Black Friday Sale!

and PTR rambles for daze

FLASH SALE! Thanksgiving holiday Boom-Sauce:

50 percent off all back issues, FRIDAY ONLY!

Through November 31st we are continuing the BUY TWO GET ONE FREE sale on Graphic Novels.

How high will you count us in?

4, 3, 2, 1:

FAQ: "You just seem happier now, and the store just feels so much better to be in... what happened, Peter?

A: It might seem long-winded, but allow me to paraphrase Kieerkegaard to explain.

The Comic Book Store leads a fantastic existence in abstract endeavor after infinity. In spite of this fact, the Operators of the Comic Book Store occupies themselves with temporal things; incorporates new staff members, opens another location, gains customers and collections... but perhaps no customer notices that in a deeper sense the Comic Book Store begins to lack a self in the abstract endeavor after infinity.

About such a loss not much fuss is made in the world, for the self is the thing the world is least apt to inquire about, perhaps, the self is the thing the most dangerous thing for a Comic Book Store to let people notice that it has. The greatest danger, losing this self, may pass off quietly as if it were nothing; any other loss, that of a staff member's activity; a decrease in the variety or quantity of new releases stocked; a rotating wheel of new collectible back issues; a consistently entertaining weekly new release mailer; an entire location of the business, etc... these are sure to be noticed.

A long, long time ago, I was in a galaxy far, far away. I suffered "Despair", and not the Nabokov novel. I lost my sense of self in the abstract endeavor over infinity.

The other losses of the comic store arrived after this invisible, unspoken loss. That's what I was trying to get at last week in my long-winded review of "Where the Body Was".

And, over this last year, I found that sense of self again.

I genuinely found purpose in the struggle. I saw past the annoyances and hindrances of the Struggle. I realized that happiness isn't something you win or get after accomplishing a mission or achieving a goal. Happiness is a personal choice against impossible odds.

I don't know if you've been by the store lately, but I bet you have if you're reading this. Or maybe you used to come by and feel like when you visited a while ago, it just felt different and disappointing, but you hang on to these type-written monologues because you enjoyed the Personality behind the comic book store.

Either way, thanks for reading.

If you don't want to stop reading, here's another long winded review of one of last year's mot acclaimed comics I finally grabbed off my shelf recently, SUPERMAN: LOST

FAQ: “Is this a worthwhile read?”

A: I don't say the following sentence as a reader of a few Superman comics. I say the next statement as someone who's re-read Red Son and Birthright, bought loeb/schultz/kelly/Casey's Y2K and Our Worlds at War era while it releases weekly. I've collected and enjoyed Eliot S! Maggin's run, almost every Dan Jurgens comic from the late 80s to 2014's Rebirth era action comics, kupperburg's copper age Superboy run, and after finishing Superman: Lost by Christopher Priest and Carlos Pagulayan, it really is top of the shelf Superman. This series is not just unlike any other Superman comic: not another comic out there resembles it.

Quoting Kierkegaard in the opening scene might be the most normal thing about this series. But I have to say it doesn't quite use the preferred translation, and in that moment of choice between translations, is really where the artful experience of this comic book does come from. It's the kind of comic that makes you look up the Danish philosophical text it quotes.

"The greatest danger, that of losing one’s own self, may pass off as quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, that of an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc., is sure to be noticed.

Without sharing Kierkegaard's concept of "the fantastical", the reader themselves becomes lost in the plot of despair gripping Lois Lane as Superman returns from a mission minutes after leaving, unsure of what he had done or the particulars of his mission.

"Generally the fantastical is that which so carries a man out into the infinite that it merely carries him away from himself and therewith prevents him from returning to himself. "

The suspense of this story, almost immediately from a half a dozen pages in, is actually about what or why Superman lost what he had done, why he had done it, or what it meant. It's a very unique spin on a Superman plotline. As readers, we know that he will save the day as soon as he flies off into the atmosphere. Priest knows that a suspenseful story will not revolve around whether or not Superman can achieve a physically demanding achievement. And so, the "pitch" of this story feels really simple: what if Superman loses his sense of self? What if he himself forgot how he saved the day when he got home to Lois? What if the fantastical took him so far away from his self, that he returned, but it wasn't really him that returned?

You have to know how good an investigative reporter Lois Lane is to appreciate her absolute shock at his return, minutes after flying away. The plot anchors on her perspective, giving us those great panels of chapter titles that Priest has developed into most of his stories since Quantum & Woody, We follow Superman through years as in his white suit that maintains his internal solar energy and fights to save a planet whose star is dying. He can't physically remove everybody from it, but, the star isn't exploding anytime soon. So years pass as he tries to help the alien culture develop its own way to escape its doom while his internal sense of self, the solar energy the white suit maintains in the presence of a red star, slowly does wither away.

Reading this comic, though, you have to fight to know the long term plot! Styled after copper age comics that are self contained each issue, you really can drive yourself crazy trying to figure out the exact relation of each plot element to each other. Superman's story of what he did after leaving lois ends up taking 25 years, but only about 95 days pass in Lois' story, and seeing these issues come out a month apart, I can just imagine the sheer frustration at the plotlines not meeting up.

At a certain point, maybe between #4 and #6, I decided that I was just going to trust the long term plotting and kind of focus more on the individual moments in the story. I wasn't sure if I was losing an internal sense of self following the fantastical plots more than the long term outline. But, I kept turning the pages forward.

We find out several things that distract us from the larger plot. Lex Luthor poisons Lois Lane, but she keeps her own illness from her husband who is struggling to find what Lois Lane wants to know: "What the heck happened in those few minutes he was gone that he himself can't remember?"

The truth of what did happen is an incredible revelation in the last issue that I don't want to share in this review. I had no idea it could come together as well as it could, that it could both be satisfying and sensical. That it could maintain its own sense of internal logic while also carrying its sense of logic outside its narrative and make a fantastical statement infinitely relative to any person reading it.

I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Christopher Priest at CASA in October of this year, and I hadn't quite finished reading this story deeply. I followed a couple issues off the newsstands and myself was lost in the plot, but that didn't stop me from celebrating the many decades of incredibly thoughtful and individually incredible comics I've read of his. I was grateful to tell him in person that his writing voice is one of the most distinct in modern comics and that I truly do have a puzzling and personally rewarding response to almost every comic he's scripted. He did the most amazing thing while I complimented him, and wrote my name down on a big piece of paper it was clear he kept track of everyone that did ask for a comic to be signed by him. I was honored, then surprised that he kept a record of people's appreciation of him, that I didn't see it as a more common practice. Then I was saddened that he mentioned DC's decision making editors did not really appreciate his writing, and that he wished I could tell DC how good a writer he was.

I am here to extol from a planet to the whole universe that Priest's writing is a not just an American treasure, but a Human treasure. The qualities that keep this series from being an immediately gratifying reading experience, like Jed Mackay's Blood Hunt, or Williamson's Dark Crisis, are what make it memorable and monumental. Give this writer another job. I'll even sponsor it if he writes stories about who visits a newsstand in Gotham City. Hundreds of years from now, scholars will puzzle at how forward thinking and dense and artful all of his comics are.

But for right now, you can be in tune and ahead of the time by opening this book, and geting lost in its plot. Opening another chapter and having a sand-shapeshifted version of superman fight him where physical force means nothing. Where an alien acquires a green lantern ring out of range of Oan communications so they have no idea what they have or what it does. A story where Lois Lane outsmarts Lex Luthor. A story where the idea of Superman is lost, and it's only in the reader's path that they mentally redefine and find Superman themselves.

It really has a killer ending, too. Don't skip any captions, though! If you feel that happening, put the book down. It really succeeds or fails as a reading experience based on following its captions. Which is very appropriate for a story about losing and regaining one's self.