Woe is me: Have I mentioned lately how unbelievably bad my local comic shop is? I thought I'd long ago accepted its generally poor selection and lack of genre diversity. I'd even come to terms with its prime display shelf being devoted to RPG and collectible busts.

But yesterday made me realize how truly wretched the place is. I hadn't bought comics in a couple of weeks, and gleefully headed out to buy some of the more mainstream titles that I thought my local shop surely would have ("Legion Secret Files," "Lucifer" #44, etc.).

What should I find when I reach the store? Nothing. Well, next to nothing. The comics section looked like Kroger right before a snowstorm, or images of Soviet supermarkets they used to show on the nightly news in the '80s.

But it's not as if there was a sudden run on comics in my city. I can't imagine that this week, a good portion of the populace decided they had to have "Namor" #9 and "Superman-Thundercats," then left the shelves bare in their wake. Hell, in the past year, I can only remember a half-dozen times when I wasn't the only customer in the store.

No. The truth is my local shop is shit. Complete, unapologetic shit. If I wanted every Spider-Man title published in the past six months, I would've been in hog heaven. But I didn't, so I'm left with three books, only one of which I actually wanted (the other two I bought only because I didn't want to feel like I'd wasted a trip). And none of them actually came out this week!

"1602" #4: I like Neil Gaiman, but the only reason I'm even remotely enjoying this miniseries is because of the large role played by Dr. Strange. I stopped caring about the mysteries of the bad weather, the Templar treasure, Virginia Dare and the Fantastic Four analog two issues ago.

"Lucifer" #41: It's funny how #44 came out this week, but the only issue my shop had was #41. My reading of the series has been hit and miss, and I'd missed this issue. It was okay. I'm not keen on David Hahn's art, at least on this title.

"NYX" #2: Okay, two issues in and we've established (twice now) that Kiden can stop time around her, and her home life sucks. Next issue: We learn her home life really, really sucks.