An Excursion to Mile High Comics in Denver, CO

I wasn't terribly excited to have to get on a plane and head to Denver Saturday morning.  It's been a busy couple of weeks at work, and I wrapped up major meetings Thursday and Friday.  But off to Denver I went, asked to present at a conference that was aimed at my industry, but not so much directly at me and what I do.

When I was first getting into comics and believed I only really needed Batman, X-Men, Teen Titans and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in my life, I came to find out that a couple years before I learned what an X-Man or Teen Titan was, there has been a crossover between the Big Two, and an Uncanny X-Men/ Teen-Titans comic had actually been printed.  It blew my mind.  I never saw the cover of the comic, or who had worked on it.  It existed as a line-item in ads for a place on Denver called Mile High Comics as a title and price point.*

Eventually I saved up some money rather than taking whatever I had and riding immediately to Piggly Wiggly on my bike to look at the spinner rack.  My mom wrote a check and in some amount of time, the comic arrive in the mail.  It was like magic.  And the cover to the comic was pretty awesome, even if the story set the tone for how poorly I've always felt crossovers worked.

Over the years of following comics, I'd always heard legends of the store itself - a massive space that dwarfed the imagination (this was back when Austin Books was about 1500 square feet and half of that was dedicated to sci-fi books) and had an amazing selection.

Eventually, I even bought a couple of issues from them online before deciding the fun of collecting comics is in the hunt, not just ordering something off the internet.

I had just crawled into bed Friday night when I realized:  hey, I'm in Denver with time to kill.  I could jump in a cab and...

So Saturday afternoon I stepped outside my hotel, negotiated a return trip with a cab driver and off I went to the Mile High Comics Superstore.  And a Superstore it is, indeed.

this represents about 1/2 of what you can actually see inside the door...

Rocky Mountain Hi!

I'm in Denver from tomorrow afternoon until Monday afternoon for work. Attending and participating in a conference.

I've never been to The Mile High City, but I certainly hope to join this club they have that I keep hearing is pretty great. Everything I know about Denver can be summed up this way:

That Elway Fellow is like Football Elvis

My buddy Matt hails from Denver

It seems to be home to the grossest family of beers I can think of

This dude is really named "Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr." and went to Texas Tech University

I won't actually learn anything else about Denver as I foresee a lot of the Westin convention center, cab rides, air ports and airplanes in my future.

Movie Watch: Sleepwalk With Me (2012)

I listen to as many or more podcasts and audiobooks on my commute and driving around the state for work as I listen to music.  Over the years, one of the podcasts I've listened to regularly is This American Life from NPR, which occasionally features work by comedian Mike Birbiglia.  Birbigilia's stuff always feels very honest, a sort of milquetoasty Louis CK with a painful level of self-awareness.

Birbiglia has delivered his monologues on air/ podcast before regarding his issues with sleepwalking, so when I heard he was doing a movie on the topic, I more or less figured I knew what it was going to be.  So, yeah, lo and behold that was pretty much exactly right.

Novemberama! Joan Crawford!

Joan really looks like she knows her way around a sharp, deadly knife...

No.  Just, absolutely, no.  We are not doing this.

Happy Turkey Month, everybuddy!

Halloween Close-Out

Well, that was a whole lot of Halloween on this blog.  I hope you kids enjoyed it.

I figured I might as well do a real Halloween blowout here once, so, that was it.  I like me some Holidays, for sure, but Halloween and it's focus on lightweight scares, costumes and candy has always been a favorite.

In days of yore I might have tried to make more of Halloween night itself, but these days I'm pretty happy just to spend the evening in the driveway and get the chance to see the kids come up in their costumes.  And this year we had a heard of turtles.  Man, there were a lot of kids.

Some great costumes from Adventure Time characters to Kermit the Frog to Witches and Werewolves to somebody named "Minecraft Steve", who was the kid across the street with a box on his head.  And, because memes never really die, we had The Honey Badger.

Jason and Amy came by, so we had some company as we handed stuff out to the trick-or-treaters.  It's always more fun with company.

Anyway, it is a weird Halloween partially because the next several days are going to be nuts.  I have serious meetings at work followed by a work trip to Denver that will last all of 36 hours and end on Monday.

Hope your Halloween was fun!

If what I saw at CVS when I popped in this evening was any indication, we are now officially in the Christmas season.

Happy Halloween, Y'all!

About this time you people should be heading home to deal with little ones and to hand out candy.  I hope your Halloween season was spooktacular!

Trick or Treat, smell my feet.

Halloween! "Frankenstein" and Edgar Winter!

If you finish listening to this all the way through, get yourself some Halloween candy as a reward.

Happy Halloween! Sheila Frankenstein - Von Helsing!

Hi!  I'm Sheila Frankenstein!

this happened.

Happy Halloween! Monster Mash!

You are now legally allowed to play this song until midnight, and then it needs to go back in the vault for another year.

Happy Halloween! The Fonz!

The Fonz in costume