I hadn’t been in a comic book store for years and years, but I was with my brother, who is a serious collector, recently and we popped into Fourth World Comics on Long Island, which had been one of our two go-to places for a geek fix when we were kids. (The other place has long since gone out of business, but that’s where I met my longtime fan acquaintance Glenn Hauman: he used to work there. Glenn is now hip-deep in the mysterious ComicMix, about which I am sworn to secrecy. Yes, it’s the Vast Geek Conspiracy at work...)
As I was wandering the hallowed aisles of Fourth World, I was sent tumbling back to my childhood, when I could be lost for hours in those deliciously oversized British magazines about science fiction -- Dalek pinups! -- and dice with too many sides and strange toys from Japan. And then this caught my eye:
And I was in love.
