“Hey,” Hibbs said to me at the counter as we closed up. “The 100th issue of Onomatopoeia is this month.”

“March?”

“Well, for June, but yes. I guess you could call it March.”

“Well, I always call it the month it comes out.”

Hibbs shrugged, adjusting the Fantasia VHS under the counter glass. “Which is fine…but wrong. It’s the month it solicits for, not the month it comes out.”

“But why?”

“Because I said so, that’s why.”

“Listen, Hibbs, you’ve got a kid now. You’re going to learn that answer doesn’t work much.”

“It does if I threaten a spanking.”

“Ugh,” I said. “Good thing no customers are around. No one wants to see comic-clerk-on-comic-clerk spanking action.”

“Actually, after Housewives at Play and Bondage Faeries, Comic-Clerk-on-Comic-Clerk is our biggest porn seller.”

“Really?”

“Of course, the clerks are all female…with the occasional hermaphrodite…but my point is, we do it like the comics do it: when referring to something besides the issue number, you refer to the month on the cover, which is wildly at odds with when it’s actually out.” Hibbs paused, straightened a few manga titles. “Actually, that wasn’t my point at all, damn you. My point is, this is the hundredth issue of Onomatopoeia.”

 “Should we do something special for it?”

“That’s why I bring it up,” Hibbs said and walked back to turn up the Zep to ear-bleeding levels. “Should we?” He yelled.

I put my hand up to my ear to hear him. “I guess so,” I yelled. “What should we do?”

Hibbs looked at me from the back of the store and held his hands out, palm’s up. “What should we do?”

I counted the cash and cleaned while Brian played stumbly air guitar, complete with patented “Jimmy Page stinkface.” When he was done, I looked at the ceiling and tapped my chin. “We could have what they have in every hundredth issue. We could have all our old enemies come back and fight us.”

“No, thanks,” Hibbs said.

“Aww, why not?”

“Because my enemies are real…and litigious.”

“How do you know my enemies aren’t real?”

“Because you obviously don’t have real enemies.”

“Yes, I do!”

“Please,” Hibbs said, arranging the archives section. “Your enemies are about as real as the ones in Hostess fruit pie ads.”

“You mean like The Roller Disco Devils and Johnny Punk and the Sore Sir’s Apprentices?”

“I’m not freakish enough to refer to them by name, but yes, exactly.”

“Okay, I said. “First, trying to make me feel bad for not having any real enemies shows how completely insane your priorities are. Second, I do indeed have a Sinister Six of real enemies, which I will conveniently list now.”

Enemy Number One: Mel Gibson

Enemy since: Hmm…tough call. Lethal Weapon 3.

“The Reason?” I asked. “None of that Passion stuff. My hate goes back as far as Lethal Weapon 3 when Mel Gibson’s character treated his best friend, Danny Glover’s character, like a steaming pile of crap. ‘Gee, your daughter got pregnant? Lemme introduce you to the guy who did it, but make you think he’s gay and fixated on you, ha-ha-ha! Oh, and I’ll have you dance like a chicken in your underwear for no reason!’”

“Okay,” Brian said. “First, that’s a movie, not real life. Second, Mel Gibson didn’t even write that movie, he starred in it. It’s not like he’s just making up things as he goes along. They have these sophisticated technical doo-thingies they call scripts.” Hibbs scratched his beard. “Also? You’re completely stuck in a rut of having people say ‘Okay, first…’ and then ‘Second…’ because I don’t talk like that, frankly.” Hibbs paused. “Or this. Whatever.”

“Okay,” I said. “First, you asked me who my real enemies were, not whether I had real reasons for them being my enemies. Second, that shows you what you know. Lethal Weapon 3 was largely improvised with the cast, screenwriter and Joel Silver writing it on the fly. Also? I wasn’t finished yet. I didn’t even have a chance to talk about Mel’s insistence on having Air America rewritten from darkly comic commentary on economic exploitation in Vietnam to extraordinarily lame buddy movie, or his uncredited reshoots of Payback to make the character more likeable and less like an unapologetic dick. Or how he has his characters be tortured to gain audience sympathy. That he apparently learned this lesson directly from Jesus doesn’t make it any less played out.”

Hibbs lifted a finger. “You really didn’t address my problems with your repetitive paragraph struct—”

Enemy Number Two: Peaches

Enemy since: This afternoon.

“The reason?” I started sweeping the floor, whisking the broom to emphasize certain points. “Peaches is like Princess Superstar but with half the talent and twice the buzz. How the hell does that happen? The Teaches of Peaches sound like the same three songs, endlessly remixed. I mean, And every lyric is sung, like, three times. That’s just lame. Lame.”

“I think,” Hibbs said slowly, “your ability to have so many opinions on so many topics so many people could not care less about is a mystery to me. Princess who? The Teaches of huh?”

“All I can say is, wait until your dreams of a female rapper undermining the hip-hop patriarchy are dashed by some hairy-crotched Kindergarten teacher from Berlin.”

“Okay, sure.  I’ll lose sleep waiting for that one, I bet.”

Enemy Number Three: Billy Squier

Enemy since: Since I started working behind the counter at CE.

“I think this one should be apparent to you, Hibbs. It’s bad enough we had to listen to the 107.7 The Bone every Friday for years on end, but to top things off, they played Billy Squier every single day. For a while, I almost started to look forward to The Bone, because of my appreciation for Zep… for Pink Floyd…for Stevie Ray Vaughan… and then “The Stroke” comes on. Every god-damned day. Over and over and over, like some sort of syphillitic sea chanty you can never escape. Also, I think it’s an attack of predatory unimaginative record executives where roughly than half the structure is stolen from “The Hokey-Pokey.” “The Hokey-Pokey,” for Christ’s sake!”

Hibbs took the broom from me, and swept a corner I had missed. I ran a hand along the archives section.

“Well?” I said. “Aren’t you going to mock my choice? Defend Billy Squier and his horrific mega-hit? Point out my lack of originality in choosing two music figures in one list?”

Hibbs shook his head. “Nope. In fact, I’m thinking Billy Squier should be on my enemies list…”

Enemy Number Four: Silver Surfer

Enemy since: Too long to remember.

“Oh, come on now,” Hibbs said, handing me back the broom. “I call bullshit. You love the Silver Surfer. I wouldn’t be surprised if you sleep in Silver Surfer underoos on top of Silver Surfer sheets next to an inflatable Silver Surfer. The Surfer is a Kirby creation. You love Kirby creations. This is like you telling me you don’t have fantasies about Kamandi and Omac jello wrestling…And your defense can’t be offered in the form of—”

“Okay, first: it’s hot oil wrestling, not jello wrestling. Second, the Surfer is a hijacked Kirby creation. And the character that really broke up Stan and Jack. Stan Lee fell so in love with the Surfer he had to create a series about him, completely ignored any of Jack’s ideas, and didn’t even bother to offer the book to Kirby for art. He got John Buscema to slather melodramatic faux-Kirby storytelling all over Stan’s melodramatic faux-Jesus plots that brought out the worst in Lee’s writing. To this day, Stan can’t tell the difference between ‘good’ and ‘overwrought.’” I thought for a moment. “Also? If The Surfer hadn’t become popular, maybe Jack wouldn’t have later made the personification of Death a black guy on a pair of skies wearing a knight’s helmet.”

Hibbs rolled his eyes. “Kirby would have made Death an Asian guy with a hula-hoop and boxing gloves, if that had been the first thing to come to mind. Kirby worked too fast to be rational.”

Enemy Number Five: The Baldur’s Gate Series

Enemy since: My computer bombed out right before I walked into the showdown with the final boss.

“What?” Hibbs said. “You still haven’t finished that?”

I looked at the floor. “No, dammit, you know I haven’t…”

“And you didn’t finish Baldur’s Gate II? Or Throne of Baal?”

I sighed.

“You know,” Hibbs said. “I think you’re not casting your net wide enough. Because you never finished Freedom Force or either of the Fallout games I lent you, did you? Yeah, I think your real enemy is actually:”

Enemy Number Five: Every Computer RPG Ever Made

Enemy since: Time Immemorial, since I, Jeff Lester, am a stupidhead!

“There,” Hibbs said. “That seems a little more accurate, don’t you think?”

“No,” I said. “Not at all. After all, I finished, uh…”

Hibbs held a hand up to his ear. “Yes? I’m listening… Kingdom Hearts? Planescape? Xenosaga? Final Fantasy? Diablo? Dungeon Siege? Champions of Norrath? Pool of Radiance? Bard’s Tale? Ultima? Temple of Apshai? Did you at least finish Temple of Apshai, Jeff?”

“Yeah, well, you know, I…” I faked a coughing fit, but Hibbs just waited the ten or fifteen minutes for it to pass. “No.”

“All right, then.”

“Ah!” I pointed at him in victory. “I finished Neverwinter Nights!”

Hibbs shrugged. “Ben’s finished Neverwinter. Twice. Once as a low-dexterity monk.”

“Oh, and Autoduel! On my Apple II!”

“So, that’s what? Two games out of eight hundred?  I stand by my revision.”

Enemy Number Six: Meta-Referentiality, a.k.a. “Meta”

Enemy since: first paragraph.

“What?” Hibbs said, as we locked the door to the darkened store. “What the hell do you mean by that?”

“Umm… A hundredth issue that seems aware of the notion of hundredth issues, maybe? Maybe ‘meta’ is just a buzz-word for ‘in-joke.’”

“Normally, not understanding what you’re saying doesn’t stop me from disagreeing, but…”

“Well, let’s take this column. I spent all of it listing my enemies, but none of my enemies actually appear…except meta-referentiality.”

Hibbs shook his head. “Stop buying Grant Morrison’s scalp stubble on Ebay, Lester. And stop smoking it. It’s fucking you up.”

“Also, “ I said. “Notice that reference to Sore Sir’s Apprentices.

“The fruit pies ad?”

“Cupcakes. Now, in that ad, Captain America fights the apprentices ‘in a confrontation that looks like a hall of mirrors.’ Similarly, this Fanboy deliberately repeats phrasings and has you and I mirror each other’s physical actions in order to create the same effect. And the Sore Sir’s Apprentices ad is significant in that Sore Sir, like Godot in Waiting for Godot, is never seen. He’s an enemy that never shows up, just like the rest of my Sinister Six.”

“You based your entire column around a cupcakes ad? A bad one? The whole thing is just a bad pun on the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, for crying out loud. Except instead of broomsticks, it’s lizard-men drawn by Sal Buscema.”

“Right, which is why there’s a Fantasia VHS under glass and I namecheck Kingdom Hearts, a-and we’re using a broom at different points, and I reference the Silver Surfer series, which featured the lizard race, the Badoon, by Lee and Buscema.”

Hibbs thought for a minute. “But that was John Buscema, not Sal Buscema.”

I slumped. “Goddammit, Hibbs, I can only do so much. Jesus. I even made sure I didn’t bring in my Sinister Six for the same reason the Sore Sir never appeared.”

“And that would be?”

I held my hands out, palm’s up. “I ran out of space.”

Hibbs rolled his eyes.

“So? ‘Meta’ just a buzzword for ‘in-joke?’”

“It’s a buzzword for lame,” Hibbs said. “Lame.”

I held out my three pairs of hands, all of them palm’s up. “Well, what else was I supposed to do?”