Okay.  Two things you need to know for this to make sense: 

1) Leon is the owner of the Hairy Tarantula Comic shop

2) Marvel, the company which brings us Spiderman, is a publisher which accounts for 30 to 40 percent of the cash flow in the average comic shop.
 
So the Hairy Tarantula is now a pretty rare animal.  Already it was something of a focal point for alternative type readers; not your average Marvel superhero crowd.  The Hairy T is a comic shop frequented by artists and writers and vampires and psychics and girls dressed up like Neil Gaiman characters.  I really like the Hairy T.
 
Here's what happened: 

Last month Marvel didn't ship Leon his order, so he gave them a call.  After leaving him on hold for nearly half an hour, they told him they hadn't shipped his books because he hadn't paid for the month previous.  Leon insisted that he had. Marvel disagreed.
 
So Leon, feeling a tad worried, thumbed through his paperwork.  To his relief, he dug up a receipt.  Marvel grumbled and then admitted that actually they did have his money.  But they said he still owed them more.  They told him how much more they wanted, and that when he paid this amount, they would send him the comics he had ordered.  (Comics which become increasingly difficult to sell the later they get, since regular Marvel customers can easily take their business to any other shop.)
 
But instead of hurriedly mailing off a check, Leon checked his paperwork again and called Marvel back.  He told them that, no, the amount he'd sent had been correct.  They argued for a while until Marvel decided that, yes, perhaps there had been a mistake.  So they quoted him a new figure and told him to pay this new one instead. 

Leon asked to speak to the manager.

After a heated discussion, the manager also agreed that perhaps there had been a mistake, and so gave Leon another new figure.  This process went on for a number of days, over the course of which Marvel gave Leon an amazing twelve entirely different quotes, none of which, according to his accounting he could see any reason for paying (other than to get his overdue comics).  on top of that, Marvel also changed their business protocol, (special, just for him), to demand full payment up front on next month's books.  At this point Leon asked himself just how badly his shop needed Marvel comics.  To his surprise he discovered that it wasn't very badly at all. 

Now, I don't have anything against Spiderman; I used to read that stuff when I was small.  But when somebody like Leon finds himself running a shop like the Hairy Tarantula, then a company like Marvel shouldn't be messing around.  It just opens up more shelf space for guys like me.  And the number of guys like me is growing.
 
Rob Walton's Ragmop is the latest to join the indy pack.  Marcus Lusk with Tales From The Bog might well be next.  And if Steve Stegelin starts getting Boondoggle, (currently my favorite indy), out a little more frequently, I think he could be there as well.
 
Anyway that's that. see you in issue nine.  Oh, also, you might want to check out Hero Magazine Online, (http://www.nuke.com).  They have some upcoming T&K pages.