'girl... you'll be a--' no, no, not going there.

Today is a special day. Not because new comics arrive in comicshops today, that happens most every Wednesday.

No, it's the date, 8th December. No, it's not Pearl Harbor Day, that was yesterday.

Give up? It's fox1013's birthday!

Did you think I'd forgotten you, Amy? I have not.

Fox is purty darn cool. She writes all manner of funky femslash, typically in fandoms I don't follow but which I've universally found is worth a read. She was a legend on the TWoP boards, where I used to follow her witty posts before I ever found LiveJournal, back in the early months of Smallville and my return to online fandom.

She even made this icon for me -- well, she made the Fezzik and Inigo frame, or rather the original version of it which I've modified slightly so that I could add the other frames. But! I still think of her every time I look at it.

Hope your birthday is full of happiness, friends, and presents, chica. You deserve it.

Every comics shop has one...

There's at least one employee (if you count owner-operators) in every comics shop. Many of us comics readers are wont to refer to the person they deal with at the shop they frequent as "my comicshop guy" or "friendly local comicshop dude" or a similar designation.

Many of these heroes-behind-the-counters share a similar appearance. The owner-operator of the comicshop in the fictional Springfield of Simpsons fame is more a lampooning than a representation of the Comics-Retailer Man type... but the fact remains that there's a noticeable resemblance among the fellows who make sure the titles on our pull lists make it into our pull boxes on a weekly basis.

They look like this, more or less:

Click here to see the Comics-Retailer Man!

My own local Comicshop Guy could've posed for that cover (as the fashion-challenged figure in front, not as the Punisher), aside from his not owning an assault rifle or a Soviet-Russia-themed pink shirt. The haircut and beard are even just the way he was wearing his back over the summer... which means, actually, that it was an even better likeness when the cover was painted.

Hmm.