I wrote this several different ways. When Thomas goes off on these monologues there’s not a lot of choice for me but to just make them a text wall. Part of the point of them and of his character in these situations in general is to explain things in a very confident verbose way. When I started doing comics text walls like this were verboten. You’d catch all kinds of shit for doing it, which made me hesitant. In the end though almost all the people who were so critical of everyone else’s work have day jobs now and don’t make comics, so fuck you, I win. I’ll make my comic however I want. Which, if you’re reading this you probably were fine with already. I’m just airing my grievances here because no one else will listen to me.

When I was working retail the shadow of streaming was looming large on the horizon. Businesses were worried about the changes coming and making terrible choices in every direction. I worked in a video rental and media store for several years and went through the change from VHS to DVD. That was quite an experience. The company wanted to keep renting tapes SO BAD. The market was just drying up though and they eventually made the change. CD sales were still high enough that we kept them the entire time I was there, but I saw cassette tapes out. We had a pretty eclectic selection by the time we abandoned them. They were still extremely popular with migrant workers and immigrants, so we had lots of music to cater to them in that media by the time it was finally drying up. VHS was he same way. We had Spanish language VHS tapes even after the switch to DVD was mostly complete.
I still remember when we sold off our rental VHS players. We sold them in their big black cases and everything. With the store numbers on them and the whole nine yards. I almost wish I had one. I do have a Dreamcast that has the store info carved into it though I think. We sold those off in a similar way.
I left that store before the actual final decline, but watched it from afar since I knew it was going to be worth remembering for my story. It hung on for another decade or so after I left, so in the comic universe there’s still a lot of time before the store has to logically close. I don’t even know for sure if I’ll ever make it to that point. The cast may have moved on before that even happens. I’ve been setting it all up for ages.
Anyway, that’s all for later. Hopefully I will be allotted the time needed to bring the story to a close the way I want to someday, but I know that’s not always how life works. For now however I hope your weeks starts off nice. On Wednesday I’ll hopefully have another page ready and we can go on as we have lo these many years. Until then, goodnight.

Posts authored by Jackie

2732 Come To Jesus Moment.