About a year and a half ago, I stumbled across the blog of a guy who was contemplating starting a comic store. He talked about how bad the local comic shops were, and how he could do better. It looked like he had some real design sense, and a love of comics, and even some awareness of business. RIOT COMICS.

But he also had some very idealistic notions. He created a great looking store, with an art gallery, a lounge, tasteful displays. He declared that he would only carry the best graphic novels, and not quite so much superhero, and no back issues. It was going to be a pure comic lovers's bookstore.

Over the first six months of so, he stopped talking about his art gallery, he stopped showing pictures; he mentioned, to his surprise, that the superhero comics were selling and the art comics weren't. He brought in back issues. In other words, he retreated somewhat from his dream store and began to look like the rest of us.

But he still talked about how hard it was to work everyday, about how much more money he could make working for someone else, how he couldn't do all the fan things he used to do (like go on trips and to conventions) because he was tied down by the store.

When he announced that he thought the rest of us was bored by all his talk of business, and that he was only going to talk about comics, which is what we were really interested in --- well, he lost me. Hell, there are hundreds, thousands, of sites talking about comics. But almost no one talking about the real experience of running a store.

Today, that fellow announced that he was closing his store to take a nice, safe job. Not much of a surprise. It was a fascinating experience. Here's a pretty smart guy, with good taste, who found that owning a comic shop wasn't all it cracked up to be. Frankly, he was irritating with his pronouncements of how all the other comic shops were doing it wrong, and he was going to show us how to do it right. But it was also strangely satisfying to watch reality begin to work on him and his reaction to that reality.

Its the Best Minimum Wage Job a Middle Aged Guy Ever Had. It's not the Best Lucrative Secure Artistically Satisfying Fan Boy Job a Young Fellow Ever Had.