I was roped into helping via Wayne Wise, my friend and comics mentor from Phantom of the Attic Comics in Oakland (make sure to be at Phantom @ 12PM on June 14th for an awesome podcast experience!!!). By roped, I mean recommended. And by helping, I mean sitting behind a table and reading comics while occasionally selling a few art prints. It was a fun night, especially after I received some company in the form of the Comic Book Pitt.

The strangest thing about the fundraiser was the crowd. It was a bizarre mix of indie artist types (from Pittsburgh's Dr. Sketchy's, mainly), comic book creators and/or fans (like myself), and well-dressed (seemingly) rich people (who I assume are frequent patrons of the arts). Oh, and I almost forgot about the cougars. That's right. Hot, sexy, mature women in their 40s and 50s walking around in tiny tight dresses. It was surreal to see them mixed in with everyone else.

The arts patrons were an odd mix unto themselves. There were young couples that looked like they should be going out to the clubs in the Strip, and there were older couples that looked like they should be attending a lecture at the Carnegie Museum. The indie artists and the comic book people? I expected them. But the rest of the crowd caught me off guard.

Seeing Ron get the award was by far the highlight of the night. Of all working artists in comics today, he certainly deserves it. Apparently this was his first award, too. That's criminal.

The runner-up highlight? Sitting down to sell prints and noticing a stack of old Iron Man comics at the table to my left. I was wearing my War Machine t-shirt, and I coincidentally snagged Iron Man #269-272, where a drunk Tony Stark's behavior first forces Rhodey to put on the Iron Man armor. AWESOME!

Sadly, none of the other attendees noticed the confluence of shirt and reading material that I had going on. They were too busy clapping for Ron Frenz and Tom DeFalco... and, of course, ogling the cougars.

Without a doubt, the best of the best is the Phantom of the Attic (PotA) comics division on S Craig St in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Save for a few missing summers and a few months spent in Brooklyn, I've been shopping at PotA for going on eight years now and the experience only gets better with time.

PotA used to sit in a cramped second-floor space where they had it all… but it was small. Now they've moved across the street into a gorgeous loft with tons of room and even more comics. If PotA's previous space was a like a delicious Dagwood sandwich of comic book merchandise, then the new PotA is a bountiful smorgasbord of comics, graphic novels, manga, toys, and more.

Wayne Wise (seen above) is a longtime PotA employee and my comic book mentor. He let me in on a few interesting facts about the relocated shop. I was surprised to learn that all the racks are custom made. The design allows for individual clear plastic shelves to be interchanged every Wednesday as the new books hit:

Back issues are now stored inside large custom drawers that have been balanced to accommodate the cumbersome weight of two long boxes:

Graphic novels sit in tall bookcases lining the store's lengthy walls:

The manga section is also more fleshed out, complete with a flip rack of anime DVDs:

The indie comics section has expanded from a couple long boxes and a few cramped racks into towering shelves of graphic novels and indie-specific back issue drawers:

New issues have tons of room to breathe in the new setup too, as do toys and other merchandise:

I've been to a lot of comic book stores in my lifetime. Some have yielded priceless memories, from the dingy Ayer, Massachusetts shop where my dad got me Uncanny X-Men #100 for my ninth birthday to Graham Crackers Comics in St. Charles, Illinois where I bought a used Uncanny X-Men #275 poster right off the wall where it was hanging.

There are some comic shops that have been less than kind. The comic book stores in Fairport, New York were so terrible that I would go to my local Wegmans supermarket to get my comics off the spinner rack in the magazine aisle. Earlier in this decade, I worked for a comic book retail giant in New York City and I never want to set foot in their stores again.

There's no other way to say this: the best comic book store I've ever been to is now the most beautiful and spacious comic book store I've ever been to. I know I'm doing some serious ass kissing here, but Phantom of the Attic in Pittsburgh has always been good to me and I just want to give back a little bit of that love.

The stories are great, but often the letters pages are better. In Next Men #8, I discovered this classic letter written by none other than comic book mega-writer Brian Michael Bendis:

All I have to say is: ZING! Damn, Bendis. John Byrne was ripping on your hair way back before you even lost it!

I wonder: have these two creators ever met? They must have by this point. I hope they talked about this letter. Seriously.

P.S. If you haven't already noticed, I changed the way I'm naming this column. The whole "Week whatever 2008" system was just ineffective. How is anyone ever going to know what the post is about like that?