Gary Panter blog

Went into the CITY to deliver my 'Omega the Unknown' cover to Marvel. For some reason I thought it was on Fifth Ave at 17th, but it was 37th. When things like this happen I tend to take the long walk and look at the city, which I did.

Lots of sights. Smart people, dumb people, pretty people, ugly people, freezing hotdog and sausage vendors, smokers hanging out in clumps outside buildings like cranes and jackals by watering holes, Yellow cabs nowadays with designy flowers on the hood running red lights, polite drivers deferring to pedestrians, pedestrians abusing the privilege, giant hairy ugly dwarf smoking a stogie 'blocking the box' with his Hummer2, the Empire State Building from underneath where you can't see it as happens to ants passing by Paul Bunyan's foot, guys trying in vain to collar passersby to discuss global warming, hip hop dudes in million dollar leather jackets with full congo jungles scenes embroidered thereupon on their way back to the ghetto, crazy faddists in those skeleton body hoodies which when zipped up become grim reaper burkas, normal looking girls with babies they were crazy enough to have by these calaveras, fucking idiots on cel phones not minding personal space. The reds, the grays, the blues of NYC in winter. The beautiful fresh cold air gridded with contrails.

At Marvel they directed me around the corner to some vaguer hole in the wall they called 'the mezzanine'. Mezzanine? It was a door through a janitorial area. There was a locked glass door at the end of the corridor with a card entry slot. There on the floor, by the door, was a pile of packages, but also some thrown-out pizza boxes in the same pile. I knocked politely about 3 times then banged the shit out of it until the irate kid who was supposed to be manning that station appeared, yelling at me that I could've thrown it on the discarded pizza boxes and I told him no thanks. Is this any way to run a Death star?