TITLE The Bastich By Hart
PANEL 1 (BASTICH excitedly picks up a package from the front stoop of his apartment.) BASTICH: Ahh, the Comic Book Mail-Order Service... One full month's worth of spandex delight delivered right to my doorstep..
PANEL 2 (Inside, BASTICH pulls several comics out of the box and happily waves them around.) BASTICH: Let's see... "NC-17 Men," "Adult Paranormal Killer Rodents," "Lady Necro," "Gun-Totin' Maniacs," "Manga Madness," and "Snob Art Comics" Volume 2 Number 8. Not a bad haul... Hey, whats this...a note?
PANEL 3 (BASTICH holds up a note with a heading that reads "OOPS!") BASTICH: "Due to the sloppy management of our middle-aged slobbish comic-geek executives, the "Piece of Cape" Mail-Order service has been forced to file for bankruptcy." This can't be...
PANEL 4 (BASTICH runs screaming to HACKER-LAD and FAITH.) BASTICH: Faith!! HL!! They've cut off my Comic Book Prescription.!! What am I to do!?
PANEL 5 (HACKER-LAD points his finger in the air as FAITH stands behind him.) HACKER-LAD: Uh, don't you mean Comic Book "SUBscription," 'Stich? FAITH: Trust me, HL, he's using the correct term...
PANEL 6 (BASTICH desperately tugs on HACKER-LAD'S shirt while FAITH smugly looks on.) BASTICH: Oh no... I can feel a relapse coming... HELP ME BEFORE I BECOME NORMAL AGAIN!!! FAITH: See what I mean..?
CREDITS (c) 1996 Joshua Adam Hart
Commentary
I know this feeling well. I was a huge customer of comics subscription services for decades. From middle school and through high school, I got most of my comics from the fine folks at Westfield Comics. I sunk my entire $10 weekly allowance into a $40 monthly comics budget (my dad wasn't impressed when I pointed out this would save him $40 per year). It was the first time I could get ahold of almost any title, not just what my local comics shop had on the shelves when I stumbled through their door. The variety skyrocketed when the Westfield order form switched to three months in advance unlocking nearly the entire catalog. I still mainly bought Marvel titles and some DC, but I could also easily access titles like Groo, TMNT, Usagi Yojimbo, Ninja High School, Robotech: The Sentinels and on and on.
In college, I returned to buying my comics from local shops, frequenting musky dungeons around Chico State selling Code Name: BloodStab #1 or whatever guaranteed collector's item shrinkwrapped with holofoil pog was shipping that week. I saw so many of these shops come and go thanks to the chaotic 90s market and the fact that most shop owners were fans more than business people (hence the jab at sloppy management in panel 3).
I returned to Westfield in the late 1990s when I joined the workforce in the SF Bay Area. I was completely on my own with a grown-up salary and no responsibility, so you can imagine what my monthly order looked like. This lasted until the dot-com bubble and 9/11 when my conspicuous comics consumption was abruptly put on hiatus by something called not having a job.
Many years later, I started up again, this time with DCBS who had a huge inventory of trade-paperbacks in addition to all of the new titles. This lasted several years until I phased most of my comics reading to digital. Now I basically only buy print copies of my must-haves like Groo and Usagi Yojimbo or random books where I just want to support the creator.
In case it wasn't obvious, the comics in Bastich's shipment map to various real-world titles popular at the time: