Christmas shopping is always a challenge for me. It’s bad enough that I have eight siblings, but at least half of them are gamer geeks. You can’t choose your family, but you can choose your friends—and apparently I have a type, for my closest friends actually shiver in delight at acronyms such as “WoW” and “D&D” (hint: these represent neither the Christian music compilations nor the military department).

Unfortunately, it is also said that opposites attract; I know next to nothing about comics or RPGs. So it was with great discomfort that I ventured into Nova Comics, in the Springfield Plaza shopping center. Comics line the walls and $1 editions burst from boxes, but I couldn’t be distracted by newbie fear of the unknown. I was on a mission: Find the expansion pack to Settlers of Catan. Okay, okay, I said I didn’t know anything about games, but if you want to play a board game, PLAY SETTLERS. If you have more than three friends, buy your significant other (SO, in geekspeak) an expansion pack; they’ll never love you more.

My mission was complicated somewhat by the presence of my companion. Yes, I know it’s uncouth to shop for someone when they are there, but you can’t possibly expect me to brave the world of comics on my own! Also (and this is important), the store is not accessible by metro, so the SO took me to the store on the pretense of shopping for one of my younger brothers.

Sadly, they had neither of the games that I was looking for, but all told, the trip to Nova was pretty exciting for a book nerd. Though I felt like a fish out of water, the store is an excellent source of specialty products in a world of bookselling that is increasingly left for the chains to rule.

And after all, nothing could make me feel more out of place than ComicCon.

Graphic courtesy of http://www.novacomics.com; click for store hours and location.