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It’s true, “Like a Bantha” is not as great a bop as “Seagulls” or “The Bed Intruder Song”, but it’s still been stuck in my head for the last three hours and it might be the best thing that Boba brought to his book!

We’ve shared just a fraction of the 6K books that I teased last Thursday that have made it to the wall as well as some pleasant surprises that walked in on Saturday morning! Hopefully all six New Arrivals back issue bins will be completely changed out in the next week or so. BUT, the two big moves I was alluding to are still in a holding pattern!

I just got word that we’ll be busting out some of our warehouse stock for the Greensboro Pop Culture Con, taking place Sunday, March 6th from 11 AM - 5 PM at the Wyndham Garden Inn on Swing Road, attached to Cooper’s Ale House. It’s been since HeroesCon 2019 that I took the lead on a convention, so we’ll see how I do!

So many secret plans that I can’t talk about until tomorrow! Since my post on June 13th, I’ve gone from the world being my oyster to piling my plate high with possibilities that I’m still waiting to see play out that I’m ready for another vacation or to get to getting on already!

I’ve also just caught up on the Expanse books, all of the latest Star Wars High Republic novels, For All Mankind on Apple TV+, and all my weekly shows, so, year, bring it on!

In the preview you can nab an exclusive look at some of the other backwall heat that didn’t make it to Instagram the other day: New Gods #1 first appearance of Orion, Highfather, Metron, Kalibak & Lightray, Ms. Marvel #18 first appearance of Mystique, Marvel Spotlight #32 first appearance of the first Spider-Woman, Jessica Drew, and G.I. Joe A Real American Hero #21 Newsstand Edition groundbreaking Snake Eyes silent issue!

If you were in the shop earlier this week (Monday, Tuesday, before lunchtime on Wednesday) you might have noticed things were looking a little dimmer than normal with a bank of our overhead lights out. Contrary to popular belief, we were not invoking a coffee shop ambiance (though we didn’t hate it), the lights were just the next thing to show their age as we roll towards our 5th anniversary this spring. Fortunately, my dad is best and can figure anything out, going straight from buying me breakfast at Waffle House to spending four hours getting to the bottom of our little problem!

Now we’re shining bright!

The second job I had in the comic retailing game was bagging a mountain of comics (like, seriously more than 10,000) destined for the back issue bins of another store in town for trade credit. The first thing that caught my eye on my first day was an X-book that looked unlike anything I’d ever seen: lush, sexy, and busting with energy, at least a decade ahead of its time, about a team of mutants putting their lives on the line for the glitz & glam of reality TV. From that moment on I stopped measuring my time in dollars and only focused on the seconds I needed to “buy” the next issue.

That book was X-Force #116 by Peter Milligan & Mike Allred, and that book lead to X-Statix, and my appreciation of Nick Dragotta and Paul Pope and Darwyn Cooke and Nick Derrington (unknowingly), and spontaneous road trips to Raleigh for DC Solo issues, and buying every copy of the X-Statix omnibus I could find on clearance (now a very expensive item on the secondary market) and giving them as gifts, and now X-Cellent, out next week.

Saga is coming back next week! LEGO Star Wars The Skywalker Saga (of which I pre-order the deluxe edition from Best Buy with the Han in Carbonite steel book case and Luke drinking blue milk minifig on August 8, 2020) finally has a release date of April 5, 2022! Book of Boba Fett will go straight into Moon Knight! When We Were Young Festival in Vegas next October tickets go on sale tomorrow!

Yep, things are looking up for ol’ Gil…

Tickin’ boxes to start the year!

• Remodel we waited eight months to be completed = DONE!

• Marathon I trained for nine months = DONE!

• Massive week of releases we’ve been dying for for the last month = COMING NEXT WEEK!

As president Bartlet always shouted to Mrs. Landingham at the end of an episode of The West Wing, “What’s next?!”

Back down in Orlando, and things have been even crazier than usual with Carly’s brand-new car breaking down in the middle-of-nowhere South Carolina four hours into the trip resulting a limping a 20 mile drive at 20 miles per hour down a major highway to the nearest mechanic, a new transmission hopefully currently (on Friday) being installed and a rental car costing over $100 a day! Add to that a 2:45 AM Uber to run 26.2 miles before we head back on Sunday and it’ll certainly be a trip to remember and hopefully never repeat. But, look, we’re still smiling!

Before we get to the tradition of recapping the keys we’ve had the good fortune of shepherding to their forever homes this year, I want to remind you that our schedule will NOT change on Friday for New Year’s Eve or Saturday for New Year’s Day! We’ll be open 11 AM - 7 PM both days as usual.

Not to bemoan the new books on the shelf that we live Wednesday to Wednesday for just as much as many of you, but it’s the x-factor of never knowing what could walk in the door when you get to work on any given day that brings a real thrill to our job. This year we definitely had some once-in-a-lifetime titles come through our door, like the Spider-Man #1 Platinum Edition, of which one copy was sent to each store as a thank you when Todd McFarlane’s landmark debut hit in 1990, and Space Ghost #1 from Gold Key.

Absent from the list and photos were some of the rarest and hottest indie books of the year like a full runs of every variant and every printing of Something is Killing the Children, Bitter Root, and Monstress because sometimes even I don’t personally fully grasp the significance or because the industry has reached a point where it moves so quickly that things are here and gone before we know it!

The best gift we could have gotten this year came through at the eleventh hour: our new roof surviving the two torrential downpours we had earlier this month, being able to replace the ceiling tiles that had been obviously damaged since white was switched out for black right before Free Comic Book Day in August, and our new floor going into place!

It could just be my imagination, but it feels warmer, brighter, calmer than it has since May. We appreciate you bearing with us for the last seven months (and last five years for that matter) and all your kind words about us getting back to normal (and that goes double for everyone that must surely have been kidding when they said they liked the concrete floor covered in glue residue just as well)!

The FREE Marvel calendar is BACK for 2022, so the first 50 people to make a purchase next Wednesday can start planning out their year!