Industrial Dogma: A Cautionary Tale
by Joe Szilagyi.

A Typical Comics Shop

One day there was a little boy. He wanted to buy some cards with cute little pictures of cute little monsters on it. This boy, Petey (all names contained herein changed to protect the innocent), convinced his mother, Susan, to take him to the local comic book/Poke'Mon store to buy two packs of cards. Petey, being a remarkably responsible boy for his age, saved up two week's worth of his allowance to afford the $24.76 that the shop was overcharging for the cards. Susan, being a sharp-thinking and busy woman, had to take Petey to the dentist that day, and decided to stop into the shop on the way there. That way, she reasoned, her little boy could quickly get those funny little cards he liked to collect so much.

Once they arrived, Petey reached into the backseat for his ever-present backpack, and threw it over his shoulder. As soon as he managed to keep from falling over from the sudden burden of six binders of playing cards that he needed with him at school, he and Susan walked into the store. Petey immediately ran off to the side of the shop where the cards were kept, the extra weight from the binders almost causing him to slam into the shelves. Susan looked around the empty shop, where a bored clerk sat reading a comic with a rifle-wielding female vampire on the cover who was hiding a pair of watermelons beneath her string bikini. At the same time, another customer walked in, looking upset, taking a sip of a triple-tall latte.

"Are the new comics in yet?!" he asked urgently.

"Been here," the clerk said, not looking up from a splash page of the melon-hider arching her back at a dramatic story moment. "Already put 'em up and filed 'em and everything."

"Great! Let me have my file for this week! I'm Steve!"

The clerk sighed, dragging his eyes off the twin binaries for a moment, and handed Steve a stack of thirty comic books. Steve immediately began to thumb through each one. Susan looked over at the clerk. "Doesn't my son have a file, too?"

The clerk gave her a flat look, taking a moment to continue reading the splash page. "What's his name?"

"Peter Johnson."

The clerk handed her that week's nine Poke'Mon comics. "You ready, Petey?" she asked.

Petey looked horrified, as he waved around both hands; he had ten packs of cards in each. Some went flying. "No! I have to make sure I get the exact right one!"

"Does it matter?"

He dropped all the packs and for a moment was stricken dumb. "OK, OK, I'll just go look at what's over here..." Susan wandered off towards the new comics.

"Kid looked like a damn horse kicked him in the side of the head right there!" Steve said to the clerk, who was too busy to hear, as he was studying the line work on the next panel of Jugsula.

Just then another customer walked in, and walked up to the clerk. "Hi," he said. "I just moved here, and I saw the shop when I was driving by. Do you have pull files for your customers?"

The clerk looked up. "Uh?"

"Pull files. You know, holding new comics for me?"

"Wha's your name?" "Frank Taylor."

"Lemme see." The clerk leaned back, looking in the pull file drawers. "Nope. No Frank Taylor. Sure it's ain't under another name?"

"No, I don't have one here."

"Then why'd ya ask?"

"I said -- I asked if you had pull files. I just moved here."

"Then you shoulda gotten one."

"..."

"Well?" The clerk asked, not sure what this apparently pushy customer wanted to bother him with.

"...I'll take one," Frank said, and the clerk handed him a form to fill out. The clerk was then overjoyed to turn the page and see Jugsula was forced to grapple with her nemesis, the Holy Brassiere wielding St. Luscious.

Steve suddenly stepped back from the counter, throwing his hands up in frustration, his face anguished. "Ah! Ah! What the hell? Where's the new crossover one-shot with the chromium variant cover?! And where's the new Cliffhanger book?"

"I heard chromium's toxic. It'll kill ya," the clerk said.

Steve smacked his head, astonished. "That's why Battlechasers and Danger Girl never come out! Chromium!"

Frank, having finished the application to get his own pull file at the shop, handed it to the clerk, who looked over all of his selected comics. After a moment, he looked up at Frank.

"Easy does it, tiger. What's this book here?"

"It's from Oni."

"We don't stock that," the clerk said.

"Oh, no problem. It's in Previews."

"Yeah."

Frank shrugged. "So I can get it then."

"How? We don't stock it."

"Uhhh, the store would order it for me."

"The owner doesn't do that unless there's a lot of call for--" the clerk suddenly became animated, jumping up of his chair, Jugsula in hand. "Hey! What are you doing?"

Susan looked up from the issue of Strangers In Paradise she was thumbing through. "Looking at this book. It kind of caught my eye, it was the only one here without a huge guy or half-naked woman on the cover."

"You can't read them," the clerk said.

"I wasn't, I was just looking at the first couple of pages to see what it was."

The clerk looked astonished. "You have to buy it if you want to read it. This ain't the library."

"But how would I know if I liked it if I didn't look in it first to see if it was any good?" Susan asked.

The clerk waved Jugsula at her indignantly. "It's that sort of mindset that's killin' this industry," he said.

"Don't forget the chromium!" Steve said, finishing the triple-tall latte.

Susan walked to counter, putting the issue down next to Steve's stack.

"So what do you read?" She asked Steve.

"All of it!"

Susan looked at the towering height of his pile. "Is it all that good?"

"Ye -- well, uh, yeah! I follow the characters!" Steve said enthusiastically.

"What if the writing or the pictures aren't that good, though? Oh, one sec," she said. "Petey, have you picked out your two packs of Poke'Mon cards yet?"

Petey had his back to her, and spun around so fast with handfuls of trading card packs that the backpack filled with the binders of cards, with all it's weight, caused to him to continue spinning right into the shelves of card boxes right behind him. In moments he was buried under packs of cards, with only his hands visible.

Susan ran to help him. "Petey!"

The clerk shook his head in disgust. "Those cards...! This is why we should stock more quality comic books, they won't fall as much as those cards were going to."

"Of course they went down," Frank said. "They're a fad."

"They don't have staying power like variant covers do! They need more gimmicks to get people's attention!" Steve said.

"How do you figure?" Frank was bemused.

"Look at it this way," Steve said, bubbling with energy. "You need a hook! Something to get people to get it! Something nutty!"

"Like a good story and good art? Talented people making it?"

"It's overrated! Storytelling is overrated!" Steve was getting bombastic, holding up comics, crumpling them in his hands. "Most people follow a title for the title, right?! That's why they call it a title! Spawn fucken rules! I follow it because it's him! It's all about character, and damn these books have character!"

"...And hey," Frank said, turning to the clerk (after stepping away from, who was waving his Jugsula at Susan, who was pulling Petey out from under the ruins of Poke'Mon. "You honestly mean the store's owner won't order me a book from a small-press publisher? Because I'm the only one who'd get a copy? He could put out one or two out on the counter, and maybe other people would get it--"

The clerk waved him off. "Blah, blah, blah, I hear it all the time online. Ain't nothing but elitism."

"Reading a book everyone else isn't reading is elitism?" Frank was almost speechless.

"Excuse me," Susan said angrily, holding her son, her shoulder slumping under the weight of many a Poke'Mon card. "I'm about to sue the hell out of someone."

All three men stared at her.

"I'm not goddamn kidding." Just then, the door opened, and the storeowner walked in. He looked around, his jaw dropping at the sight of the fuming woman, the injured little boy, the sweating and frenzied man with handfuls of crumpled comics, the man standing relatively unscathed, a whole wall in his shop absolutely destroyed with packs of cards lying around everywhere, and his clerk who was squeezing his Jugsula in his hand.

"I'm going to assume I missed something," he said.

"Uh, hi boss. Nothing. I mean you didn't miss anything special." The owner looked at the comic in the clerk's hand, and the clerk subtly tossed it back behind the counter. "Just another day selling comics!"

Frank gave him a dirty look. "Except for the ones you wouldn't sell me."

"What?" The owner asked.

"Yeah, that's right. I asked him to get me a comic book and he distracted me with Wally West, seen in his disguise as Fanboy, here instead," Frank said, jerking his thumb at Steve, whose eyes went wide.

"Fanboy! I'm not a fanboy! And whaddya mean Wally West?!"

"You drank enough coffee to look blurry to me," Frank said, and brushed past the owner on his way out the door. "And this store sucks, I'm going to find one that'll order me the books I want."

"Wait, wait, what the hell did I miss?" the owner asked, but Frank was out the door, and he turned and ended up face to face with Susan.

"See if you miss my lawsuit. C'mon Petey, I'll find you another shop to gouge you on Poke'Mon cards." She stormed past him, and the owner turned to the clerk.

"You're fired." The clerk shrugged and trundled past him.

"Fine then," he said. "I'll get a job where someone'll appreciate my high level of customer service. I'm off to a convenience store!"

Steve was still standing by the counter, crumpled books in his hands, eyeing the owner. He stared for a good thirty seconds at the owner, who was now behind the counter. "What!?" the owner blurted out.

"I find that insulting!"

"What? Him calling you a fanboy?"

"Calling me Wally West!"

"Oh shut up."

Joe Szilagyi, April 20th, 2000

Joe Szilagyi is a regular contributor to PopImage. Beginning in June, he will become the new editor of Attitude, as well as becoming a regular columnist with Industrial Dogma.

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