A scanner-reader by the name of John asks of the shipping lists page, "What's the deal with all those titles in bold?"

To which the answer politely removes itself from the lavatory and replies, "All the titles listed in bold on the shipping page denote new number 1's hitting the shelves for that particular week."

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Reeling from the waft of the old age smell of some nasty comics. Marvel Comics' The Incredible Hulk to be precise. Issues 179, 180, 182, 183, 184 and 185 to be just so pedantic about it. That's right, no magical 181 in that lot. Just the famed cameo in 180, then the story picks up just after the full on debut issue of the Canuck.

A customer was kind enough to drop them by for the boys on the weekend. They had a hard time divvying up the goods. Naturally, referring to the guide on which half of the six was best taken to, taken to after the split.

Written by Len Wein, pencils by Herb Trimpe and inks by Jack Abel. The issues are both fairly fragile and rather stocky. Nice heft to them too. The stench like an invisible clouded punch right to the back of the brain. A percentage of the hit you'd be facing if you walk into a certain comic book store in the city.

Maybe this is right, and maybe you shouldn't dig your nose into the spine and crank up the olfactory vacuum for kicks. People do, and those people are the people you best leave alone.

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Sunday is supposedly the quietest day of the week in the store. That and Monday. But since Monday is when the doors are closed, Sunday takes the roost by default. Given this stated notion, there certainly were a lot of people in the store yesterday. Just about ten minutes after the doors open and the place is seeing a churn rate of at least two people who are not regulars float around the store. This low buzz of movement and people goes on for over 90 minutes and probably close to two hours -- can't remember exactly, memories wash away every day.

Pulling out the standing order, the initial stack for the week hits eight titles -- A Bag of Anteaters #1, Amazing Spider-Man #517, Astonishing X-Men #8, Bride of the Freakshow, Captain America and The Falcon #13, Captain Gravity and the Power of the Vril #3, Tomb Raider #50, Ultimate Spider-Man #73 -- add to that Freedom Force #2, Futurama #1 and Trigger #3 off the shelves and it's a damaging blow of eleven in one go. This is what happens when the box isn't cleared every week for a couple of weeks. Others have it worse.

Running a cursory sum of the total haul, watching as the numbers get ever closer to and over $50, the summing up pauses on the sight of Spider-Man: India #4 in the mix.

Delvac, who was in the store taking a few photos of some items, cracks up laughing at the register. Stepping out for less than five seconds, picking up those three extra comics and in that time he manages to slip in a copy of India... what happened?

Even though there were more people than expected for a Sunday morning, it wasn't enough to cause that much of distraction.

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Quite a sight to see in the window of the shop. A blow up Spider-Man doll the likes of which have only ever been seen hanging from the ceiling.

For a long time, kids -- or more to the fact, their parents -- would come in and ask about buying the one that dangles from above. No can do, the only one there and it's not for sale. They stopped making them. They did. Then.

Now some company (can't remember the name right now) is putting them out. Hulk, Spidey and Batman get the blow up treatment. Big and small.

The pose in which both the Hulk and Spidey fronts is a little weird. There in a squat position with a posture not unlike that of a sumo wrestler. Think David Barlow of the Sydney Kings and his little logo photo for Barlow's World.

So what's the deal?

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Suspicious and paranoid, it's now possible that a server config has been installed and any incoming traffic through Firefox is being blocked. Time spent working around this is getting into too far a deviation from the daily duties. At least Opera can still subvert the network. For now at least. Either that or they're playing tricks.

So while this was going on, a reading of a few dozen dozen bookmarks was taking a back seat. One in this absence was that of Neil Gaiman's blog. Looks like Gaiman picked out some feedback over his photo that accompanied his Locus interview. On it, whether due to a discolouration in the scan or some such, Gaiman looks like he has a bloody lip.

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Out on the counter are the new flyers for the 11th birthday sale of the Comic Shop. They're yellow -- which is normal for their lot. But unlike previous notes, this ain't on the usual precut standard size of A5 or even A4. What we have here is now pretty much a square, like the ones the origami works so well with. Of course, that could also mean there are offcuts -- the part left over from the A4 break into a square -- being used similarly as slips. Who knows.

From the X-Men; metal man Colossus (on the backissues), bamfing Catholic Nightcrawler (on what could be a tag line for the weekend) and this decade's market saturator Wolverine (thinking about this very site). And then there's Warpath (with statues and action figures in mind). Warpath, when was the last time he was ever in the comics? Is he even alive any more? Doesn't matter. (Incidentally the sale is on for February 26 and 27)

Oh, wait, now that "I'll be first in line!" line makes sense.

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