Month: May 2014

Originally published November 10, 2000, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1408

The worshipers sat in respectful, anticipatory silence in New York’s St. Marks church, waiting for His arrival.

Usually when the faithful attend the church, they have to settle for communication with He Whom They Worship to be within the confines of the heart, or the mind, or the soul. People don’t go to church expecting that there’s actually going to be a visitation from the Divine One. That he’s simply going to materialize before them, smile boyishly, say, “Hi, how you doing?” and proceed to chat them up for the next few hours. At least, I don’t think a lot of people expect that. Maybe a few. Hëll, maybe all of them. I’m Jewish. I know from latkes and the lyrics to all the songs from “Fiddler.” From Christian church services, I know zip.

With that said, there was nevertheless a thrill of anticipation in the air that was (by my guess) atypical for church gatherings. The lights went down, all eyes on the stage. Light shone on the pulpit. The wait stretched over minutes. Nothing happened. The folks in the crowd began to laugh or talk to each other. One idiot started chanting under his breath “Let’s go, Mets” (hey, I had to keep myself amused somehow.)

People started guessing that a sensational entrance was being planned and had momentarily misfired. “Maybe he’s going to be raised up on a platform behind the podium…” one person speculated. “No, he’ll be lowered down by ropes from the balcony,” guessed another.

Continue Reading “Neil Gaiman’s “Last Angel” tour” →

Originally published November 3, 2000, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1407

When last we left what we laughingly refer to as “Our Hero,” the situation was as follows:

I had hit upon the brilliant scheme of proposing to long-time girlfriend Kathleen at The Adventurers Club at Disney World’s Pleasure Island. Everything was in place, with the members (i.e., cast) of The AC ready to make it a reality, the wall-mounted puppet known as “The Colonel” ready to work from the scripted proposal I’d drawn up, and everything set to go precisely at 10 p.m. that evening. The spanner tossed into the cunning plan was that my sister Beth and her husband Rande—down in Florida for a second honeymoon—were working in tandem with Kathleen to surprise me at The Adventurers Club, and the decision had been made to switch the rendezvous time to 9 p.m., threatening to foul up my carefully scheduled scheme and leaving me no way of informing the folks at The AC that we were going to be there an hour earlier.

Continue Reading “A Decent Proposal, Part 2” →

Originally published October 27, 2000, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1406

“I have a plan… and it’s so cunning you could stick a tail on it and call it a weasel.”—Edmund Blackadder

I wasn’t going to write about this, but several friends of mine in the fan community have told me I should because they thought you guys might be interested. And I suppose it’s somehow appropriate: Although it was never anything I’ve intended, I’ve lived my life in this column. Ups, downs, good times and bad; it’s been like weekly therapy sometimes, the differences being that I don’t have to pay for it and I’ve got about twenty thousand therapists… most of whom don’t say all that much to me in terms of guidance, but then again, many therapists just sit and listen, and the only time they speak is when they say, “Time’s up.”

So…

I decided to ask Kathleen, my girlfriend of three years, to marry me.

Continue Reading “A Decent Proposal, Part 1” →

Originally published October 20, 2000, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1405

Assorted stuff…

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Rumor mill: What big-mouthed columnist was recently driven to distraction by a rumor started on a comic news service?

Continue Reading “Everything I Need to Know I Learned from the Internet, and more” →