I Offend

Mechanical, Is It A Bee?

Today I finally had the opportunity to stop and pick up the new Buffy comic (#31). I'm out in Cranberry fairly often, but the comic book store keeps the mercurial hours of a ghoul, so when I'm there, they aren't.
Wait! That proves I'm not a ghoul! Finally, concrete empirical proof that I am indeed a nonghoul. What a relief!
Anyway, the shop opens at noon on Tuesdays, and it was 12:15pm, so I figured that with a fifteen minute buffer they would have to be open. Even though the place was darkish and the CLOSED sign was still in the window (this isn't a big deal, they never flip the sign to OPEN), I went up and tried the door because hey, they had to be open by now, right? The door was unlocked, but once I was inside it was apparent that only the backroom lights were on. I tentatively shouted out 'Hello', which was answered with, 'I'll be open in one minute.'
I waited inside the door and was joined by two men who came in right after me.
A few moments later the lights all went up and the woman emerged from the backroom, and boy, was she pissed off. She didn't say a peep to the guys, but told me that from now on I was not to enter the store if she wasn't ready to be open. I explained that it was long after opening time, and the door was unlocked, and I just waited inside the door for her to come out of the back. She shot such a look of contempt at me and said that she'd been late to work because she was in an accident that morning and then repeated her original message that I was not in the future to ever, EVER come in the store if she wasn't ready to open. i didn't say anything more at this point, because, what's the point?
This is not the first run in I've had with this woman. In fact, every time I go in New Dimension Comics she goes out of her way to make an ass out of herself. Those rare times I go in there and have to deal with a guy I have no problems, so what is the deal with this woman? Is it me? Do I inspire hostility in comic nerd fangirls that I'm completely unaware of?
Oh who knows, but I think I'm going to take my business solely over to Phantom of the Attic Comic Book Store.

Fringe Comic Round-Up, Sort of...

Comics, while a glorious diversion in and of themselves, can also be an informative and fun tie-in to a TV show or movie franchise, providing back story, or just more story. Done right you can have something as stellar as the Buffy Season 8 comic book, and then when done not so right you can wind up with the new X-Files comic dud.
Really, truly, I don't want to come off sounding like some dweeb fangirl gushing over all things 'Fringe', but just as the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, so too have I climbed willingly into this handcart to careen wildly on my eternal descent. Resignation to one's fate can be a virtue, if one wears sensible shoes.
Like nearly everything in my life, I discovered the 6 issue 'Fringe' comic by accident one day at New Dimension Comics. The counter girl was yelling at me, saying that I was too early to pick up the latest in the Buffyverse, so I was feigning shopping to kill time. As often happens while faux browsing, I found something I wanted, needed, had to have. That something was issue #2 of the 'Fringe' comic, issue #1 having sold out ( I later found a copy of it at Phantom of the Attic in Pittsburgh).
Now that the special 6 issue edition of the comic has wrapped up, and the second season of the broadcast version of 'Fringe' is set to resume on September 17 at 9pm, I have an appreciation for the wealth of backstory provided in the comics for both Walter Bishop and William Bell. Two young, brilliant, if somewhat undisciplined, scientists. The comic definitely augments those two characters, and given how 'Fringe' ended it's first season, any information on Bell is more than welcomed! Thankfully it's not just information for information's sake, but framed in tales of time travel, floating heads preserved in jars, clones with heterochromatic eyes, among other freaky goodnesses.
With some luck the comic will return during the show's hiatus again next summer and give fans something to tide us over once more. Until then, I have only the Batwoman comic and the Buffy stuff to divert attention.