The day before New Comic Book Day, which is a Tuesday, has a predictable routine that is always followed to make certain the shop is renewed with the serialized glitter of comic book magic. Otherwise the cliffhangers of the spandex wearing heroes may never be concluded, or worse the sales brought about from those monthly adventures may wander directly across the street into our competitors register.[1]
The order goes as follows: Frank arrives in his silver van to drop off the books, usually before noon. I pre-sort the books into two piles: subscriber books and shelf copies. I finish before 3:30 when Chris arrives to sort the subscriber books as I begin looking up codes for special orders. And nearing the final step, the preparation of the racks, the store’s favorite loiterer, Steve Felder, arrives to heckle and peruse our efforts. Today everything goes according to plan and Steve is explaining to me and Chris how if this universe was included in the DC comics multi-verse of specially 52 alternative universes, each with their own version of Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and so on, then he would be this universe’s own Batman. And with this wordy explanation, I blurt out, “That makes you Bat-Felder!”
Chris snickers as I navigate the jargon laid out in the Previews order form.
“Is it 4089? Or 4098?”
“It says 3940 on the invoice.”
Japanese import vinyl statuettes are normally in the 3000’s. Into the 4000’s are role-playing manuals, other gaming related items, DVDs, and the occasional audio book.
“Oh here it is. Weiderholt ordered it.”
I hand the item to Chris to label and put away. Chris held the 1:6 scale Japanese school girl and gazed into its world- encompassing baby eyes. The girl looked jolly, frozen in mid-hop with its perky plastic breasts barely covered by a school uniform: a tube top with a ribbon across the top and a short pleated blue swatch that was suppose to be a skirt.
“The Head of the Japanese school board are some mad pervs,” stated Steve.
It wasn’t difficult to imagine a boardroom full of repressed Japanese business men with sweat-covered foreheads and fog-covered glasses as they imagine the next line of school girl collectibles. Chris stretched out his thin lanky arms to gracefully put the item above the subscriber boxes where all the special orders go.
Chris and I are nearly a generation apart; he was in high school during the first Gulf War and I was starting college during the second one. I guess you could call it the Peace-Time Clinton gap. The PTC gap seems shallow with its edges hinted at only by Chris’s few shinning strands of sparklingly gray hair. Our distain for Tony Danza and Alf made suitable ice breakers; it is our similar vantage points in popular culture that make the PTC gap a traversable crevice. With the three of us, Chris (35), Steve (30), and myself (25), no one would get lost in any nostalgia wandering.
Throughout the day Steve complains. About professional wrestling, (“I hate Vince McMahon’ s gimmick matches,) Star Wars, (“Like Mace Windu just needed to cut whinny Anakin down. Burr-Romp[2] and he got no head to complain with any more),” but he most fervent about his pizza job. “I need to get fuckin’ paid!,” yelled Steve into the store phone. Steve had an ongoing dispute with a pizzeria owner that eventually made air on a local Fox TV station’s Call for Action segment. For over 3 months Steve and four pizza shoppes worth of pizza makers, servers, and delivery drivers were bouncing their paychecks all over the city. It was not until the State of Missouri charged the pizza chain owner with tax evasion that Channel 4’s TV producer returned Steve’s phone call about the dispute. The interview with Steve, and a room filled with other unpaid employees, was a perfunctory design of generic anecdotal tragedy that only a local Television crew would manufacture. Combined with the Steve’s complaints, colorful and matter-of-fact, were images of the bare shoppe as the investigator narrated the context of their plight. What wasn’t included in the Call For Action special was Steve’s last day at the shoppe. After Steve and a friend cleaned out the restaurant of its remaining booze and money (less than 100 dollars between the two) they then sat and smoked a joint. Afterwards, still high, the two drove by the owner’s home to vandalize his car. It had already been terrorized; someone keyed the sides and flattened the tires with a knife. Steve threw the brick into the rear view window. He would later see the car again without the key marks and with new tires, but with dents on the hood and a side rear view mirror dangling.
Steve left. Chris and I finished sorting the books and left the shop slightly after 7:30pm.
[1] Just like BurgerKing and McDonalds, or CVS and WalGreems, we have a competitor directly across the street.
[2] Steve has many sound effects. Burr-Romp is his light saber noise. Steve also utilizes other noise like yah-yah to punctuate action in stories. Such as when he was in the hospital and kept pressing the button for pain-killers to be pumped into his I.V. “So I was like yah-yah, yah.” Regrettably each exuberant yah meant the hospital charged him eighty bucks.
