My pal Mike is famous today.
Blog@Newsarama picked up an item from the local paper on the imminent closure of our only comics shop. Mike has been working at Time Warp in Longmont for some time and managing the place for about a year now. There's no doubt the store has been suffering financially for some time, but Wayne the owner is finally throwing in the towel and concentrating on his other store in Boulder.
There's been a lot of discussion about the reasons for the failure of the shop, many of which are expressed in the article. I'll refrain from expressing my personal opinions on that topic for the time being, but let me just say that Mike is exceptionally good at his job and with his customers.
Aware of the coming closure, me and my friend Mark switched to ordering our comics online from MyComicShop.com a couple of months ago. I have to say that the service and customer experience is top notch, and I get a better discount there than I've ever gotten from a brick-and-mortar comics shop.
What's missing is the human interaction: that longstanding ritual of stopping by the shop to pick up that week's arrivals and chatting with your favorite staff members and fellow addicts about all the ins and outs of our various fictional worlds. So nowadays Mark and I geek when we can, and get together with Mike for beers and comics chat every month or so.
Not quite the same, but we also never got to drink beer in the shop.
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