I drove over to Arcane Comics yesterday afternoon with Shawn and Anastatia to pick up some stuff that had arrived for me and so Shawn could check his box as well. I’m not habitually a comic-reader, but I had ordered the complete trade-paperback set of Akira so I could finally read the whole thing cover-to-cover.

My brother-in-law Matt had introduced me to Akira in about 1990, and I was smitten. Katsuhiro Otomo’s imagery and plot line were completely enthralling to me. I was determined to land a full set of the colorized Epic Comics publication. As luck would have it, the owner of a (then) local comic shop in Pullman had a nearly-complete set he sold me for a song. Of course, I wasn’t about to damage these gems by actually reading them, heavens to betsy no! I put them in archival bags and began purchasing the Marvel trade-paperbacks, which was pretty financially painful at the time given my salary as a sandwich-slinger. In fact, I never could afford to complete the set.

Now that I’m older and money isn’t as much of an object any more, I finally got my shit together enough to look into picking up where I left off. Sadly, the full-color TPs are no longer available, but an English-translation version of the original black-and-white compliations is, and I set about to pick up the complete collection. Which brings us back around to yesterday at Arcane.

I picked up my purchase and went out to set it in the back seat of my car while Shawn and the Bug poked around in the shop. Shutting the door, I took a moment to study the tableau: a station wagon with a hatch full of WiFi equipment–access points, clients, antennas and cables–and a back seat littered with comic books.

Perhaps I’m not the Dilberttante I thought I was. 😀