I ended up taking an unexpected vacation from the internet over the last couple of days, due mostly to work and life and all the bits in between.
I’m going to take another little absence, this time a planned one, starting very soon. The reason: reading. I never seem to have the time to read anymore and it bothers me, as I love to read. So tomorrow morning will be spent cleaning, and the afternoon will be spent reading and the evening will be spent with family doing family type things.
It will be glorious.
I’m not sure when I’ll be back. I plan on finishing Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince, which I am roughly half-way through, and Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, which I have not even started yet.
It may be a while.
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When you’ve worked in a comic book store, you unwittingly join a community of those who have worked a busy Wednesday, or those who have helped host a Pokemon tournament, or those to whom the task of cutting up a subscription holder’s discount card has been delegated. It’s a brethren, really.
One such “comic book guy” was a legend in the field, a man who has gone above and beyond the call of duty as the proprietor of a local comic shop. Indeed, a man who went out of his way to help boost the image of the comic book from something that rots the brains of children to that of a legitimate art form.
That man was Rory Root.
It saddens me to say that Rory Root, owner of Comic Relief, what is hailed as “The Comic Bookstore”, as died. I had never met Rory, something I now regret, though his presence in the field of comic sales is well felt amongst comic book guys such as myself.
Sad, sad news indeed.
Newsarama has a great article up in which Paul Levitz remembers Rory.
Mark Evanier and Neil Gaiman and Warren Ellis also had some very kind words about Rory.
They were lucky enough to know the man and their words are common amongst those who did.
I think I’ll take a bit of time away from Harry Potter and pick up a graphic novel.