August 6, 2010

Greetings friends, from the world's greatest comic store. It's been a crazy month here at Local Heroes, with flood waters, renovations, hour changes and great comics all happening at the same time!

We had some flood damage during the big storm, but thankfully, we didn't suffer any insurmountable damage. The water just kept coming and a customer and I were stuck here, with nothing to do but watch it come in the front and back doors! Thanks to said customer (Craig Nogosek)for all the help moving stuff around during the deluge, we would've fared much worse without his help!

Renovations had always been planned, so this seemed like as good a time as any. So after the flood clean-up, we moved right into worthless stage removal. The stage was ripped out, new floor laid, and room made for two new single-issue shelves and two new bookcases. Our comics can now breath a little easier with all this room! We hope you dig the new set-up and all the benefits it provides.

Speaking of changes, we're changing the time we open on Wednesdays to 1:00pm, in an effort to offer you better service. AS business as grown, so has the time it takes us to pick up, unpack and check-in all the merchandise each week. We hope the new time will allow you to walk in and find all the new comics shelved and ready to go!

Even though it's been a hectic few weeks - we still had time to read some really great comics. We went with one new and one oldish book this month. Matt Kindt's Revolver and Ben Templesmith's Wormwood: Gentlemen Corpse made the cut and are our books of the month for August.

Matt Kindt has had a really great track record of fantastic graphic novels the last few years, so I was extremely eager to read his newest offering from Vertigo - Revolver. The story centers on Sam, an everyman who hates his job, his boss, his girlfriend and is becoming increasingly annoyed with society in general. All this is immediately changed when he wakes up during the middle of the American Apocalypse and lives an entirely new life as the same man. Sam then begins to shift between this new world and the one he's used to, but with full realization of the transition. This book is strikingly original, fun to read and has a couple of great "oh shit" moments - even the way the pages are numbered is fresh and fun. A fantastic offering from Kindt, and if you dig this, be sure to check out some of his previous books - Super Spy and 3 Story: The Secret History of the Giant Man.

I've long neglected to give Wormwood book of the month status, not because it isn't amazing, but because there hasn't been any new books in a little while. Well now all that gets remedied and should be a perfect time for you to catch up on the series. Templesmith has proven to be one of the most prolific and talented creators of the last decade, with works like 30 Days of Night, Fell, Singularity 7, Choker, Groom Lake and Welcome to Hoxford. Like a lot of the great writers of the last 20 years, Templesmith has a great sense of humour and a desire to tell stories that are just a little bit "off" from mainstream titles. Wormwood was one of the first times that he took on the role of writer AND artist, and he never missed a beat. The hero in Wormwood is a gentlemen worm with a serious love of alcohol who uses his powers to animate a corpse. He gets into all sorts of misadventures, hangs out in a strip club with his equally entertaining cast of supporting characters, fights demons, offends indiscriminately and uses his occult powers to make sure he wins the day. Pretty magical stuff, funny as shit and beautifully illustrated in Templesmith's unique style. If you're looking for a comic out of the ordinary, I can't recommend this one enough.

We hope you give these and other great books a chance this month, don't forget we're here to help you find great comics! Thanks for reading and let us know what we can do to make Local Heroes the best comic store it can be!

See You Soon.

-LH (Greg)