Life in the Geek Lane: The Dork Knights Return!
June 20th, 2008Well, there’s been some changes in store of late, and its been a while since we last spoke on a personal level, geek to geek, so lets check out what has been happening here in the real-world counterpart of Starstore.com, namely The Last Picture Show, here in the Meadowhall centre in Sheffield.
We now have a new internet Monkey colleague in the form of Jon, who out-geeks most of the rest of us by being an avid WoW player. Thankfully he isn’t quite so knowledgeable on comics and movies, so the balance is steady, for now at least. Anyway, the nerdometer is about ready to explode as it is right now, thanks to me frothing at the mouth with glee at the current series of Doctor Who (See our regular TARDISWATCH and TORCHWATCH features for proof of that), so my crown is still residing safely upon my shiny head. Anyway, welcome Jon!
The hot merchandise of late has been the Gears of War action figures, the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figures, the Halo 3 range. The AVPR range is still proving to be popular, so as long as you guys want the Hybrids, Aliens and Predators, we’ll do our utmost to get them in.
Everyone’s getting stoked for the imminent release of the new Batman film THE DARK KNIGHT, and quite rightly so. The posters and some of the merchandise has started to arrive, and we’re proud to have it on our shelves as we all love what Christopher Nolan has been doing with Batman. Its been quite a year for superheroes so far, what with Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and Batman getting people excited about superhero cinema again. The direction the Marvel movies are taking is really quite brilliant, and things are coming together nicely for a coherent Marvel screen universe, which if course will lead nicely into the AVENGERS movie.
There’s been some shifting around of stock and shelves and the layout of the shop is mutating into something much cooler. The shop layout is something that never really stays still for long- like your home, there’s always something that would look ‘better over there’. We’re trying to get everything displayed nicely and keep the store fully accessible for visitors.
We’ve been trying to figure out which crossover event we’re more into at the moment- Secret Invasion or Dreamwar. It looks like Dreamwar is edging ahead in the Starstore popularity stakes as stuff actually happens in it. Secret Invasion is cool as hell but the pace has been a bit too slow in picking up to keep us guessing. Elsewhere on our comics racks, the new Tank Girl series has been picking up a bunch of new readers and keeping the iconic, foul-mouthed anti-heroine in the public consciousness, so that’s a good thing. On the graphic novels front, the reissue of Batman: The Killing Joke has been flying out, and there’s also the first collected volume of THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY out now for all of those My Chemical Romance fans who suddenly found themselves reading comics and discovering they’re actually rather good. My advice to those new comics fans? Get hold of WATCHMEN so you can be like the rest of us here and know all about the greatest comic series ever released, before the movie comes out next year. That way you get to say ‘I TOLD you it was brilliant’ once Zack Snyder’s adaptation hits the screens.
Anyways, I gotta get back to sorting out the new layout and mocking Greg’s scene kid hair.









