The Underground Junk Hole

I dropped by with my friend and his friend with benefits, unfortunately on a day that the staff was busy! D'oh! And by staff I mean like 2-3 people (maybe someone was on break). I was lucky enough to find the Boss, Mr. Paul Grimshaw though so he gave me the okay to take pictures. By the way, when I don't see someone often enough, I remember them like how I remember how to get to places, by landmarks. Like, "that guy with the crazy eye" or "that chick with the cool hat". It's a bad habit, but it's funny when applied to people, funny for me I mean, it's probably a slap in the face to everyone else! So I hope the folks at HOS won't take it too personally if I don't mention their names and refer to them by feature :P

The point is, I'm bad at remembering things, especially names, so it didn't occur to me until after I left that:

• I didn't give them my name...or tell them where I'd be posting this page, oops! @_@
• I didn't ask the babe behind the counter her name, I thought I knew it so I didn't ask, lol? Also, I sound sleazy asking women for their names. (It's a gift)
• I assumed Mr Grimshaw knew who I was already because I'm egotistical like that, I'm Nightmare! I make customs! How can you not know who I am! Ahem... ;)
• I went in to buy Red Sonja hardcovers but left with a Jonah Hex figure instead, how the hell did that happen!?

I know who Paul Grimshaw and Erik Warfield are (the guy who's usually there to ring me up) because they have awesome last names. I assume everyone else who works there has bad-ass names too, like Ben Corpseripper or Sam Thunderwall, Raven Stormreaver! Awesome. So yeah, these guys are smart to set-up shop near the Warner Brothers Studios, I assume they get some recognizable customers from time to time because of it, maybe even some business from tourists that see the shop along the way and figure what the hell, let's buy some souveniers!

First thing you'll notice is the store feels a lot roomier when you're inside it than how it looks from outside. The ceiling is higher as you get deeper into the shop, which is prefect for filling that space with toys! I love how there's just one big mish-mash of action going-on, GI Joe shooting down Batman, Spiderman trying to rip posters off the ceiling, it's great! The shelves are also higher to fit all those statues and busts. Having them all on display is a much appreciated feature of this shop, maybe they simply did it to spruce the place up a bit, but this is a great way for us customers to see the actual statue before we plop-down $100 on something we might otherwise end-up using as a paperweight!



By the way, Erik and Grims put-out their own collaborative work, Five Color Comics, where they weave one story with many different artists drawing different panels, and they can only use 5 colors to color them! The result is pretty cool, you'd think all the art would clash but the color-scheme blends all those doodles together, check it out, it's a lot more interesting than my bland retelling makes it seem! I believe Erik also wrote a short story a few years ago featured in the comic mini-series Containment involving vampire baby-eaters; I saw his name as the author so I'm 80% sure it's him, you can't go wrong with that!