Long Days and Pleasant Nights...

...and the same to you, Gunslinger.

Thanks to Edh who reminded me that Sai King had authorized comics of the Dark Tower series. She brought me back a older promotional poster, but as a true Dart Tower addict, I'll treasure for some time.

But, in the usual fashion, I forgot to pick them up for about a week.

I head to my local comic book store. The location itself is a special memory to me, as it's the first place I ever bought a book for myself. In seventh grade, my buddy (Brotha Z) showed me the cover of Streams of Silver by R.A. Salvatore and had me read about three pages of an action sequence.

I was hooked.

I knew the store was there because Mom always went to Drug Emporium (now Ace Hardware) for necessary home stuff. I asked Mom for a ride to go for some books, and she quickly took me up on the offer (she enjoys the hot and heavy romance books). Not long after Mom would let me walk up there and come back with three or four books.

Times change...the place went out of business when I was in high school, then on my return from college, it had transformed into Pop Culture Comix.

I'd gone in before because R.A. Salvatore had authorized comics be made of his Demon Wars world, so I snatched those up in a heartbeat.

I like PCC because a lot of other comic book stores I've been in are full of tables of people playing collectible card games, Warhammer, and occasionally DnD a little too loud. PCC is cool, calm, mellow...and your almost overwhelmed with the amount of material they've got to offer.

I browse around, wondering how I'm going to find the comics I'm looking for when I remember it's being done by Marvel, so I head to that section and they're in alphabetical order by title. I pick up numbers 2, 3, and 5 out of 7, with the a couple second printings with different covers. I also grab some comic protectors to keep them nice and clean when I'm not reading them.

The owner (I assume, he's in there every time I go in there), promptly rings me up. I ask if he'll have the remaining comics in the series coming in, and he pulls up his order chart and tells me he'll have the ones I'm missing on Wednesday around 2pm. From approaching the counter, to looking up his order, to me walking out of the door was easily less than two minutes. They knew what he was doing and what he was looking for.

In addition, he also helped a woman who came in and was told the store did UPS shipping. Turns out he didn't, but by the time we both got the woman calmed down, he was drawing her a map to the post office in downtown Overland Park.

But the customer service doesn't end there.

I went in yesterday, and true to his word, everything I was missing was there. I snatched them up and headed to pay for them. "Hey, weren't you in here last week picking some of these up?"

"Yeah, I was. I bought what you had at the time, and you recommended I stop in today and pick up once your shelves were stocked."

"That's right! Did we get you a punch card last time?"

"Nope, I didn't even think about it."

"How many did you buy last week?"

"I can't remember for sure, but you said six of the seven comics were out, and I've got two here, so I'd say four, even though I might have bought a couple more."

"Fair enough" The guy punches the card six times. 14 more and I get a free comic book...and he took me on my word.

It's customer service like that...well, it makes you want to go back...even if you didn't have any notions of picking up any comic books in the near future.

The store itself is awesome. I've always been on the lookout for an original Spawn action figure just to sit around on the desk to keep Neo and Boba Fett company, and they've got more comic books than I've ever seen, with tons of card games, supplies, poker stuff, and a lot of new and vintage action figures.