I feel I've reached a critical point in my raging fanboy status: which is to say, I can finally admit to myself that I love absolutely everything about comic books. I love shopping for them—milling about a store, browsing for that bracing shock of the new for three, four or even five hours, unable to find anything and finally buying a trade paperback of issues I've already bought. I love bringing them home and leaving them lying around the living room—wondering which of my roommates is going to read Finder and which is going to read Housewives At Play, and the delightful inner tingle I get when everyone in the house picks up Housewives At Play and nobody picks up Finder. I love losing them—there's just nothing better than trying to find that latest issue of Eightball to lend to one's brother, swearing and sweating over the row of long boxes lined up in the basement like child coffins waiting for the ground to thaw so they can finally be laid to rest, until he finally says, "Dude, no worries. I'll just borrow this copy of Housewives At Play for now."

But perhaps the absolute best part about comics is waiting. Yup, there's nothing this fanboy loves more than walking into a comic store week after week for a favorite title and having it not come in. That's the best, because it makes it all that much sweeter when you finally do walk in and it's the week, finally, when the title has finally arrived. There is absolutely nothing better than going home and opening up that issue for which you've waited for so long and not really remembering what's going on, and then maybe somebody dies on the third page and all the other chracters are horribly upset and you realize you don't recognize the dead character at all. So you decide to reread the back issues, forcing you to go back down to the basement and spend thirty minutes digging through the long boxes unable to find any of them (but hey, there's that Eightball!) until finally you decide, "You know, I'm sure that character's not that important to the story in the long run. I'll just sit back down and make my way through the rest of the issue." And then, of course, when you sit back down and read that issue, around the time there's the hugely poignant funeral for the character you still don't recognize, you realize that the carefully crafted emotional resonance is entirely lost on you, and all those visits you made, and all that patient waiting, was all entirely wasted.

Yup, I love that feeling. It's got to be the best one in the world, unless there's some sort of genitalia and waffle iron mishap out there I haven't experienced (and believe me, I've had more than my share of those).

And so, like a demented four-color version of Hickey from The Iceman Cometh (the Eugene O'Neill play, not the sexy X-Men miniseries Bill Jemas has commissioned), I've decided to help all of you who may also, um, love the eternal wait for your favorite titles. My original plan was to make use of my extensive contacts within the comics industry to get copies of the scripts of the most eagerly awaited books, and then concisely summarize them so you can be free from the yoke of coming in to the store every week and go, "Third issue of Dark Knight come in yet? Any idea when it might be in?" Yes, after this column we can all go take a small break from the comic shop for a while, and go do something more enriching with our lives—me, I'm gonna go get in line for Attack of the Clones tickets. And so, without further ado, here are the next issues of those books we've been waiting for forever, presented as if you were actually reading them:

Ministry of Space No. 3:

That military guy with the mustache is in the process of trying to pack up all his documents before the authorities burst in and find out how much money he's embezzled. Flashback to the Ministry of Space program's space colonies, self-contained solar powered pods scattered in orbit around the sun like drops of spilled mercury and a comment about the sun never setting on the British Empire. Flashback to people telling that military guy with the mustache that his plans for hydrogen powered ships are impossible. That military guy saying that people once thought that a perfectly trimmed mustache on a heterosexual was impossible, and look at him. People warn the military guy with the mustache that although his power has grown by leaps and bounds that he should remember his place and that the Queen Mother can undo all that he has done with a simple cocker spaniel-like cough. Military guy stares coldly out the window. Back in the present, old military guy with the mustache is huffing and pushing papers into a shredder, his face sweaty, his mouth agape. Over the speakerphone, his secretary announces that official types from the Ministry of Finance are here to see him. Close-up on the military guy's huffing mouth. Cut to flashback of military guy in bed with the Queen of England, her curled on the bed in post-coital bliss, military guy looking uncomfortable and faintly disgusted with himself. Queen says she's unsure if military guy is such a fantastic lover because of the discipline that comes from being a military man, or from the naturally tremendous drive that comes with his ambition. Military guy lights two cigarettes, gives her one, and replies that he is first and foremost an explorer, and that any prowess he might possess in bed comes from the desire to see and experience what is new and what is possible. Queen rolls her plump, wrinkly body closer to him and says there's something new that she's just thought of, and she wishes to make it possible with him. Military guy snubs out his cigarette and with pulls her close. Close-up on the military man's steely eyes as he says "So have I. So have I." Cut to page of enormous space cruiser New Albion, half as large as the moon and departing for its first deep-space voyage. Within five years, it will sail past the edge of the known solar system and put a colony of men, of Englishmen, deep into the new currents of uncharted cosmic seas. A big ceremony commemorates military guy with the mustache, whose eyes seem beaten and exhausted. Back to the present day, the men from the Ministry of Finance break into military guy's office just in time to see him put the gun up to his head. "Don't do it, military guy with the mustache!" They yell, but it is too late; he blows his own brains out. Stepping over his body, they look at all the papers that he was unable to shove into the shredder—financial statements and documentation that show that he was taking many of the profits from the Space program and filtering them through foreign accounts, only to invest them and filter the higher returns back into the Ministry of Space. His driving ambition drove him to break laws he did not have to break, only so the Ministry could be advanced that much faster. Someone says something about how driven he was and how unknowable he was, and then his body is put in a space coffin and fired into the sun while all the people in all the solar colonies stand at attention and his space coffin melts into ephemeral space-goo; a goo that, like the powerful and resurrected Britain, is now everywhere and always will be.

Origin No. 6:

Pages 1-26: The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner is recited while Logan runs with wolves. As the poem progresses, the guy with scars on his face travels across the country, Logan jumps about in many primordial full-page shots, and the fat guy with the cap, exiled out in the wilderness, plots his revenge. As the poem draws to a close, we see it's being recited by Rose, in bed, to the guy with the beard, and we see Logan holding a locket with a picture of Rose in it, and we see the guy with the scars on his face arrive in the mining colony, and we see the fat guy with the cap grinning evilly as he peeks in the window of the cabin where Rose is in bed with the guy with the beard.

Page 27: The evil version of Tubby from Little Lulu bursts into the cabin, stabs bearded guy, and then grabs rose, saying the only way to hurt "that crazy kid is to hurt...you!" He raises a tubby fist and then Logan bursts into the cabin.

Page 28: Tubby says, "Fall back, bub! I gotta knife! Whatta you got?" Logan draws his claws and leaps on Tubby. They fight and Tubby, remembering his little girlfriend Lulu, pulls hard on the edges of Logan's hair, giving him what will be his traditional hairstyle from that point on. Suddenly the guy with scars on his face bursts into the cabin on a classic motorcycle, knocking over a lantern.

Page 29: The guy with the scars on his face says that he's here for "the animal," but, contrary to what he's been told, has no interest in bringing him back alive. While he says this, distracting Logan, Tubby stabs Logan. Rose jumps forward, calling Logan's name and she gets stabbed. The guy with the scars on his face calls Rose's name, jumps forward and claws pop out of his hands. He stabs Tubby to death with them. Guy with scars on his face declaims Logan while weeping over Rose's body and says that Logan got the life that he, the guy with the scars deserved.

Page 30: Logan rises up, shakily, lit by the fires of the burning cabin, walks over to the dead guy with the beard, takes one of his expensive cigars, lights it with a stick of burning furniture, and says that everything he got, he got by other people giving it to him, "And usually all I got was pain," Logan adds. But he says that there were a few people who gave to him generously and who cared about him and to whom he only gave pain, even if unintentionally. And so, he says to the guy with the scars who's rising up with a look of anger on his face, maybe it's time he tried giving some of that pain to people who don't care about him for a change, and saying that he's wounded and beaten and that the guy wants to have his life, he's welcome to try and take it and will probably get it if he's lucky. "So," Logan says, puffing on the cigar, "I guess what I have to ask you is: do you feel lucky, punk?"

Page 31: Guy with scars on his face jumps on Logan. They fight while captions recite biblical quote about Cain and Abel. The two fight, each of their faces wild and animalistic. In the scuffle a Canadian passport falls to the ground. Cabin on fire collapses. Cut to long shot of the cabin, burning, a fire in the night, and then there is a brief flare-up of the cabin, as if something had exploded outward, and the biblical quote continues, talking about God's punishment of Cain for killing his brother, saying "A fugitive and a vagabond shall thou be in the earth." And into the foreground, we see the smoking figure of the man, riding the motorcycle, his crazy Little Lulu hair jutting up and the smoke from his cigar trailing off into the night.

DK2, No. 3:

I don't know, really. I've only got as far as the superhero pop revolution blazing across America, and President Luthor looking all nervous. And then Batman basically forms a very wrinkly version of the Superfriends, causing President Luthor to form a very wrinkly and scary version of the Legion of Doom who all meet in Brainiac's head and then there's a bunch of sketches of the Wonder Twins in bed with each other, and some drawings of Supergirl undressing, and then Frank adding up his bank balance two or three times, with the words "Sequel? Spin-off? Bolivia?" written underneath. And they read well, these first set of pages, but the coloring on them is pretty atrocious, except on the words "Sequel? Spin-Off? Bolivia?" for which Ms. Varley has chosen a very sensible and evocative color, indeed.