Scott felt a sympathetic pang when Sam mentioned having lost the comics he had collected, and it showed on his face. Sure, all those little issues were hard things to hang onto, especially if there was a lot of moving around going on. Still, not having any of them left? If it had come to that for him, Scott would have considered ritual suicide if not for the existence of cheap trade collections on Amazon.ca. Well, and the existence of the Nintendo Entertainment System. And the Sega Genesis. And Playstation. Saturday morning cartoons. Garlic bread. The Smashing Pumpkins. Sex Bob-omb. Ramo— okay, maybe he wouldn't have committed ritual suicide. But he would've been upset. Maybe he would have banged his head against a wall or something.

There seemed to be something more under the surface of Sam's smile than he was putting across, but Scott couldn't quite tell what it was. For now, he didn't try to dwell much on it. The guy probably just had a lot on his mind, especially if he had gotten to the point of taking survival tips from Stephen King. "Scott. Scott Pilgrim," he answered, reaching over and extending a hand to shake. "You're the second Sam I've met, actually." The other one was a giant, wise-cracking Freelance Police dog in a human body. Think you can top that?

"I don't think I've seen him in a while, though," he added in a bit of a dejected tone, gaze shifting off to the side for a moment. "I'd say maybe he could've used a few survival tips of his own, but you know how this place is. Even some super awesome people just end up gone without a trace sometimes." Why was that, Scott had to wonder. What was it about the place that could take out people like Wolverine, who had apparently been around before and disappeared. He was back now, but it still stood that something had made him disappear the first time. That was a pretty dang hard thing to accomplish, getting the best of a man with an claws, an adamantium frame, and a healing factor.