The Cliques: The Hero-Clix Gang

So I thought I'd start another series to talk about the groups of people that would congregate in our fair store. It'll pad out the narrative as well as give people the opportunity to compare and see if any similarities lie within their own groups.

Before I get to it, I will say I'm surprised that I have 7 followers, but a little dismayed to find people so adverse to commenting. I know it's easier to read-n-run, but when you comment you really let me know there's someone else out there. Plus, it'll give you guys a chance to connect and maybe start discussions amongst yourselves.

Which brings me to a new point. As things wind down (as they eventually will. I have the ending posts pretty mapped out so in my mind we're kinda closer to the end than to the beginning) I'm thinking of starting a new blog/forum based around the industry called something like "Comics Suck". It'll basically be a big bitchfest. Now, I don't think comics suck. I actually told a smoking fox French study partner that I was on the upper floor of Barnes & Noble wrapping up "Civil War". How can I be such a mack? Practice. Plus, I went to Urban Outfitters recently and saw some cool little Mighty Marvel Mugs. So I still like the culture of comics, especially the part about how if you look somewhat normal (ie under 450 lbs, somewhat washed and fashionable) that no one blinks an eye when you let your nerd out. Thank you, "The OC"! But I do think there's a ton of crappy comic stores, customers, and Diamond is still out there making lives miserable so there's room for a spin-off. I swear I'll never know how Diamond built an empire on being a bloated, inefficient middle-man.

Back to the point: every Friday night our shop would host Hero-Clix tournaments. Hero-Clix is a collectible miniatures game that came out in 2002. It's tiny little plastic figures of comic characters with stats on the dial and powers to modify what they can do and you battle it out. And even though I disparaged it earlier on my customer complaint on the Mole-Man... I gotta say, it's kinda fun. Me and my buddy (the cokehead) got into it when it first came out, and even stayed at the store until the wee early hours of the morning playing it. And this was the summer when we hung out with the college girls in their off-campus apartment watching them get drunk on Arbor Mist and going to free radio concerts. Ahhhh, the summer of '02. Why did you ever have to end?

Even back-er to the point: A series of regulars would go to these games. And despite being held on Friday nights, these were generally the most normal gamers of the bunch. I geniunely liked a lot of these people. Now the bad apples were superbad, but most of them were cool, like outside of comic shop cool, even!

There was a guy I'll call D-Rock ('cause someone else did) who was built kind of like a pro wrestler. He was tall, blond and athletic. But most appealing of all was his natural sense of ease and good-naturedness. He just exuded a confidence rarely seen in our neurotic little world. He made frequent jokes, chewed tobacco and married an Asian nurse.

His sidekick and the guy that ran the tournaments I'll call D-Rock Jr, because he was shorter, skinnier and still blond. The big boy from New York didn't really like him because he thought he was smug and caustic. I dunno, I got along fine with him.

There was another guy I'll call McEnroe because he once grew out his curly brown locks into a McEnroe-like 'fro. He was in his late 20s and divorced, and talked about his ex-wife a lot, which was weird. He was a decent looking guy. He also seemed baked out of his mind every minute of every day. He later moved and I have no idea what happened to him. Never got confirmation that he smoked more weed than Seth Rogen, either.

A guy that recently emailed me is someone I'll call Shogun. He was a comic customer first, and would bring his young son in when he picked up books. Now normally, I can't stand kids. Oh I can be civil, but I recognize that at least right now they're not for me. However, this little guy was pretty cute, I admit. He would sing "Ain't No Sunshine" and would run around the store. All of this is making me seem about as normal and manly as Pee-Wee Herman, but trust me. The kid was awesome. If you didn't laugh at him, a part of your soul undoubtedly has died.

I've mentioned Sack Ofshitskin (I ironically encouraged him into playing rather than just collecting) and Mole-Man. There was another troublemaker I'll call Dickhead. Dickhead was disliked by everybody, not really for any big reason, just little, small, subtle ones. He just carried himself in a very dickhead manner. He was in his early 30s, paunchy, and had a perfectly cute fiancee that no one could understand the attraction was. D-Rock joked that he should sleep with her just to spite Dickhead. He should've.

Ponytail had a life that was either the greatest or the worst. I had actually met him back when the Star Wars CCG was popular almost 10 years ago. He had a cute, goth-ish girlfriend who went to a local college. He had a ponytail and worked at Michael's, the craft store. Sarcastro would kind of give him a hard time, but Ponytail seemed to take it well. Before I knew it, he disappeared and my apathy remained. He returned when Hero-Clix took off and came back with a stunning blond girl. And when I say she was an 8, I mean an 8 in the real world. Not an 8 in the comic world, which would be a 4 in the real world. She was thin with a nice body, blond, and a pretty face. And for some reason she was devoted to Ponytail. The guy that wrote an 8-part movie epic involving Atlantis and evoking "Tango & Cash". The guy that ran out to puke on the sidewalk on several occasions. She would fight with him and sit next to him on Friday nights as he played miniature games. Ponytail lived at home. Past 30. I have no indication to believe he might have moved out. He apparently has an 11-inch penis that dispenses Arbor Mist and new episodes of "Grey's Anatomy".

There were some odds and ends. There was one guy with a super-southern accent but actually said some clever things, so it taught me never to judge someone by their cover. No it didn't. The last guy was the first guy to run the tournaments. I shall call him Unibrow Johnson, and I shall get to him later. He was the guy that "bought" the store.

So there they were. These brave champions of Friday night, that would battle until 10 at night. These men with cute girlfriends and normal social lives. Some things are just a mystery, man. Some things are just a mystery.

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Parade Of Assholes Part Two

Sack Ofshitskin

First, an apology. This blog has had crazy delays at least twice, and all I can blame is my schedule and laziness. But this time, it literally has been my schedule. I'm taking 17 1/2 hours of college classes and working 20 hours a week, so I'm packed. I will try to continue posting as the rage remains...

Which brings me to my second regular who gave me regular bouts of insomnia and suicide attempts. Sack Ofshitskin. Once again, people who are familiar with the shop will recognize what the name is based on, others won't.

Sack was an old high school cum of the owner. He looked like a mixture of Mr. Burns and a baby, fitting because he was a fairly well-off right-winger who cried like a bitch at stuff, hence my two photos. He was balding, liked volleyball and walked around a local mall with a Santa hat. Needless to say, he probably was a closeted homosexual. He also had a sweet tat of the eyes of Nightwing on his bicep, so his predilection for man meat was probably true. I mean, it's lame enough to get a comic book tattoo on your bicep, but Nightwing?! The gayest sidekick that ever bared bare leg? And his freaking eyes? Not even his symbol or anything? What was he gonna finish off with, his face and a heart around it? Ugh.

Now besides being lame, Sack was best known for being cheap. Really cheap. Really... really... cheap. This is a guy that would try to get out of paying sales tax. Once, out of frustration and embarrassment, I paid the sales tax on his Witchblade action figure. Oh that's right, this guy is trying to get the best deal on a Witchblade... action figure. Comic fans by and large are known for being extremely selfish, cheap and short-sighted. Eager to pray to the altar of Amazon not realizing that by killing brick-and-mortar they're killing their own hangouts and game competitions. So to be noted by one's peers for being cheap, means that in the natural world you are a Cheap God.

It was his cheapness that ultimately created the schism between him and the owner/store. Sack had ordered a crate of Heroclix for an incredible steal, pretty much what he could have gotten ordering online. We were making close to 0% profit on this, very slim. He balked at paying the sales tax, which was something the owner warned me he might do while insisting that he had told him that he couldn't do away with sales tax that time. Without sales tax the profit might have just gone into the negative. I told him that he'd have to pay the sales tax, and that to refuse was un-American and hampering the War On Terror™ that was so beloved by his fellow NeoCons. He said "you know what? Forget it," and stomped back to his seat like a four-year-old. I said, "all right" as I didn't make comission anyway. Before I opened the new case to sell, what do you think he did? Buckled like a belt. Caved. Backed down like a bitch. He went ahead and bought the stupid case full of plastic toys for children made by Chinese children. Then went ahead and stopped getting as many books and buying Heroclix elsewhere. We sold the store and I moved shortly afterwards so I didn't get the full effect of the Sack embargo. The owner later said he visited the shop under the new dumbas-owners, I meant owners, and Sack ignored him. What a fucking baby.

Fun fact: When the "gang" went to go see X2, Sack talked like a retarded pre-teen throughout the movie, much to the derision of the theatregoers around him. "I didn't know Nightcrawler was so powerful!" "Siryn!" "Ulp, Phoenix! We got a Phoenix!" Dope.