{"id":3574,"date":"2010-10-06T09:30:24","date_gmt":"2010-10-06T09:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/?p=3574"},"modified":"2010-10-13T13:50:34","modified_gmt":"2010-10-13T13:50:34","slug":"retcon-punch-episode-01-he-dont-like-wednesdays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/?p=3574","title":{"rendered":"Retcon Punch, Episode 01: He Don’t Like Wednesdays"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday.<\/em><\/p>\n

Superman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s head shatters.<\/p>\n

A bullet breaks the Man of Steel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s plastic noggin and continues into the back wall of the shitty little closet, packed to the rafters with toys for grown men.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ike, come on out. Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s do this face to face. I get that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re scared.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I should be! You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re shooting at me!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Ike hears a small distant thud, a pistol hitting the worn carpet. Then, silence.<\/p>\n

Ike looks down at Veronica\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unconscious form, her body sprawled uncomfortably over two large cases of Witchblade maquettes. He takes in the large bump on her forehead, shiny even in the near-darkness. He stares at the small of her back and the visible bit of her underpants.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ike? Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t test me.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

It occurs to Ike that this was never supposed to happen\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbut then most of the time, when one is being shot at, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not supposed to be happening. Ike wishes he was at home in the crummy recliner he pulled out of his neighbor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s trash six years ago, settling his ass cheeks into the cushion\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s familiar imprint for a night of Twilight Zone<\/em> reruns. He has wished this same wish about seventy times over the course of the past fifteen minutes. It has yet to come true.<\/p>\n

Instead, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s here, and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s shaking a little but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s to be expected, because he can see through a bullet hole in the shitty little closet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s thin door and his adversary is closer than Ike thought, arms extended forward into pudgy claws like Batman crawling out of the Batmobile in that full-page Frank Miller splash from Dark Knight Returns…<\/em><\/p>\n

Ike opens the door.<\/p>\n

\"Retcon<\/a><\/p>\n

One Week Ago Yesterday.<\/em><\/p>\n

I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like Wednesdays.<\/p>\n

They always make me think of that song by the Boomtown Rats, where the girl has the chip in her head and she goes crazy because she don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like Mondays. I actually bought a Boomtown Rats greatest hits in college; I wondered if they had any other good songs. They don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t.<\/p>\n

Yes, I went to college, and now I sell comic books for a living. I try not to think about it.<\/p>\n

Unlike the crazy chip head girl in the Boomtown Rats song, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve almost always preferred Mondays over Wednesdays. I manage Superb Comics at Sepulveda and Aviation in Hermosa Beach, and only the saddest of sad sacks would spend time in a comic book store on a Monday.<\/p>\n

Whereas Wednesday is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153new comic book day\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to a salivating legion of fans, all of whom descend upon the store at exactly 11 a.m. and file nervously inside as fast as I can unlock the deadbolt. Then they form a line at the register, waiting for me to hand them a stack of 32-page pamphlets containing the latest installments in the ongoing adventures of intellectual properties concocted by brilliant Jewish men many decades ago.<\/p>\n

On this particular Wednesday\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe Wednesday when the giant penny in my personal Batcave flips, and suddenly heads is tails and black is white and dogs and cats are living together\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe weekly comic book shipment to Superb Comics is late.<\/p>\n

Comic book fans are tightly-wound people; they do not react well to change. Alter the shade of yellow on Batman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s belt buckle for one issue and the letters will pour in for months decrying the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153new look\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and longing for the halcyon days when Pantone 101 graced the waistband of the Caped Crusader.<\/p>\n

When comic books arrive late, it is a cataclysmic event on par with a kidney arriving late for a transplant surgery. To say that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153it sucks\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is an understatement on the highest order. It sucks, in fact, the most massive of suckable items.<\/p>\n

This is why it takes me upwards of an hour to notice the giant gaping hole where the store\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Fine\/Very Fine copy of Fantastic Four #1 once hung. Like most comic book stores, Superb has its most expensive old comics displayed on the wall behind the register, which serves the dual purpose of attracting buyers and allowing an employee to always be standing in front of these pricey bits of pop ephemera so that no one can stuff a copy of Avengers #57 down their shorts and walk out with it.<\/p>\n

This particular copy of Fantastic Four #1 had a $17,000 price tag plastered upon it. The tag was more of a joke than anything else\u00e2\u20ac\u201dnone of the clientele had the cash on hand to buy a comic book worth more than their annual salary. Instead, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d just come in and ogle it as they made their purchases. Occasionally, some pimple-clad pre-teen would notice it and ask to hold it, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d always oblige. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care if an extra half-ounce of fingerprint oils could over time deteriorate the precious paper slightly\u00e2\u20ac\u201dit was worth it for the awe-filled expressions.<\/p>\n

Still, the fact that Superb Comics wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be selling it anytime soon for $17,000 didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t WORTH that much. It easily was. Any enterprising nerd could have moved it at a convention or on eBay for that amount.<\/p>\n

So for those keeping score at home: It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a Wednesday, the new comics are AWOL, and Superb Comics\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 most valuable back issue has gone poof.<\/p>\n

A single word runs through my brain, over and over. It starts with an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153F.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It has four letters. It isn’t \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fart.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Next week: Douchebag Ascendant!<\/A><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday. Superman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s head shatters. A bullet breaks the Man of Steel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s plastic noggin and continues into the back wall of the shitty little closet, packed to the rafters with toys for grown men. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ike, come on out. Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s do this face to face. I get that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re scared.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I should be! You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re shooting at me!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[402,401],"class_list":["post-3574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-fiction","tag-retcon-punch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3574\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}