It's NOT the same!

Wednesday is new comic book day. Way back when I was in college, it used to be Thursday but it's been Wednesday for a while now. Anyway, New Comic Day is great. Like any comic book fan, I love seeing the new books on the racks. I love gathering them into a stack and then taking them home. It's just nerdy bliss. So this last Wednesday, I was talking to the owner of my local comic store. He's not anything close to the chubby weird dude from The Simpsons. He's actually got more of a "cranky old neighbor" vibe going on. Instead of screaming for me to get off of his lawn, he hands me stuff from my reserve list. Big difference. We talk about a great many things. This week, it was digital comics.

Now, I'm the last person to speak against digital publishing. It took me a while to wrap my head around ebooks, but once I got a Kindle and started diving in to all the great stuff out there I was hooked. Sure I miss the actual books sometimes, but there are plenty of offerings in the digital arena that simply can't be found on shelves. And with publishers floundering along with every other industry lately, ebooks make plenty of sense. You see quirky titles that would never get a shot otherwise and in the end, the written word still shines through. So...I get digital publishing. For COMIC BOOKS??? Nuh-uh.

 

I have a Kindle Fire and I do purchase some digital comics. Yes, they look sharp and clear. Yes it is pretty cool to have them electronically delivered. But my insider source (comic book store owner dude) pointed out that the big companies are aching to go digital all the way. That's easy to see with their apps and their general push in that direction. The way things are headed, comic stores will start drying up completely in less than a decade. Is this just speculation? I hope so. Unfortunately, I could easily see this happening.

I still read plenty of comics and the experience is significantly better (and different) between digital versus print. With regular books, that difference boils down to a format thing. The words are still there and I still enjoy reading them. For comics, the difference is in art. There's something vastly different in seeing the picture on the screen as opposed to having it there in your hands. There's also the ads. What's that, you say? Ads?? Yes. When I dig deep into my collection and read an issue from the early 1980's, I see ads for Atari 2600 games and candy that doesn't exist anymore. I see membership forms for dopey fan clubs whose  cards used to take up space in my cheap little plastic wallets when I was nine and DON'T exist now. That stuff really takes you back and it has nothing to do with a story that could be reprinted in digital format. Even ads now are specifically targeted to a comic book audience and are stuff I really want to see. Well...mostly. This is a general thing. I'm not in love with ads. You get where I'm going with this.

The thought of comics being exclusively makes me sad. It will probably take a long time for print comics to be phased out all the way, but they WILL become harder to find. There simply aren't as many comic stores now as there were years ago. I've seen entire chains in cities where I've lived dry up and blow away. Could it just be a dip because of the recession? Is it a shift in times and people like me will just have to deal with it? Probably some from both columns.

Right now, I read some comics on my Kindle. I even tried reading some on an app for my phone (which wasn't bad during prolonged bathroom visits). Those are ok. When it comes to my favorite books, though, I want the print version. I've come to terms with ebooks. If comics start going purely digital, I can honestly say I'd rather trim down my purchases to a fraction of what they are now and get my fix with back issues.

Bah! Freaking technology. GET OFF MY LAWN!!!!!!

Odds & Ends

These last few weeks have been strange. I've been working on some older projects, some ghostwriting (a guy's gotta pay the bills) as well as some new projects. The new projects include a few steampunk offerings, two of which are with editors in NY and others are going straight to ebook format. The first draft of one series is completed and I'm liking it a lot. It's pure adventure with plenty of retro sci-fi goodness thrown in that was a ton of fun to write. Thank God for ebooks because this series would never make it past the editors wondering "How does THIS tap the marketplace that reads [insert some other currently popular series here]?" Sink or swim, I'll finally be able to write the stuff I've wanted to write. Hopefully you guys will think it's just as fun to read as it was to create. More details as they come along.

Also, I've been into some new video games. Arkham City is a big one, but I'm also well entrenched in Gears of War 3. Both are awesome games that make me wish I could chuck everything else and just play. Some of that time is taken up by reading comic books. I'm still loving most of DC's New 52. At the top of my list are Justice League, Animal Man, Aquaman and Deathstroke. Aquaman???? Yes, I'm loving Aquaman. It does a great job of making him cool while also acknowledging how un-cool he's been for so very long. "So," one reporter asks Aquaman in issue #1, "how does it feel to be NOBODY'S favorite super hero?" Niiiiice.

Tuesday, Extinction Agenda is released. Since Borders has closed up, I really don't have anywhere to go to check shelves around here on release day. You guys will have to let me know if you spot them out and about. I know I've said I gave up on checking the shelves on previous release days, but who am I kidding? I go out to have a look and everyone knows it. After some of the editing blunders that made it through the process of putting Book 5 together, I'm a little nervous about that aspect as well. I tried my damndest (as I always do) on Book 6 and even enlisted some extra help, but I'm sure there will be flubs here and there. In my own defense, my books aren't the only ones with crap like that in them. All I can say is oh well. I write to provide a fun experience for the readers and hopefully that's what they are.

This last year or two have been one hell of a roller coaster ride for a great many reasons. Many are personal, including my move out to West Virginia. That's been fun getting used to a whole new part of the country. I've always been a Midwestern boy, but am liking it out here just fine. Also, the entire publishing industry has been tossed on its ear lately. I've already mentioned ebooks, but there's also been the loss of some big name retailers along with the looming arrival of game changers like the new Kindle Fire. A Kindle with some snazzy tablet computer functionality combined?? Sign me up! This thing looks to be huge and even if it flops, ebooks aren't going anywhere anytime soon. These kinds of things have scared the shit out of most everyone in the writing / publishing industry because they represent such humongous changes. My hope is to keep getting my stories out there so they can be enjoyed. Who knows? Maybe I'll even be able to get MORE stuff out there!

Anyway, look for Extinction Agenda on shelves or online starting October 25th!! Let me know what you think and I'll let you know what's next as soon as I have some definite news to share. Trust me, I'll be sending some cool stuff your way.

Old Habits Die Hard

As anyone who even dabbles in comic collecting can tell you, DC has relaunched all of their titles and reset everything to #1. I, like many people, thought it was a marketing gimmick. On the other hand, I've been wanting to dive in to DC for a long time, but have always gotten lost in the mire of storylines, history and references that come along with characters that have been around for 50+ years. I know my Batman and Lobo well enough, but as much as I want to really dig in to titles like The Flash or Green Lantern, I get left behind when I realize I have no clue who these bad guys are or what's so monumental about what they're saying / doing. DC relaunch? Hmmm. Sounded interesting, but I was skeptical. I figured, just give it a few issues and they'll start referring back to shit that happened 16 years ago.

I've always been more of a Marvel guy. Spidey got me into comics when I was a kid and Punisher drew me back in when I was in high school. Marvel answered back to DC's move by relaunching all their Ultimate titles, but I'm just not interested in anything but The Ultimates and maybe Hawkeye. That leaves new Spider-Man and X-Men in the dust. Wha-HUH????

So I read Justice League #1. I loved it from the first panel. Awesome art. Great interaction between Batman and GL. Amazing run-in with Superman that leads to the inevitable Bat / Supe fight next issue. I've heard plenty of bitching form the DC fans already. The cool part is, I seriously AM jumping on right now after being put off by the dozens of layers of back story which contradicts itself anyway. See also: X-Men. My mind is a clean slate (as always) and so far these reboots are making me excited for DC stuff! Superpowered beings are looked at with suspicion and hunted by the Army / authorities. Last night, I read Men of War which looks like it'll be showing that fight from a soldier's perspective and that soldier is SGT. ROCK!! For some unknown reason, I was pumped to read a title called Frankenstein: Agent of SHADE. Ok. Not really a strange reason. A bizarre comic with monsters shooting and ripping folks apart led by f'ing FRANKENSTEIN. Actually, it's Frankenstein's MONSTER, but I won't pick.

This is the biggest point. I read comics for over-the-top, escapist fiction complimented by great art. I'm not into the black-and-white graphic novels focusing on someone's spiral into depression or their lovelife (which usually leads to a spiralling depression) and I'm not interested in tearing everything down as an analogy for life. You like that kind of thing? Fine. Enjoy. Give me monster armies and people with super powers any day. For anyone who's read SKINNERS, this should be no revelation about my psyche. Say what you want about how the new DC titles fit into existing history. To me, it feels fresh and most importantly FUN! Marvel's, on the other hand, seem like more of the same.

Seriously, if I have to read one more time about how sad and picked on the mutants feel before Prof. X or whoever bands them together, I'll gag. They killed off the original Ultimate Spider-Man and now there's some new kid who will just happen to get the SAME powers that Peter Parker got BY ACCIDENT? I was there for the first reboot when Marvel launched their Ultimate titles in the first place. I loved them then and love them now. ANOTHER reboot?? ANOTHER kid gets to swing about joyously until he learns about responsibility? Next thing you know, there'll be yet ANOTHER X-Men storyline where someone develops a "cure" for mutations.
Some random mutant who's brooding: "Don't you want to be NORMAL? This (fill in the blank treatment) will give us our normal life back. It will cure us all!!"
Some other mutant: "Being a mutant isn't a DISEASE!!! (tear rolls down their cheek) It's who we are."

Maybe this is the same sort of bitching that longtime DC people are saying about this reboot. I guess the Marvel ones seem stale because I've been with Marvel for as long as I've read comics. Have I given up on Marvel? Hell no! Have I jumped onto this DC bandwagon? For now...hell YES! So far, I like what I see. It's cool, well written / drawn, and fun. That's all I want in my comics. It's a win-win situation for me as well as the dude who runs my local comic shop.

One little caveat to my Marvel rant: I went to the comic store after having talked myself into taking the higher road and letting that new Ultimate Spider-Man swing right by me. Then I saw there was only one more issue of #1 on the shelf and it was in a cool plastic cover. Just ONE LEFT!! Maybe I should at least read the first issue before I complain. Give Spidey a chance. I bought the damn thing, but haven't read it yet. I think that comic shop dude saw me coming and hid all but one of those Ultimate Spideys. Evil freaking genius. Ultimate X-Men #1 will NOT suck me in!!!!

It ain't easy being gr...wait...green with envy? Eh, to hell with it.

Yes, I read comics although it's become an expensive habit and I've fallen way behind. (see previous blog posts). Yes, I know some stuff about Green Lantern. No, I don't know everything. For GL trivia or lore, I always go to Webmaster Steve and even then it's a tangled mess of characters, deaths, rebirths, villains, changing alliances, etc. That's pretty much the case with any long-running comic series. With all of that said, I do like GL but have always found him to be kinda hokey. Don't get me wrong, hokey isn't a bad thing. In this case, it's more of a hokeyness harkening back to what makes kids like comic books in the first place. A lot of that stuff is hokey. Superman can do anything and wears a blue and red suit. Spider-Man sticks to stuff and wears a blue and red suit. What's the deal with blue and red?? The Flash goes really fast. Red and yellow. Green Lantern creates things with his ring. No blue and red to be found. At least he's not a slave to fashion.

When GL wants to punch someone, he makes a giant boxing glove. Somebody's falling? He catches them with a big hand or makes a giant mattress or something to break their fall. Again, this is just based on the limited amount of GL I've read throughout the years. Webmaster Steve has pointed out all the coolness to the character such as the awesome science fiction elements and the many other ways the ring is creatively used. I was convinced! I wanted to get into the books, but have yet to find a good diving-in point that doesn't get me lost in all the characters / bad guys I know nothing about. Still, from offerings like Blackest Night or Green Lantern: Rebirth, the character is a lot cooler than I'd previously thought.

So I went to see the new Green Lantern movie. I've heard bad stuff and good stuff about it. Most of the bad stuff sounds like it either comes from people who knew nothing about GL and found it too hokey or those who know everything about him and were disappointed by the condensed movie version. Personally, I thought the movie was AWESOME! It had a good amount of hokeyness (GL making giant springs to lift something or hit someone with the good ol' enormous fist) to be fun and perfectly retained the shiny, sparkling, "gee whizz" feel where all the science fiction elements were concerned. It felt like a comic book and I loved it. Seeing it in 3D was amazing!! I've become a fan of GL since Steve's big push to get me on board during the Blackest Night crossovers a few summers ago. Black Lanterns creating zombies of dead DC characters? Cool! That was the same summer as Marvel's Dark Reign crossover, which made for a dark summer. Awesome, but dark. I like dark.

I also saw X-Men: First Class. Like a lot of other people, I wasn't going in with very high hopes. After X3 and the Wolverine movie, (which I didn't hate as much as most, simply because I thought it was just a fun spectacle) the X movies seemed to have been tossed aside by quality film makers for some reason. As for total accuracy to the comics, let's face it, there is no possible way for ANY movie to get X-Men stuff accurate any longer. The comic story lines are so twisted up and feeding back on themselves that it takes several crossover events to make any of them fall in like with each other. The most a movie can hope to do is show the characters being true to themselves and adventuring in their own way. Did the Wolverine movie do that? I think so, more or less. Was it a great movie? Eh, it's fun to watch.

I love seeing Magneto doing his thang in any of the movies. He's just a great character with a power that looks freaking great on screen. And going back to the whole hokey thing, there simply isn't a way to see Beast in his full blue & furry form without him looking funny at first. That's the way Beast looks, though, and I got used to it. I'm WAY behind on X-Men comics, having given them up after not buying them for a while. Jumping back in is like flipping on a soap opera after it's been rolling for decades and expecting to know exactly why each character is mad at another. Because of that, I may have missed out on why Angel wasn't only a woman in First Class but that she had insect wings instead of feathery ones. Is that a new Angel from the books or just something for the movie? Hang on...I'll Google it and see.......

OH!! She's not THE Angel. She's Angel Salvadore  aka Tempest. Told you I was behind on all my X-Men stuff. I've read plenty of the books, but was always more of a lone hero sort of fan. Spidey, Punisher, Moon Knight, Batman, that sort of thing. Where teams were concerned, it's pretty much Avengers for me. Anyway, I still thought the insect Angel was cool too. It was also great to see Banshee in something other than the cartoons.

So now that I've seen these two plus Thor (did I talk about Thor yet? Also loved it. Damn, I seem easy to please. Oh well. Better that than my normal grumpy self) that still leaves Captain America and Cowboys & Aliens to scratch my comic book movie itch. Haven't been to theaters this many times for quite a while! Looks like I'll have popcorn stuck in my teeth all summer long.

You can't have just one

So yesterday was Free Comic Book Day. And...I didn't even look in my local comic book store's direction. I know, I know. I'm terrible. I'm also not a rich man and am very weak when it comes to buying comics. Here's how the pattern goes:

Phase 1) I love comics. Always have. Always will. I want to keep up with the story lines and just plain enjoy having the books in my hands. I would like to purchase comics every week.

Phase 2) I'll make the trip to the store every Wednesday. You know...just to get away from my desk and indulge in the geeky wonder that is the comic book store. I'll set a budget in stone, something I can afford, and STICK TO IT. Don't worry about back issues. I just need to accept the gaping holes in my collection.

Phase 3) Wow! This is going really well! I'm so happy. I look forward to New Comics Day almost as much as New Video Game / DVD Day. My budget idea rocks. After all, it's one of my few entertainment expenses since I don't get out to bars or fine dining very often. YAY!!

Phase 4) This is a slow New Comics Day. Only 1 issue came out that I want. Why let my budget go to waste? Maybe I'll take a gander at some series I've never read. Ooooo! What's this one? Pretty colors!!!

Phase 5) So now I'm into my original series as well as 57 new ones. I'm invested in the story lines and want to know what happens in every one. Plus, I LOVE the weight of that stack of new comics in my hands every week. The pile is just so mind-numbingly heavy and smells so good! New comics smell differently than new books. Like different perfumes for two different, yet equally enticing, ladies. God, I love Wednesdays! Plus...it's still cheaper than going to bars and paying $8 for a Bud draft.

Phase 6) Ok, so this isn't cheaper than going to a bar. Still...I gotta have my comics. I work hard! I DESERVE THEM!!! It's not a problem! I can stop any time I want!! Stop looking at me like that!!! They smell so good. I love them. YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND!!!!!

Phase 7) Intervention. Somehow I stop buying comics altogether and take time to read through the stacks and stacks of issues I never had time to read during phases 3-6. I can pay my water bill again now. I guess that's nice.

I went to Free Comic Book Day last year, stuck to my guns and only picked up the freebies. It was fun, but I felt like a meth addict being led on a short tour through Lindsay Lohan's house that ended with me only being able to lick the bottom of her purse. Just too much of a tease! So I passed on Free Comic Book Day this year. Not because I wanted to but because, in the words of the great Wilford Brimley, it's the right thing to do.

I wonder if the movie will be as good as the book?

Picked up the DVD for the animated Planet Hulk movie. Talk about an awesome comic book! That story had it all and it was focused on a huge green dude that smashes stuff. I know the movie can't cover all the bases of a 10+ issue story arc, but I hope it's good enough to represent. I want to know where the second Doctor Strange animated feature is!

In other news, Skinners 4 is coming along nicely. My brain is already chugging on Skinners 5, which amounts to a whole lot of grinding gears and smoke coming from the space between my ears. Considering the previous paragraph, I can't help but think how cool a Skinners comic book would be. I'd take a movie too, in case any Hollywood big-timers are reading this. Heh.

I've become addicted to Jimmy John's sandwiches. Not only are they delightfully tasty, but their delivery truly is freakishly fast!! There's one across the street from my place, which means the sandwich is there sometimes before I hang up the phone from ordering. Ok, maybe not THAT freakish, but pretty darn close.

Had our first rain of the winter season. It's nice to have the piles of snow washed down to the point where I can turn onto another street and actually SEE if a car's coming or not. I know. I'm picky.

Should I get a coffee drink? An Almond Joy Latte from Scooters sounds great right about now. If the Jimmy John's guy would swing by there to pick one up for me, I'd never have to leave my sanctuary.

Priorities

We canceled our Christmas trip to St. Louis due to all the nasty weather headed our way. It has started, but at the moment it's all rain and the temps are just above freezing. While that means it'll get really nasty once this wetness freezes over and a bunch of snow is dumped onto it, I spotted a window of opportunity.

Today is New Comics Day. The roads aren't too bad yet, so I headed out to pick up the fresh batch. I actually feel proud of myself for darting there and back in that stretch of wet calm before the freezing storm. Also picked up some milk and bread so it seemed like I was actually taking the risk for something worthwhile. Now, I've earned the right to laugh heartily at those who were too nervous to drive in the soon-to-be-frozen rain. Sure you may be warm, safe and dry, but do you have the new issue of Thor? Didn't think so.

Ohhh yeah!!!

Gotta have patience

Now that I'm back into the weekly comic book buying thing, I'm also digging into issues that have been sitting around for a while. Every now and then I talk about those, but lots of times I shake my head and wonder why the hell I let those issues sit around so long. Now I know why. Case in point: The Flash Rebirth. I've been reading and enjoying this series for all three glorious issues. In fact, when I buy them, they go straight to the top of the stack to be read ASAP. For someone who is used to having several issues in a series backlogged and ready to go, waiting for normal publication dates is excruciating! On top of that, Flash is BEHIND the monthly schedule!! I even started to think I'd missed an issue and bugged the comic shop guy about it. He rolled his eyes and checked anyway. If there's one thing dorkier than your typical dude behind the counter of a comic book store, it's the pasty dude pestering the guy behind the counter. What depths I've sunken to.

While on the subject of comics, I'm loving the Ultimatum storyline. I'm just behind enough on that one for me to read at my leisure and always have more to fill the void. This storyline must be part of Marvel's "Summer of Cataclysmic Doom". It, combined with the whole Dark Reign event in which all the bad guys take over the superhero roles in their own awesome, twisted ways, has been a source of endless joy. I've always loved the bad guys. Maybe that's why I wear so much black. Well, that and the fact that white shirts make me look like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.

I like the Dark...go figure.

So my comic book addiction is back in full swing. And just in time for Marvel's big summer event: Dark Reign. You name it, there's a Dark title. Dark Hawkeye, Dark Wolverine, Dark Darkhawk. Maybe that last one cancels itself out. I normally don't go for these big event crossovers because they're built to suck the money right out of geeks like me. The completionists. I read Dark Avengers because I'm an Avengers fan already. Holy MOLEY! It's superheroes actually using their powers without any checks or balances. Sure, Hawkeye is really Bullseye and Spider-Man is really Venom, but they are whipping ASS and they're being led by ex-Green Goblin Normon Osborne! You got someone causing trouble in a major way? Send in the fast / strong guy to rip their damn head off. Someone else giving you grief? Let Hawkeye shoot them through the eyeball. What makes this great is that they're working it into the proper Marvel Universe instead of it being one gigantic "What if?" thing. And I truly, sincerely hope it doesn't turn into a big "What if?" thing.

As of a few minutes ago, I finished reading Dark X-Men #1. Since my comic reawakening, I've been steering clear of the X titles simply because there's SO much going on that I've missed. I want to try to get into it, but X books are like Lays potato chips. You can't eat (read) just one. I made an exception for Dark X-Men and I'm glad I did. Normie is putting together a team to police mutants and he's using Namor to spearhead it. As soon as I read the part with Dark Beast, I was in love. Between all the kick-ass darkness and last week's Captain America Reborn, I am one happy Marvelite.

Dumpster Diving

A friend of mine has a blog about comic books and when he digs into his back issues to read something that may be crap, he calls it Dumpster Diving. Well, I became very familiar with this phrase when I dug into some back issues of my own. Namely, a few issues of Spider-Man 2099 and a mini series called Blood Legacy.

According to the good folks at Marvel (and they are mostly good, if not great), about 90 years from now, we will traverse cyberspace on Rollerblades while wearing clunky VR helmets. Did I say Rollerblades? YES. F'ing Rollerblades. 'Nuff said.

Then I read the Blood Legacy series. It was only 4 issues and kept promising some big twist to pay off my time and $12 spent getting through it. Well, comic books also promise that I can see through ladies' clothes with x-ray specs or build an army of Sea Monkeys to forge my underwater empire. I think I just made an "I am really old" slip there with the Sea Monkeys reference. Anyway, none of those promises panned out. All I got was a bunch of vampires who swore they weren't vampires, but insisted on giving themselves away by drinking blood and living forever. My only payoff with either of these comics was a real good look at why I probably stopped reading comics for a while.

Speaking of feeling like an old man, I caught some of the MTV Movie Awards. Let's just say I was genuinely surprised that they didn't give Ben Stiller's Comedic Achievement award to Rob Pattinson. Megan's a Twilight fan, so I tried to keep my mouth shut. And even though she would tell you I didn't keep very quiet, she should know I did hold back quite a bit because yes, I realize I'm not the audience for Twilight. At least Heath Ledger's Joker won for Best Villain. If a sparkly vampire won that one, I would have had to write a terse letter to MTV. See, THAT'S how us old guys throw down!!

Thwip-aholics Anonymous

Hello, my name is Marcus and I've got a comic book addiction.

Like most other addicts, I remember getting my very first fix. It was an issue of Spider-Man where the Web Head battled Sandman, bought by ten year-old me at the convenience store that used to be within walking distance of my house. That was a great store, by the way. Not only did it have comics, candy and gum, but it was also where I would go to plunk my quarters into classics like Donkey Kong, Rastan and Defender. Man, I feel OLD. Anyway, I saw that wire carousel with the comics, picked out a few and was hooked. As the years went on, I graduated to other series, but mostly stuck with Marvel.

In high school, I dove in again with The Punisher, X-Men, more Spidey, Batman, Lobo, and a very wide array from all companies. Two things facilitated this: my first real jobs and the opening of comic book stores close to my house. Getting my driver's license made things worse. I just love comic book stores. They're like little geek cocoons where all the walls have cool posters, there are action figures in cases and busts of superheroes displayed like the great pantheon they are. I'm not the type of guy who really has "hang-outs" but I was a fixture in one comic shop from the middle of high school all the way through college. It got to the point where I helped unload the delivery trucks when they dropped off the new issues and my only payment was getting first crack at all those fresh, beautiful, clean, perfect. . . .sorry.

Money problems stepped in once I had real bills to pay and I was forced to go cold turkey. It wasn't easy. It was HELL, but I did it. I'd stocked up a good backlog and of course I kept every one of my older issues, including that first crinkled copy of Spider-Man from the days when I didn't know about bags and boards. Fellow comic fans know what I'm talking about.

My addiction kicked into high gear about ten years ago and quickly turned into obsession all over again. I had a good job and was able to maintain my hold list every week. These were the years when I fell in with a gaming group that not only reawakened my tabletop roleplaying bug with D&D and World of Darkness, but they also got me into Magic: The Gathering. Free samples of crack wouldn't have hit my wallet harder.

I weaned myself off of those things, got myself into shape and, apart from a few setbacks here and there, was doing fine. . .until yesterday.

My wife and I were out (she was there for the dice throwing, Magic card years) and I wanted to check out a local comic shop. I've been meeting the guys from Nevermore Paranormal (more on that later) at a comic store and felt the old cravings stirring deep inside me. Once I had a stack of comics in my hands, I looked to my wife and said, "Stop me before it's too late. Seriously." Maybe she thought the geeky fire in my eyes was cute or maybe she knew better than to grab the squeak toy from the hungry dog's mouth, because she didn't even try to stomp out the fire. I'm dipping my toe back into the comic book waters and will try to keep control of it.

Things will be better this time. I can control myself. I can quit whenever I want. I swear!!