of loyalty to two of the employees (the good ones) that I consider friends. One in particular, Jason Young, is someone I think of like a brother. He and I do a podcast together, we hang out all the time, drawing, eating, making fun of Magic players, watching movies and talking about comics.
Jason has worked at this shop since he was 14 years old. He is now 36.
Think about that.
And as of today (July 20th, 2013), Jason will no longer be working at this store. He recently got the opportunity to take a position teaching and utilizing art to help developmentally disabled adults adjust to society. Or some bullshit like that, whatever. Either way, he is no longer going to be doing God’s work – selling comics.
Joking aside, I’m super proud of him and happy that he’s taking this new job. He’s been miserable at the comic shop, and this is a great thing for him. I will miss the Magic horror stories though, and our podcast is going to lose a major segment.
And so, back to me and ignoring my friend’s happiness, as of today, I am officially no longer a customer of my local comic shop.
I bought the last two books there that I will ever buy. Jason rang them up for me, as he has done since 1996, for the final time (I bought Avengers Assemble # 17 and Scarlet # 7, in case you care). There are still a couple books to be released that I do not get through my mail order service, but I can purchase those at many of the other comic shops in the area until my orders catch up. I had Jason close up my file, and I still had some credit at the store, and told him to randomly buy me something tomorrow on his last day.
And I don’t feel bad. The store is falling apart, the customers are not great people, even the comic folks. The bad ones are the worst comic fan stereotypes that exist. The store and its customer base cannot and will not support independent or creator owned works. Hell, it will barely support non Batman or X-Men comics from DC or Marvel.
But still, it’s an end of an era. My friend is leaving the store as an employee after 22 years, and I am leaving it as a customer after 17. Like I said, I no longer feel bad about not supporting the store, but there nothing there anymore for me to want to support.
