Kirby Redux

Due to a little SNAFU yesterday, I forgot that I'd ripped the cover logo off an issue of the Jack Kirby Collector when I did the original cover mock-up a few weeks ago. So, in the interest of having John Morrow not kick my ass all over HeroesCon, I went back and changed the logo. So once again for your viewing enjoyment, the nearly final cover for TNAOJK #1, still featuring art by the inimitable Goose:


Click to King-Size it!

Look for it Wednesday! And in response to Steven Hager, who posted yesterday about mail ordering a copy, trust me: If you want to buy one, I'm going to do my best to get one to you. Give me a few days to check with my peoples, and we'll work something out.

Now, on to the rest of it.

I know that as of late, all this blog's been good for has been crazy customer stories and the Punisher, and I don't like it any more than you do. But as HOV says, "try to ignore 'em, talk to the Lord, pray for 'em, but some fools just love to perform." And today was a double-shot.

We finally got a new DVD player for display, so to test it out, we popped in the ridiculously awesome Clone Wars cartoon. So this guy wanders over and looks at it and goes: "Man, I forgot how corny them cartoons are."

How corny the cartoons are? Mister, you're a grown man wearing an Orange County Choppers baseball cap and a chain wallet. You're buying Shi and Lady-fucking-Death. And you think the cartoons are corny? Some people's children, I swear.

But that guy was a mere prelude to the lurking horror that is... Cockeye McGee. This guy, man, is almost universally loathed by the Saturday crowd, employees and customers alike. He's the kind of guy that'll be playing a game for the first time with people who are already familiar with it, and start giving them tips on how to win... people that are doing far, far better than him. And then he'll just talk and talk and talk and talk until you pray for the sweet release of oblivion. Or maybe that's just me. Regardless, he's rough.

One of my major pet peeves is when I'll be watching something and somebody'll make an insanely obvious comment. And I'm not just talking about stuff like "Holy Crap, he just punched that guy in the face!" I'm talking about occasions like when I saw Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the two loudest old ladies on the face of the planet were sitting three rows behind me and kept saying things like "This movie's in Chinese!" and "Here comes trouble!" whenever the villain approached. Lady, he's the villain. We know he's trouble.

So dude comes in and starts making an ungodly amount of noise, grunting and panting and whatnot, and as soon as I turn to see what fresh horror was this, he catches my eye with his good one and goes: "Well they 'FIXED' my computer today!"

Yep. Air quotes. This guy has got to go.

He said it like it was some private joke between us, like we'd been on the phone with each other for an hour last night discussing his undoubtedly wacky computer problems. I gave him an "Ah." and turned back around.

"You might've noticed I put quotes around 'fixed.'"

Holy. Crap. He actually said that. So he goes on about it for a few minutes and then finally notices the Clone Wars playing, at which time he parks himself in front of the TV for the duration, dropping pearls of wisdom like "Well ya can't hit a Jedi with energy weapons, right?!" and "Uh oh, he's got his lightsaber back! Big mistake, fellas!" But it was when Anakin fights Asajj Ventress and starts flipping out that he truly broke through the barrier into enlightenment: "You can't get mad like that! When you're a regular fighter, sure, but not when you're a Jedi! Ya just can't get mad. That's REAL bad news."

He said it solemnly, shaking his head.

"Yeah," I said, "I'm pretty sure that guy turns out to be Darth Vader."