I have to admit it.  These are actual things that occur to me, on and off, during your average day, not even while reading comic books, but while doing the typical things that people do; working, riding the bus, fighting off the demonic mannequins who wish to kill me and take my place.  All thoughts are guaranteed 100% authentic.

If I had a LMD, I could send them to work in my place.  But something always goes wrong with those damn things; they either turn rogue, or they get killed by Hydra agents.  In fact, has there ever been an LMD in the entire Marvel Universe that actually worked properly?

I wonder if, now that he’s been married to Mary Jane for a while, Spider-Man doesn’t wish that he’d handled Gwen Stacy a little bit better back in issue 121.  I have no idea what Wonder Woman does in her secret identity nowadays.  Maybe she doesn’t even have a secret identity.  In fact, I’m not even sure that the book is still being published.  Is that next issue of Eightball ever coming out?  Ever? What is Jughead hiding underneath that hat?  What if somebody was really confused and went to buy the latest issue of Transmetropolitan and got the latest issue of Cosmopolitan instead?  There are a lot of comix out on the web now.  Why aren’t I reading any of them?

Did Spiegelman really want to do that New Yorker piece on Charles Schulz?  Or did he just need the money?  Was he really being condescending, or was I just defensive?  Would Seth have done a better job?  Does Stan Lee really want to buy Marvel?  What the hell is happening in Planetary?  Is Peter Bagge ever going to do anything more than “Yeah”?  And how well is “Yeah” selling?  And what is Larry hiding underneath that hat?

Am I the only one who wants more really obscure action figures?  When’s Jarvis going to get his own action figure?  Where’s the Thing in shower cap and towel action figure?  There’s a Warren Ellis and a Garth Ennis.  Shouldn’t there be a guy named Orf Emmis writing comics, just to make things a little more confusing?  I’d be really happy if Gorilla Comics actually had gorillas in them, but I bet it’s not going to happen.

What if I’m wrong, and the Green Lantern power battery is actually cool?  I wonder if I can still get that Year’s Best Erotica with the Batman story in it.  But do I really want it?  Will Star Trek: Voyager ever get desperate enough to introduce Two of Nine, the Borg version of Mini-Me?  Why is it that I grew up reading nothing but Marvel Comics and now I read just about anything but?  And what is the Golden Age Flash hiding underneath that hat?

Does George Perez squint a lot?  I bet he squints a lot.  How can the Ghost Rider be one of the coollest superheroes and one of the suckiest superheroes at the same time?  Why don’t I get the Cartoon Network?  Would I actually watch it if I did?  I picture Chris Ware as the type of guy who has to make his bed in the morning three times before he’s finally satisfied.  Is that mean?  Why is the best regularly published anthology of alternative cartoonists Nickelodeon magazine?

Will the CBLDF cruise suck?  What if it’s cool?  I wonder what will happen to Dave Sim when he finishes the last issue of Cerebus.  I sort of imagine him turning into a statue made of cigarette ash and blowing away.  What sort of cruel world is it where an X-Men movie is made and the character most faithfully captured is Sabretooth?  Why do I have to call him Barry Windsor Smith?  Can’t I just call him Barry Smith?

I wonder if R. Crumb likes France.  I haven’t seen his brother around in a while.  I wonder how that Ghost World movie is coming along.  Why don’t I like 100 Bullets?  Is it just me?  Are there more bald protagonists in comic books now than at any other time in history?  And why is that?  Have I ever liked a bearded superhero?  And what is Paul Pope hiding underneath that hat?

Why did the Vertigo books cut their letter pages when all they added was another page of in-house advertising?  Why didn’t Linda Medley get a story in the Big Book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales?  How many longboxes are too many longboxes?  Why isn’t Captain America married?  Out of all the superheroes out there, he seems like the only one that seems like he should be married.  And maybe Superman.  Maybe.

I miss Jim Woodring. If I had the money, I’d pay Woodring bajillions of dollars to just draw and draw and draw.  Is it true that more web designers have read Understanding Comics than comic book artists?  Did the guy who draws Liberty Meadows kill and eat the guy who drew Bloom County?  Whatever happened to that guy?  What was up with the Dwarf with the gun?

Has Mary Worth ever done it?  Did they ever show the Human Fly’s face?  And what happened to that guy in real life?  I imagine a guy in a Human Fly suit pumping gas somewhere in New Mexico.  Why kill Chewbacca?  What’d he ever do to anyone?  Will Daredevil ever come out on schedule ever again?  Larry said that beer is like liquid comics.  Then what’s comics in its gaseous form?  I’m not sure I want to know.  Is it possible to save comic books, or will the field just shrink and shrink as videogames continue to grow, as television continues to tailor itself to younger and younger audiences, and as adolescent power fantasies become easier and easier to act out in real life, and less people learn the basic tools for reading a comic book, while too many in the comic field continue an arguably unhealthy obsession with trivia and minutiae?

And what’s Galactus hiding underneath that hat?