ONE DAY AT THE LOCAL COMIC SHOP

I hate fads.

And comic book collecting is now in vogue.

You don't have to look far to find the proof -- it's as obvious as dinosaur bones jutting from the dry cracked mud:

People buying twenty issues at a time of a Superman #75 reprint (in which Supes happened to die, although we all knew that the grave wouldn't hold him forever), because they all think that the issue might be worth something someday although the art sucked, the story was pitifully melodramatic, and DC Comics printed enough copies to feed Ethiopia for five years on fiber alone.

Companies selling new series emblazoned with the shiny phrase "1st Issue Collector's Item", despite the fact that telling consumers to collect a series -- any series -- is certainly the Kiss of Death to a comic's resale value (Proof: If all collectors own the same issue, who's left to buy it?)

Teenagers copying the drawing styles of various comic artists and thinking they're the freshest, coolest thing since Michelangelo or Salvador Dali.

Incredible. Definitely astounding. And unbearably depressing that the same sort of fad mania that made normally placid 80's mothers throttle each other over baby dolls resembling Hubert Humfrey with gas and reduced colors for children's clothing in the last two years to putrid shades of purple and green has been striking (and is now in full force upon) the comic industry at large.

There could be no other explanation for the fact that the first issue of the bizarrely named Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is now worth (conservatively) a spry $240; or that comics worth nothing for years suddenly quadrupled in price because they contain a panel or two of everyone's favorite Wolverine-modelled badass of 1994, Sabertooth. A hobby market is quite capable of revealing its fans' general attitudes; and the growing value of comics predominately featuring trendy art, fantasy babes, and ruthless scallawags rather than meaningful storylines or complex characterizations only announces the coup of the comic industry by impressionable and mindless young wallets.

And bragging about what you have, belonging to the collector's clique -- not *real* collecting, for the true love of comics and writing -- is what matters to them. You don't believe me? Fine. Try this.

The story I now relate is completely real and is as fresh in my mind as if it happened yesterday, simply because -- for the record, mind you -- it did happen yesterday. The act described is a summation of everything I have just described, and is indicative of the sheer ignorance perpetrating itself among those who now immerse themselves in an industry that used to be reserved for artists, writers, and honest-to-goodness dreamers who had a penchant for coupling the skill of the pen with the beauty of the page.

Not even Superman, despite his invulnerability, can survive the chink of flashing dollar signs.

Shortly before Christmas dashed by us this year, I received my "Holiday Bonus 20% off all back issue stock, which means NO discount on CURRENT BOOKS or SUPPLIES, dummy, so don't even bother to ask" coupon from the local comic store. It was an offer I could not resist (indeed, my undisciplined mind often cannot resist any offer, no matter how transparently awful), so it wasn't long before I lowered myself into the depths of the "Card and Comic Cave" with my flashlight, pickaxe, and backpack to dig for comic gold before the veins petered dry.

When I arrived, the Card and Comic Cave was inhabited by no one but the current clerk. I didn't recognize him and, after a moment of chatting, found that he was working for the "Card" half of the store. That left us very little to say to each other, as I had given away all my baseball cards back in the eighth grade (except for the 1980 Topps Phillies team -- a momento from My Spectacular Single Year In Baseball Fandom), so I took my leave and wandered back into the stacks. I really didn't have much time to dig; it was already 5:30pm, I had promised my wife that I would food-shop before I returned, and we hadn't yet eaten dinner. (Forcing a late supper might not sound devastating to you, but my wife was pregnant at the time, which made her a Tazmanian Devlish on heels. She was usually ravenous.)

But, just as with the Grail, the quest for the last missing issues in a series can persuade a cavalier collector to do many tortuous things -- the least of which is to eat late or frustrate one's spouse -- and so I ended up rummaging through the boxes much longer than I had planned. It was an arduous business. Namor the SubMariner joined my handful at some point, but most other issues on my Top Ten Wish List were simply not there. I was in the process of bemoaning the lack of an Iron Fist #9 and had just gone on, disappointed, to see what Batman was up to in the Underworld Olympics of '76, when I heard the bell of the front door jingle as someone else entered the store.

You know the sort of bell I'm talking about. The brass one, about the size of a golf ball -- the kind you see speckling a large reindeer harness or imagine hanging on the collar of Bagheera the panther. Small stores always have one hanging on the door, in lieu of the slightly more expensive electric eye alarms or pungi pits found in some ritzy shopping malls. I suppose the bells are there in case some joker either tries to walk out with an armload of comics or bursts in on his way to knock over one of those multi-billionare Mom-and-Pop-store comic sellers (with the bell giving said owner a few seconds to make peace with God before the fiend lays waste with his semi-automatic).

Anyway, I didn't hear any scurrying feet or immediate gunshots, so I lowered my head and kept digging through the boxes. I did make an effort to block access to the Daredevil row, however, as I had to jockey for the best position in case a scramble ensued.

And that's when I heard the young voice greet the counter guy.

A kid. A lot of kids hung out in the stores, all stirred up about Youngblood and WildCats. and other nasty mutant-swamped series. In all truth, kids weren't that much competition for non-fad back issues. This one'd probably just hang up out front, look at the new books, buy a few packs of trading cards, and then wander out -- which was fine with me. I liked having a monopoly on the stacks.

But that didn't happen. And it's important to remember that the counter guy was a Card Man and not a Comic Man, or perhaps this incident would have ended much sooner than it did. But it didn't, and the clerk only knew how to read the price tags, and he was much more polite than I might have been if I had been tending the store at the time.

So Mr. Clerk traded hellos with the kid, just to be friendly, and then made the unfortunate mistake of volunteering help in case the kid was looking for something particular. You know, the general spiel you get whenever you walk into a small store and the owner is either very lonely, or wants to keep an eye on you, or -- more often than not in small stores -- is actually able to help.

And the kid said "Well, yeah, okay. I wuz lookin' for X-Men #1."

If I would have been drinking coffee at the time, I would have hosed down two long comic boxes with hot caffiene. As it was, I felt dizzy and a bit grey in the head, as if I had plummeted off a tightrope into Niagara Falls. I couldn't believe my ears. Maybe those three days in New Jersey without Q-Tips had really plugged me up with wax. Maybe I should really turn down my CD player headphones a few notches. In any case, after the initial horror, my ears stood up along with my hackles as if I were a dog hearing his food dish being filled. I had to know what was going on.

There had been a long pause up front as my mind accelerated through the various gears, but apparently the clerk didn't spend long gnawing through his lower lip. "Which one did you say?" His voice was very quiet and I had to listen hard. He might have been comic-illiterate, true, but he was smart enough to know that any title followed by the number "1" demanded a recount.

I heard voices mumbling for a few seconds and realized there must be more than one kid. Then I heard the same voice again. "Uncanny X-Men, you know? That's what I want. Number 1."

"Yeah, that's the one. It'll be awesome," said someone else.

After my brain finished playing Twister, I peeked out around the corner. I was expecting to see someone flashing money. Perhaps Bill Gates had been passing through town...

But no. No one else was there but two teens who looked like they had just been transferred to high school from the 7th grade.

"X-Men #1." The clerk mouthed the words as if the kid had said he was from Andromeda and was looking for some greasy Earth cuisine before he kidnapped some UN members plus Whitley Streiber and headed for home.

I could understand what he was feeling. I was pretty numb myself.

X-Men #1.

I've been collecting since high school, and that sort of stuff is as far out of my league as Hitler is from heaven. The Uncanny X-Men #1 came out in September of '63 -- thirty-one years and three months ago -- five years and two months before I was even born -- and bore barely a passing resembling to its current incarnation all decked out in flashy costumes, Barbie and Ken clones, and pointless non-stop squawling. For one, Jack Kirby was doing the art, and there's a fistful of difference between his style and the current wunderkin Jim-Lee-clones. For another, the skirmishes were rather laughable. I mean, who could be deathly frightened of the Vanisher -- a guy in a green suit resembling Lewis Carroll's version of "Brussel Sprout Man"? And the actual tone and dialogue was much different than today's comics. Comics are almost a different genre in some ways, nowadays.

If this kid just wanted to read the series, I wondered why he wasn't just buying the reprints of early X-Men that had come out over the summer. Anyone with $1.50 could have grabbed a reprint of X-Men #1 in the last six months just to satisfy his or her personal craving.

To further confound the issue, no serious collector would have looked for such an issue at the Card and Comic Cave. Downtown Waynesboro didn't draw much of a crowd anytime of the year, and every other comic store that dared to set up shop within city limits usually bit the dust within three or four months. We had a Sheetz, three laundromats, and one used book store, and by golly we were proud! Ten straight blocks of nonstop stationary shops, old hardware stores with ladders and plank flooring, and a McCrory's [Editor Note: At the time of this publishing -- 1997 -- the McCrory's has gone out of business], and don't swerve off the beaten path, par'ner, unless ya wanna step into a deep pile of cow plop, and here's this kid walking into a comic store that shares rent with a baseball card seller due to the general lack of prosperity, and he expects to find a #1 of anything just sitting there, on a pedestal perhaps, light pouring down on it from heaven and a miasma of angels belting out the Hallelujah Chorus. Amen, Hail Mary, Glory be to God, Hallelujah!

I was frozen. I was a statue. Either this kid had no idea what he was asking for, or he was way beyond me. I felt like Jamie Lee Curtis taking a deep breath in her yard on Halloween: Some sort of psycho alien mentality was lurking out there, and it was as scary as hell.

Time resumed its normal flow, gushing forward with reckless abandon. "Yeah," said the kid again, with all the stupid sincerity and unmitigated ignorance of Doogie Howser, M.D., "Yeah, X-Men #1. So you have one?"

Mr. Clerk gave the smoke from his ears a few seconds to clear and then said rather quietly, "Uh well, no, I don't think so. Not #1." What I think he really wanted to say was "Are you out of your flarkin' mind, kid? You swallow a reefer in the locker room today? You have too much Vitamin B in your baby formula? Do you think I'd be working the counter here instead of touring Europe in my Astin-Martin if we were trading #1's every day?"

Doogie screwed up his face. "But, hey, well, I really wanna buy it." My walkie-talkie got some static at this point, so perhaps some of this next transmission is garbled, but the phrases that passed through were enough to make my blood run like slush pops. Things like "...really into X-Men...", "...the cartoon's cool...", "just read some two days ago...", and "...been collecting since then..."

Heh heh. And now he wants to buy #1. That Doogie. What a JOker. What a MACaroon. What a NINcowpoop. What a...

He and his sidekick Chumley started conferring again. I was as petrified as someone watching a nuclear warhead do the mambo ten feet off ground zero. This was one sick stupid joke. Any second, these kids would pull off their masks, wiggle their antenna, and fly away in a shiny Havana, or they'd laugh and point out the hidden camcorder meant to earn them that illusive $10,000 prize from America's Vapid Funniest Home Videos.

The Clerk fished for a line. He might have been stunned, but he was a salesman after all, and a salesman couldn't dissuade potential sales, not matter how potential they might be. Finally he came up with a good one. "Well, do you have the money to pay for it? Jeff can get the comic for you if you want it, but you have to have the money to pay for it."

And then came the kicker -- the line that clinched that this kid's had been playing left field since the pony leagues. Doogie said, in all sincerity and honesty, "Well, I've got some money on me."

I choked. He had some money on him. And it had to have been a lot. There was a double ding as my eyes spun around like Daffy Duck in Ali Baba's treasure room and stopped cold on the dollar signs. For a fleeting moment, my fingers twitched, and I wondered if The Clerk could pick me out of a lineup.

Then it was time to choke; Doogie plunged ahead and said too much. "At least $75."

That's it? The money signs fly away. All I can think of now is how silly Doogie is. Silly silly child.

Although he didn't know the exact price, The Clerk was kinder. He just raised an eyebrow. "Well, that's good, but it might cost a little more than that." And all I could do was nod my head in dazed agreement. It'll cost you more, kid trust me. More money than you'll see in your life. Plus your first child. Plus your white blood cells. Plus your soul, with redoubled interest coumpounded minutely. And your brain thrown in as a freebie.

The Clerk started rifling through the price guide, probably Wizard. That's the guide I thought Jeff had said he used.

[As a quick aside meant to educate and not bore, there's a few different standard price guides for comics, and sometimes the prices can differ by a great deal -- maybe by $5-10 in some instances for a $20-30 comic. Some of the more unscrupulous shop keepers buy comics from people using the cheaper guide, and then sell their stock at the higher price from the other. There was one store owner in Waynesboro who did that. He came from the big city of Baltimore. He owned more comics in one store than I had ever seen before in my life. He paid the cheaper price and collected the stiffer one.

He went out of business.

You see, comic collectors don't take kindly to being ripped off. Most of them know what price they deserve anyway on a certain issue, and it doesn't take neophytes too long to learn the prices either, where their wallets are concerned.]

In any case, I don't think it really had mattered which guide the Clerk had been looking at, even if it had been the free Real Estate listings you can pick up as stove fodder outside the post office. An official mint-condition issue of X-Men #1 was now, as it had always been, beyond my and anyone else's reach. Out of my grasp. It might as well have been on Planet X or lost in space somewhere. As far as that issue was concerned, it was a pool of water and I was Tantalus, doomed to be parched for all eternity.

Not that I wanted X-Men #1 anyway; I wasn't in comics to collect stuff I didn't really like. But what shocked me was that Doogie thought he could buy it for the amount of money he'd pay to take his classmates out to McDonalds.

And as I was standing there, mulling over the untouchable comic, Doogie continued on yet another bumbling step into his line of ignorant, giddy, Image-bootlicking, fartsy-art grovelling fadishness. "Aw man!" he winced. And then, rather begrudging, "Well, I guess I could get $600 outta the bank if I have to use it."

Six hundred bucks. I felt like a horse had kicked me in the face. You're obviously clueless about this whole deal, and now you want a comic book bad enough to pay six hundred bucks? Instead of buying a camcorder, or a stereo system, or an electric guitar with an amp? Six hundred green crinkly dollars, flushed into the industry toilet? That's a big commitment to comic collecting.

And even that wouldn't be enough. It might have sounded like a major league baseball salary to Doogie, but it was only a drop in the bucket for prime-rib comic. And if he didn't know that, he shouldn't have been spending so much money in the first place: anyone serious enough to shell out 1.2 million pesos (or whatever it is) on a flimsy periodical knows how much it costs before he goes store-hopping.

So where'd Doogie get that sort of money for comics in the first place, and why wasn't he using it to pay for an education?

Formerly taciturn but now apparently amused by Doogie's distress, Chumley chose that moment to chime in. "He's got the money. He says he'll pay for it. Yuk, yuk, yuk." The fact that Doogie obviously felt committed to the purchase earned him some ribbing. I didn't know it then, but Chumley had just settled on his buzzphrase for the evening: "He's got the money, he said he'll pay for it."

Just like a "Krusty the Clown" doll: you pull his string, and he says The Line, over and over, and over, and over, and...Gag.

The Clerk stopped flipping pages and shook his head. But he still didn't raise his voice. "Well, I'll take your six hundred. And then you'll give me three thousand more."

I hoped Doogie had enough arithmetic background to puzzle that one out.

$3600.

It was a lot of money.

On the other hand, I had thought that Uncanny X-Men #1 would have been worth more.

Maybe if Sabertooth had been in it...

There was a long second of silence, when I expected both Doogie and Poncho to pull a standard Ren and Stimpy, eyeballs exploding in full graphic detail and then slumping down into a mushy puddle. Unfortunately, nothing of the sort happened. They just stood there like mosquitos in amber.

No matter. Now they knew how foolish they had been. Now they knew that collecting #1 issues of fad series was a matter of financial commitment, not giddy splurges. Now they would scrunch down like defeated alley cats and slink out of The Card and Comic Cave, never to plumb its depths again. I could imagine how the situation must be for them. It was embarassing. It was flustering. It was crawl-in-a-hole-and-whimper-quietly bewildering.

But that Doogie. Boy, I really had him mispegged as a normal Joe who can fess up to a mistake now and then. This Doogie, he was about as intelligent as the large black bull thrashed by Bugs Bunny in the bullfight. Every time that you think Ferdinand will catch on and realize that the rabbit always wins, that any bovine -- even a huge one -- simply has no chance in Hades, the bull pushes his luck one step further and ups the ante and then pays for it in spades.

Nope. Doogie didn't back off. Instead he pawed at the ground and then charged right over the edge of the cliff.

"Well, okay. Can you get it for me?"

There was more silence in that room than in King Tut's tomb. No one knew what to say.

The Clerk spoke first. "You still want to buy it."

"Yeah, I still want it," said Doogie, a bit too emphatically. "I said I wanted it, didn't I?"

Who was this kid?

The clerk spoke again. "You sure? For $3600?"

I have to give credit where credit was due. This man was a gem -- a Mother Theresa among savages -- possessing such faith, such consideration, such kindness. I'm afraid that if I had been clerking that night, I would have been in a Joker-like laughing rictus on the floor and then heading into a parody of a '40's Daffy Duck rampage, abusing the two teenagers mercilessly and hoo-hooing in their faces. But the clerk said simply, "Really? You're still interested?" Amazing.

I would have shaken Doogie until his teeth flew out like candy corn, all the while shouting "SAVE YOUR MONEY! TRUST ME! SAVE IT! YOUR PIZZA HUT CAREER WON'T ALWAYS BE THERE!!"

And then Chumley finally kicked out his stupor and added his infamous line: "He's got the money. He said he'll buy it. Yuk, yuk, yuk." And he ribbed Doogie in the side, as if to let him know the hot water he was in.

Shut up, Chumley.

Doogie ignored him. "Well, do you have it?"

The Clerk spread his arms, at a loss. "Well, no. But like I said, I can talk to Jeff and he can arrange to get it for you. You'll have to deal with him."

"That's cool then."

The Clerk had to reassure himself one last time. "Are you sure you're really interested?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. It's a cool issue."

Chumley's cord was pulled again. "He said he'll buy it, didn't he? Yuk, yuk, yuk."

"Okay. I just want to make sure. Jeff can ask around and find it for you, but he doesn't want to waste his time if you're not serious."

"Yeah, yeah, I want it. I can get the money."

Again, the Line: "He said he'll buy it, didn't he? Yuk, yuk, yuk." I really wanted to slap Chumley the Dancing Slug, but he was too far away for me to get away with it.

The clerk looked them over. "He'll definitely want the money up front too, you know. Jeff's not going to buy this thing and then bring it back and have you change your mind. You'll have to pay ahead of time, before he gets it, just because it's so much money."

"He has the money," repeated Chumley, poking Doogie in the ribs again. "He said he'll buy it. Yuk yuk yuk!"

"Yeah, I know," said Doogie, his face whiter than if he had just been told that his one-night-stand was pregnant, "maybe my dad will help me out."

His lips kept moving, but I've never been a good lipreader, especially in the face of such moronity. [Hmm, is that a word? Well, it is now -- created solely for this episode.] I simply didn't believe that Doogie was actually going to buy this thing, this comic of which he obviously knew nothing, and for a whopping $3600 to boot. Unless he was an idiot savant without the savant. A scarecrow without a brain. A redneck who hung out in parking lots to meet scawny 9th graders impressed with a 4x4 and a little backseat nookie.

Maybe I was just a skeptic. Maybe I was just a cynic. And maybe I was simply right.

Because I was. Because then they started talking about how it would come. The issue, I mean -- they started talking about what the comic would be KEPT in. My skepticism was rewarded when Doogie asked Yet-Another-But-More-Absurd-Than-Before Stupid Question.

"Does it come with a cardboard backing?"

I winced until I couldn't see past my cheeks.

Chumley mercifully broke away into a new, if not exciting, line: "I'd guess so. It should. Probably comes in plastic or something."

Doogie waxed poetic. "Well, maybe they'd keep it between glass or something. That'd be cool."

The Clerk, in his infinite patience, kept the slight possibility of an authentic sale open, although his fortitude and optimism was amazing. "Yes, the comic would definitely come with some sort of backing, in order to protect it, and it should be covered with plastic of some sort as well."

Doogie nodded his head as if reassured. I thwacked mine. The boy was a double-glazed donut.

The Clerk continued. "And even past that, you know, I'd advise that you keep it in a safe."

"Yeah, your dad has a safe," reminded Chumley, on a roll at last, his new lines coming like heavenly inspiration.

"Heck, no, not the safe, are you crazy?" said Doogie, sounding a bit cocky. "I'd keep it in the bank! Definitely!"

Oh Doogie, why start being intelligent now?

The Clerk finished up with final details, said he'd leave a note for Jeff, and they could talk to him for sure by Saturday if they were still interested. The kids repeated their commitment to this act of ignorant stupidity and finished up with a few Hail Mary's, Bible oaths, dead-chicken waving, and controlled bloodletting, and then the deal was done and signed and sealed and the crowd dispersed.

Take it from me: Mephistopheles was in the wrong business. He would have done much better winning souls by selling comic books.

The bell dinged and more customers entered. Doogie and Chumley drifted into the back of the store, still mumbling to each other and staring into the various glass counters until Doogie realized what he had done.

Up to this point, I was almost certain that they had no idea what they had gotten themselves into, and that, after they thought about it some more, they'd realize they had agreed to purchase it only to save face. That they really didn't want to spend $3600 on the comic. That they would probably not collect many comics at all after this point, and might not ever set foot in this store or even perhaps in Waynesboro again as long as they lived, just to save more face.

And then there were no more doubts: their own words convicted them better than Scopes could have in a knock-out drag-down trial. I couldn't believe my ears. Doogie and Chumley were peering into one of the glass cabinets, which contains back issues running in the $10-30 range, and then Doogie dropped The Bomb. He pointed into the cabinet and said, "Hey, there's that guy, the one who uses a gun." He pauses. "Yeah, whatsis name? Oh yeah, it's the Punisher, I think."

Double-Thwack.

For all of you who don't know much about comics, the Punisher is a declining fad character: chest emblazoned with a large skull, he wields large automatic weapons in his self-imposed war on the drug trade. Like most fad characters, he's not very nice. Although he originally didn't have his own series until the mid-late 80's, the opening issues are already worth $20-40 apiece. He was even popular (and conventional) enough to make it to the movies, although it was probably Dolph Lundgren's swan song. Anyway, any collector serious enough to spend more than $100 per issue -- and almost anyone who is into comics for any length of time -- knows who the Punisher is. People who don't are like self-proclaimed baseball historians who can discuss the genealogy of Willie Stargel or Hank Aaron and not even know who Reggie Jackson is. It just doesn't happen.

So these kids don't know who the Punisher is and yet want X-Men #1. They don't know who the Punisher is and yet want a comic book valued at $3600 that doesn't resemble modern comics in the least. They don't know who the Punisher is, and they pretend to be comtemplating the purchase of a flimsy 26-page book printed on newspaper that is worth more on the market than perhaps their first used car.

I almost killed them myself, then, I swear I did, and afterwards I would have venerated at the feet of the Punisher himself in obeisance, and he would have forgiven me, oh, I know he would have laid his hand upon my head and spoke words of forgiveness for my vile deed because, right after drug dealers, the Punisher hates nothing more than silly butthead kids who hop on a bandwagon and don't know when to get off. Kids who hop on ANY bandwagon just because it's there, whether that bandwagon is drugs or booze or promiscuity or a distortion of a valid interest, like sports or comic books. Kids who get older and drag other kids behind them in their wake, creating an exodus of imbecility through what was once fertile mindsoil, and then disappear into the night.

Every hobby has its detriments, and those of the comic industry are the fad followers and the impromptu investers who actually treat comics as a miniature stock market and try to make money off them rather than really loving them for what they are -- illustrated stories, some campy and some chilling, but just as valid a storyform as a popular paperback or a classic hardback novel.

Wouldn't you know it, but those kids never DID come back in the store again. I guess they found a copy of Uncanny X-Men #1 down the street in the local Quickee-Mart.