You read that right. My relationship with my friend and the store was so amazing that I bought the X-Men. Not, like, the cool ones, either. A crossover with Ultimate Spider-Man. I KNOW. I even stuck with this store after moving to a little burg about 40 minutes away. It was kind of a hike and ended up with me cutting my visits down to about once a month. Tragic but satisfying - like eating the ENTIRE container of Ben and Jerry's. Mmm.

Then came along manga. Seductive little half-inch thick books with delicious ice-cream colored covers, gooey-eyed heroines on the front. It was furtive at first, buying them and slipping them into the middle of my stack, scheduling runs for when my buddy wasn't working. (I later found out that he was still sorting pulls and had put them into my box, totally ruining my cover, but forcing me to come out into the light, so to speak.) At some point during all of this, due to a moment of brief pettiness on my friend's behalf, I also lost my constant ten percent discount. That rankled a little. C'mon. I'm a faithful shopper, make this trip worth my while. Then came The Incident.

I hadn't gotten my manga fix for a while, it seemed. I understood that they had to be hand-pulled, so to speak, but had they not come out? Being an Oni Press sort of girl, I know about delay, so I vowed patience. A while turned into a few months and, curious, I asked about release dates the next time I was in for a visit. The hipster running the counter pulled up dates as one of the owners came over to investigate. It turned out that they had missed the latest release of all of them. Every single book I was pulling.

A little frustrated, I asked when they were going to be coming in and they assured me it was a few days. So, a few days later when I made a special trip, the same owner who had been standing there chuckled and told me "They all came in at once!"

What. Seriously? Dude, I was there. You were there. We were both there. Don't play me like that, okay? But I persevered and stuck with it. Then I got four copies of the same issue, same cover of Doktor Sleepless. We all know how I feel about my boy, Warren, but this was a little excessive.

A few weeks after I got the fourth copy of Doktor Sleepless, my friend, Steve, and I went on a grand tour of another little town's comic book shops. And, frankly, I wasn't impressed. No love here. But then he mentioned another store that we weren't going to have time to run to. I said I would pop by and check it out. I was looking for a back issue, after all. I was on a quest. No stone would be unturned!

On the way, my husband mentioned that maybe this store would be kind of cool since it was mere minutes from my house. The seed was planted but then I walked in. There was a game room and a wall of manga and Firefly toys and a nice guy behind the counter offering to tell his people to look for my book. I might have started to make a crack about the gamers because I'm mean but I was told that there was a place for everyone at Fantasy Books. I swear, I felt guilty and welcomed at the same time. I got a form to start my pull list but didn't fill anything out. I didn't want to be a cheater, you know? I asked friends the best way to do all this. They all agreed that it might be time and just to make a clean break.

So I dumped my old store. Admittedly, I had to have a few drinks before I could go in to do the deed but I walked right in there and told them we were through. The whole thing was anti-climactic, though, for all my whiskey and coke courage - the girl at the counter was new and made all of my pulls inactive without a blink. I walked out, cheerful, and emailed my pull-list to Fantasy Books the next day.

Fantasy Books, located in practically downtown Belleville, is my dream-store. I get my ten percent back, which is kind of a big deal when you're laying out some cash for books. They're cheerful and involved in the process, dealing with my constant requests for new books with aplomb. There aren't any intimidating people wearing shapelessly cool clothes. These are comics people, not ultra-cool cats with computers. Last Wednesday, Mike stayed open a few minutes late so I could pick up my pulls. He was, naturally, wearing a Superman shirt. I sent a request for some pulls the next morning with apologies for adding stuff every week and Steve said it was awesome that people got so involved in the hobby instead of just sending a confirmation. They're so cool. I get the big magazine Previews for free (because I order all sorts of crazy stuff out of there) and it exposes me to all sorts of shiny stuff I might otherwise be missing.

Furthermore, they have a Hello Kitty figurine dispenser at the door. I think it's love.