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I completely free-handed the Mickey on the back of the Starcaster with the Posca marker, the only image that wasn’t done with an Illustrator/ Cricut stencil, repping my status as a Disney adult. And now I can reveal that my next trip to Disney will actually be to Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea in October!

That’s right, as a joint 40th birthday party (mine in July 2024, hers in May 2025), Carly and I are going on a twelve day trip to Japan, visiting Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka, which will also be the first time I’ve missed processing a weekly shipment since July of 2018! There’s plenty of time for planning and I’m sure by that point you’ll all be in great hands with Austin, Mike and Jay.

Today marks the 7th anniversary of the ol’ First Look blog, and we have some very cool titles to spotlight that tie into our upcoming Free Comic Book Day festivities on Saturday, May the 4th (be with you)!

Image Skybound artist Matthew Roberts, so far best-known for Manifest Destiny, is launching the new Universal Monsters mini series, the Creature from the Black Lagoon Lives, and he’ll be joining us again for FCBD this year! The previous Dracula book was excellent, and we can’t wait to see what Matt brings to the new title!

And then local hero and FCBD guest Chris Giarrusso has a new printing of his ever-loving Mini Marvels strips as well as the brand-new all-ages sequel Officer Clawsome: Crime Across Time! He’ll be happy to sign both when he comes by on the big day!

Congrats to my brother and sister-in-law for welcoming into this world my second niece, Quinn Rue Mayer! This is the first child they’ve had since they’ve lived in NC and therefore she became the tiniest baby I’ve ever seen in person when we stopped by yesterday and she was still less than 48 hours old!

Stephen’s So-Called Emo Life!

• MLB the Show ‘24 - pretty much the only reason I keep GamePass on my X-box for half the year is that it costs the same as if I purchased the Show on its own.

• Star Wars High Republic Defy the Storm - hasn’t been my favorite entry in the era, but it’s just because everything feels like it’s on hold until the Stormwall falls, wherever that will happen.

• Ghosts Series 5 - I know the American remake has been super-successful on CBS, but for me & Carly it’s only about the original and we finally broke down and paid for the newest season on iTunes rather than try to figure out how a VPN works.

Free Comic Book Day, the most exciting day of the year, is just one month from today, falling on May the 4th be With You (Saturday, May 4th) for the first time since 2019! In addition to picking out eight comics from the 50+ available titles absolutely FREE, you’ll receive one FREE raffle ticket for hourly drawn prizes (plus an addition ticket for every $10 you spend in the store)! We’ll be running our classic Buy 2 Get 1 FREE sale on all graphic novels, toys, and back issues, and our always amazing Warehouse Stock of $1 comics will be available for your perusal on the sidewalk!

We’ll also be hosting signings with Matthew Roberts, artist on Skybound’s Manifest Destiny and the upcoming Universal Monsters Creature from the Black Lagoon Lives, Chris Giarrusso, creator of Officer Clawsome: Lobster Cop and Mini Marvels, and Becka Seashols, proprietor of the Art of Cute!

We hope you join us in celebrating the 7th anniversary of our grand opening!

Hop by the Greensboro store any time between now and Easter Sunday (March 31st, when we’ll be open regular 12 PM - 5 PM business hours), make a purchase, and pick out an egg for a sweet treat inside each one, plus the chance for FREE back issues, additional in-store discounts, and gift certificates in several extra-lucky capsules!

Today is also Opening Day when the Yankees will be taking on the dreaded Astros! To celebrate, here’s the spotlight of The Captain, the logo, and the new captain forever enshrined on my Starcaster, which is just as good as Monument Park, right?

I’m consoling myself over denying my man-cave the addition of the HasLab Ghost Trap & PKE meter by making the AMC Theaters exclusive Trap popcorn bucket my must-have item of Spring 2024, so much so that I’m going to go buy it at the AMC in High Point and then drive back to Greensboro to actually watch the movie using my Regal Unlimited pass. Ghostbusters Afterlife was the first movie I saw back in theaters post-but-still-in-the-pandemic-cause-I-still-had-to-wear-a-mask-in-the-theater, and even though it got a little overly sentimental near the end, I’m fine with it in my head-canon in a Force Awakens kind of way.

Plus Doop is very Slimer-like! I based the Starcaster Doop off of a sketch that Darwyn Cooke did in my X-Force: Famous, Mutant & Mortal hardcover during my first San Diego Comic Con in 2009. It was trickier having to create the eyes and X out of negative space since his original was all hollow lines. Some of the smaller lines closed up on me and botching Darwyn’s signature to the point that I covered most of it with a blue accent was one of the few regrets I had with the finished product.

Back in 2009, before his Eisner award-winning run on Daredevil or co-creation of Fire Power with Robert Kirkman, Chris Samnee used to drop a sketch into his wife Laura’s lunch bag when he packed it each day and she would share them on her blog for everyone to enjoy. The same year, Carly and I met and befriended the Samnees via signings and conventions, so when our wedding rolled around in 2011, Chris gifted us a portrait in his Lunch Notes style. It now hangs in our front hallway to welcome everyone comes in the house.

On the Starcaster, I scaled the details down to the bare essentials to fit with the iconography of everything else I was painting on, but I think the touches work well and still come across as me and Carly. It’s on the back, so it hangs closer to me, and is the largest single piece on the body as I was feeling especially proud of everything we’ve accomplished in our thirteen years of marriage and almost 20 years together!

The next stop on the Ssalefish convention stock road trip will be Matthews Comic Con, this Saturday, March 9th from 11 AM - 6 PM at the Matthews Community Center at 100 E McDowell St. in Matthews! We moved a mix of variants, silver age books, and keys at the Durham Mini Comic Con last week, but there are still hundreds of great finds still hiding in those boxes.

We’re also almost ready to announce our guests and events for Free Comic Book Day 2024, taking place Saturday, May 4th (“May the Fourth be with you”), our biggest and best ever, so stay tuned to the usual channels to be the first to know!

Scratch, the crown jewel of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles collection we acquired back in November, has finally returned from being AFA graded and came back a Y75, just in time to coincide with the release of Last Ronin II Re-Evolution next week! It was definitely a learning experience getting a toy graded instead of the hundreds of comics we’ve have done, but it was well worth the wait and is sure to be the grail of someone’s collection.

There will be lots of releases and changes in the coming weeks and months based on news that rolled out of the ComicsPRO Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh last week, like DC returning to Wednesday new releases with the rest of the industry and new printings in omnibus format for the majority of the Marvel & DC crossovers, and we’ll keep you up to date on all of it as it becomes more pertinent!