I am a big fan of number one and two of DC's Elric: The Making of a Sorcerer. At a certain point, when number three did not show up in the comics shop, I began to wonder. Now, I'm not a big follower of previews--for the most part, my consumer experience is that comics show up on the rack and I buy them. So I turned to my comics dealer for answers: did I miss something? has it been canceled? is there an expected-to-arrive date? "As far as we know, Elric has not been canceled," was the answer.

My last trip to the shop finally turned up the desired goods: Elric number 3. I brought it home, but before reading it, I checked the DC website to see when the last book in the series, number four, is scheduled to appear. It turned out August is the promised date, so I went ahead and read it, rather than put it aside until I had number four in hand. It was a good issue, although the parallels to the Bush administration were a bit heavy-handed in my view. Bush's crowd is already so cartoonish to begin with, you really don't need to belabor their villainy.

I haven't waited so long for an issue since the days when I was collecting Aria. Another series--this one on television--that is frustrating my patience is HBO's Rome. Fantastic series, but it's a very long wait until season two. It just goes to show you that when it comes to schedules, there's a definite line between creating anticipation for a series and just plain annoying people with a long wait.