Our Valued Customers

Anyone who’s worked in a comics store will confirm that some patrons are odd enough to provoke snickers as a survival mechanism. Making these moments public in a cartoon humor book is a trickier business. Chamberlain has gathered quotes, some hilarious, from his stint as a comics store clerk, and these cartoons run the gamut of typical conversation—being annoyed with females, leering at females, taking criticism of your favorite superhero too personally, making sweeping statements about how stupid some other superhero is, bickering about hypothetical situations that involve superheroes as though they were real, wishing super powers were real, and revealing a lack of knowledge in areas beyond comic books. As funny as any individual panel might be, the succession of bizarre and ignorant statements have the unintended effect of piling up into something both alarming and depressing. Chamberlain goes to great pains in his foreword to stress that his book is not representative of the typical customer. Though the reader understands that intellectually, reading the book ends up feeling like one has endured an irritating work day in the comics shop, and that couldn’t have been the author’s intention. (July)