Little Cool Things: I hanker for a hunk of meat

Superhero comic books focus on the big: the boistrous, the loud, the bombastic. But don't forget to focus past the action to check out the background details: the elements that aren't integral to the plot but which is a delightful little bit of stage dressing. In other words: keep your eyes peeled for the little cool things.

Here's a page from X-Factor #18, in which Madrox and Rictor pick up a sandwich tray from a deli for Layla "I know pastrami" Miller.


Page from X-Factor v.3 #18 (June 2007), script by Peter David, pencils by Khoi Pham, inks by Sandu Florea, colors by Brian Reber, letters by Cory Petit

Just another ordinary day in the life of Peter David's mutant detectives, huh? (Well, a little light on the awful puns, perhaps.) But did you detect the Little Cool Thing on this page? Perhaps we oughta start that scene from the beginning again. Take it away, David and Pham!



As a native New Yorker, let me tell you what' missing from this panel: big stacks of newspapers on a rack outside (The New York Daily News, The New York Post, The Daily Bugle) and a dog tied up outside because he can't come inside. (Substitute baby stroller if in Park Slope, Brooklyn). But are you missing the forest for the trees? Are you seeing what made me giggle out loud? Are you getting straight to the meat of the matter?



Wow! Well, I'm sold! Sign me up for a basket full of meat, Mister Deli Guy!

Seriously: if any deli or bodega in New York or the other fifty-three boroughs of Manhattan (Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Westchester, Newark, Shadowland, etc.) put up a sign like this, their business would quintuple overnight.

YAY 4 MEAT! Yum yum.