A ray of hope!

Often, I end up thinking comic fans, by and large, are idiots. At least, the more vocal ones - the ones getting stiffies over Hal Jordan coming back, the ones that think "smoking hot chicks" are a gift to comic fans everywhere, the ones that buy multiple copies of issues in case they'll be "worth something" someday...

Every once in a while, though, I feel "a bump and heard an oh, beg your pardon / Suddenly I saw polka dots and moonbeams /All around a pug-nosed dream," to crib from Burke and Van Heusen. Today, that sunshine-and-happy-place comes courtesy from ADD's Five Questions with the guy he buys his comics from:

I remember one guy in his early twenties on a bike looking for a hot (at the time) issue of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN. He said he missed that issue, couldn’t find it anywhere and wanted to read how the story ended. I told him that we had it, but was a few dollars over the cover price. He didn’t care; we pulled it from the back issue bins where it was bagged and boarded. I handed it to him and he had a big smile on his face and said "at last!" After he bought it, I asked if he wanted a bag, he shook his head. He then proceeded to take the book out of the bag and board, and handed it back to me saying I could have it back. And then he did the unthinkable. He folded in half, put it in his back pocket, hopped on his bike and rode away. While some people in the store looked at this in disbelief, I just smiled, this dude was my hero. He didn’t care about condition or value; he just wanted to read the story.

Hooray for small miracles, wherever we may find them.