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Officially starting up the engine on the hype-train for Mask Con 2020, taking place Saturday, October 10th at the Lexington Cinemas new drive-in theater facility! That’s right, it’s OUTSIDE (with a rain date of the following Saturday, October 17th), and we’ll have a brand-new 30,000 $1 book collection out for sale among the 25 other (and counting) dealers!

Tomorrow morning, we say goodbye to my third oldest friend (behind Carly and Tyler Klein), my beautiful brown-eyed girl, Maeby. We got her on Carly’s 21st birthday, and even though I acquiesced to her extravagant gift request by finding the ad on Craig’s List for free puppies, I made it clear that she would by my dog, if we broke up, she would come with me. Fortunately neither of them has left my side for the last 15 years.

While a mainstay at my old place of business on Wednesdays and Saturdays, she was an infrequent visitor to Ssalefish because her ever-shedding hair didn’t work with our light floors and the older she got, she became more and more unsteady and uncomfortable on slick surfaces, but she still loved meeting everyone she could on Halloween ComicFest and Free Comic Book Day.

I’m keeping it short today cause I’m already mulling over next week’s more timely post. Feels weird to be blogging in Greensboro after about four months of Thursdays spent down in Concord, but Colton asked me to kick off the weekend for him tomorrow instead so he could take his lady out for a nice birthday dinner, probably at Uncle Julio’s in Chapel Hill.

An all-time favorite game of mine that also happens to be comic-adjacent is finally coming out on the current console generation, including Switch, this Christmas, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World!

This weekend includes an extremely quick jaunt up to New Jersey this weekend to see my grandparents since I won’t be making my usual stop-in during October for New York Comic Con and I don’t want to go more than a year without seeing them.

It’s more perplexing witnessing the state-to-state decisions for handling the pandemic, for example NJ is only going to start allowing indoor seating in restaurants at any capacity this Saturday, whereas we’ve had it since I believe June, but Carowinds and movie theaters are closed here while Great Adventure and AMC are open up there.

While this picture of a storage unit may not look like much right now, just know that everything that was removed from it will be well-worth the trip Jay made to Atlanta to pick it up! With our new warehouse manager Xylon riding shotgun, they loaded up over 100 long boxes of new comics that will have to be sorted, processed and doled out into a variety of socially-distanced and sanitary events we’re putting together for the fall! It was more than we could even carry in the Ssalefish van, we had to rent a box truck!

Today was an insane day with so much going on and being set up, some I can reveal now and some you need to wait just a bit longer to discover, which is why I’m posting so late!

We’ve got a signing with Brian “Smitty” Smith locked in for Wednesday, September 2nd to mark the release of the first two Pea Bee & Jay graphic novels!

We’ve got two new waves of Black Series, two new waves of Marvel Legends, and every Star Wars and Mario LEGO set being released this fall (that isn’t an exclusive)!

And we’ve got a new GIANT collection of silver age books making their way to the backstock!

Obviously we didn’t get to do our usual sales during Free Comic Book Day in May or Independence Day in July, but we just couldn’t wait for Labor Day in September, either, so this Friday, August 14th through Sunday, August 16th, take advantage of Buy 2 Get 1 FREE on all graphic novels, Funko Pops, action figures, and back issues! It’s the Ssalefish Ssummer Ssale!

Greensboro’s sale excludes new (unbagged & boarded) backwall books, LEGOs, statues (including non-articulated PVC figures), supplies, posters, and novelties and all purchases have to be made within the same category, i.e. three graphic novels, not a graphic novel, a figure, and a Pop.

This will most likely be our last sale until after Thanksgiving, so make hay while the sun shines!

Please join me in wishing Colton a very happy birthday! He took a much needed day off today and went to the zoo in Asheboro only to get stuck in the rain! Can you think of a more Colbert situation? But that said, I never thought once I got married I would have a regular roommate again, but that all changed for six weeks this spring, and while I’m glad I have free reign of my basement again, even after spending all of that time together, I can say you’d be hard pressed to find a more earnest dude!

I’m not super happy with my tone on this cover of blink-182 Greatest Hits b-side “Not Now” (I’m still getting used to my new NYC Tech 21 VT Bass DI I got myself for my birthday), or even my playing, but I feel like it’s been a few months since I posted any music and I’ve gotta get myself back on the horse.

Happy Umbrella Academy Season 2 Eve! I’ve got my pre-orders in for the Seance (Klaus) maquette from Dark Horse Direct, variants for the You Look Like Death: Tales of the Umbrella Academy mini series, and the volume 3 deluxe edition hardcover, and I’m seven episodes into my season one re-watch, but I’m not anticipating it as much as I was in February of 2019 (and I definitely won’t try to watch it in one sitting).

I know it’s a tired old adage, but I can’t stress enough that as much as you and I may enjoy the show, the book is still better! Compared to the vibrancy of the world and art in the comic, the show might as well be black & white or sepia, so if you’ve never tried it, grab the first trade, the stand-alone Hazel & Cha Cha Save Christmas still on the shelves for Christmas in July, or jump into the new Klaus-centric series when it starts in September.