On Line

With my two-year anniversary of working at the Edge rapidly approaching, it's a little hard to not look back on how I actually started coming to the Edge and how I managed to land a job working for the boss man.

Practically all of my life "Batman: The Animated Series" has been my favorite cartoon and for the longest time I tried to find some way to have all of the episodes on DVD (this was long before Warner Brothers ever started releasing them to DVD). Finally, about four years ago I managed to get a hold of a set of these DVDs and soon after that I found out that Bruce Timm, the creator of "Batman: The Animated Series", had written and drawn a short story in the Batman: Black and White four-part comic book miniseries. I had to have it so I checked the phone book for comic book stores in the area and found 2 comic shops; Not-Collector's-Edge-Comics and Collector's Edge Comics WEST. Since Not-Collector's-Edge-Comics was closer to my house, I went there first, but they didn't have what I was looking for so I headed over to WEST and met John for the first time.

The clean store that John was running impressed me quite a bit after going to Not-Collector's-Edge-Comics and the fact that John had what I needed brought me back again for all three of the other "Batman: The Animated Series" related comic book series. Since there were so many other Batman series out at the time, I had to get those too so I started my package soon after and John supplied my comic book fix on a weekly basis from then on. I've been a comic book junky for a little over three years now.

About two years ago, I started asking John if the owner had any positions open at any of his stores that I might be able to fill. He asked Steve and apparently since Mike Lang, the basement rat before me, was leaving for the Air Force he needed someone to take over for him in the basement. That's where I came into the picture. The day that I came into South to see Steve for the first time and "interview" for the job, Steve almost told me to leave the store before I told him who I was because I was reading a comic book off the rack waiting for the store to clear out so that I could talk to him.

Well, luckily Steve liked me enough to give me the job and I started training intensely under the comic filing Master Mike Lang to fight the war against the basement back stock the next Friday. Since then, I've managed to expand my work responsibilities to Sunday counter and office work.

Now that you know how I came to be the basement rat at South, you might want to know what I read and what I do besides working at South. My favorite character by far is Batman with Wolverine following in a close second. I also like Superman, The Flash, Green Lantern, and most of the other DC Comics heroes and characters. I am mostly a DC guy but I like the X-Men as well and some independent stuff catches my eye too once in a while. As far as the rest of my life goes, I'm currently a sophomore at Milwaukee School of Engineering in the Software Engineering program and I plan to create computer games once I get out of school. In my spare time, when I'm not reading comic books, I play online games such as City of Heroes. Even when I'm not reading comic books, I'm doing something related to superheroes so as you can see, superheroes play a big role in my life.

Well, now that you finally know who the basement rat at South really is, don't be afraid to come down and say hi and pick up some back issues. We always got new books coming in so we should be able to fix you up real good with what you're looking for. Well, I got to get back to reading some more Batman comic books in the Batcave so I'll catch you all sooner rather than later.

Shifty (A.K.A. Kyle ³ , the Other Other Kyle, and That Damn Mumble Some Basement Guy)