Hey you! Yeah, the turkey holdin’ the comic book! Why don’t you c’mon in? Oh, you’re not hungry? Well that doesn’t matter – you’re goin’ to want to check this place out. Of all the dining halls on Spaceship OL, this holodeckin’ eat-a-torium is most guaranteed to satiate your fanboy-cravings.

This is, after all, the Comic Book Café.

Now, I feel obligated to offer a word of warning. In spite of the innumerable perks that come with eating in a livin’ and breathin’ paneled-page, there’re some definite drawbacks. The lunchladies are cranky. The pizza’ll burn the roof of your mouth. And the cliques are unbearably divided.

By the Coca-Cola machine sits the Marvel crew – Peter Parker and Joe Quesada are trading yogurts, Betty Banner is smashing a watermelon with her fists, and Tony Stark is sneaking rips of gin out of a Gatorade bottle. At the top of the café is the DC posse – Wonder Woman is givin’ catty glares as Clark Kent sucks on Lois Lane’s bottom lip, Dan DiDio is nose-vomitin’ milk while he guffaws at Plastic Man, and Swamp Thing is tryin’ to extol the virtues of using a canteen instead of Styrofoam cups. And if you look between these two, you can see the IMAGE gang hanging by fire exit – Brandon Graham and Jonathan Hickman are hackin’ away at sketchbooks, some nutjob wearin’ headgear is claiming to be a prophet, and baby Hazel is cryin’ for milk.

It’s quite the scene.

But it’s not the whole scene. Sure, these three tables are the most jam-packed and rambunctious, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the most exciting. If you’re lookin’ for a bit of adventure, why not take your tray to one of the other tables? What’s that? You thought that those three cliques were the only patrons of the Comic Book Café? Way wrong, bro!

Hey, take a seat at that small table next to the Art Club sign-ups. Yeah, the table with the dudes that don’t really look like anyone else in the cafeteria. This squad goes by the name of 215 INK, and they pride themselves in their independence from the other three. Once you get situated, you should strike up a conversation with the dude rockin’ the beautiful beard.

His name is Mauricio Pommella and he’s the illustrator of TRANSMEET, a comic about trying to grow love in the depleted soil that is our inevitable dystopia.

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Full disclosure: I’m not intimately associated with Mobeius and his work, though my brother and I were even recently expressing a desire to correct this utter lack. I do know that he was tremendously influential, and his ripple-down has infiltrated the work of my more specific heroes.

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