Holy smokes! I just realized that there hasn't been a posted discussion on Craig Thompson's newest work. What did you folks think?

I've got it but still haven't had a chance to read it. I plan to soon though, when the time is right. Did you enjoy it?

My bank account is still in recovery from buying too many* guitar pedals lately, but I really want to read this.

*"too many" is an imaginary number

I'm still working through it. My wife blazed through. She felt that it was better than Blankets. I'm almost finished, though.



I wasn't going to have enough to pick it up when I did, but thanks to the supply and demand caused by DC's New 52 I was able to work out a trade with my local comic shop guy. I doubt he'll ever let me get such a deal out of him again. Oh, well.

I can only imagine the conversation went something like this:

Arrow Eye "I wish to purchase Habibi, yet I lack the funds. All I have, sadly are these New 52 #1 all destined for the dumping ground of the quarter bin..."

Shop owner "I'll take 'em! Enjoy Habibi!"

Arrow Eye/Shop owner "Sucker..."

There is nothing not to like about that post.

I agree. I wish I'd have thought of something keen like that to swap for my copy.

All four comic shops within twenty miles of me not only carried "Habibi", but were sold out of them within the end of the day on Wednesday. My local shop said they're going to be reordering some more but all I could think was "Way to go, Thompson!". I'm sure it will be worth the wait.

While this would have been the way to go I kind of played the part of Han Solo instead. Leaving the bounds of Grand Rapids, where not a single shop had extra copies of the more popular titles of the 52, I made my way about thirty minutes East to a small town which had a comic shop that was better stocked in general than most shops I've seen. The only people who frequented this oasis of cool were the locals and a few others like myself, so hardly anyone. On their wondrous shelves I found all the titles from the 52 release, even multiple copies. Knowing this and realizing that I had access to something the stores back home didn't I employed my smuggling skills to bring extra copies of the hot titles back. So after disturbing the comic book economy of Grand Rapids for a weekend I managed to work out a deal for Habibi.

It was fun driving back into town, slamming a Monster Rehab, talking to my non-existent co-pilot (my wife didn't want to come because she thought I was being super-geek-silly), and looking at my wonderful cargo. The faces on the covers of those first printings of Action Comics #1 and Aquaman #1 were practically smiling up at me. It felt like I was doing my fellow Grand Rapidian geeks a service. True I was doing it for selfish reasons, but I realized on that drive back that folks who would have not been able to find the issues would now not have to go without.

Looking back I find that I actually lost out on the deal. The store where I made the trade ended up marking up all the issues to about three times the cover price. Technically I could have had two copies of Habibi and they still would have made profit. I'm just thankful I managed to get a copy. The other local shops were all pretty much Habibi-less as well, Jake.

Oh, in case you're wondering, no, I didn't dump my cargo at the first sign of Imperials. The State Troopers were quite sedate out that way.

I just hope the covers didn't get too banged up, rolling around under the floor in those hidden compartments.