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In Coffee Run, Dave Bidini tastes the city one coffee shop at a time.

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Literally and metaphorically, I’d left behind the world of comics. They were tired symbols of a mewling childhood; begging totems carried home by my mother in paper bags from the variety store; an A&P afterthought if I’d been well-behaved that week.

But later in life, it’s what I got for being ill-behaved that carried more appeal. Giant masked men in their underpants battling villains seemed effete and empty compared to a growing awareness of Litton armaments made in nearby suburban factories or hunger in the Third World or the villainy of Clifford Olson or Jim Jones.

Comics stuffed in boxes stuffed in my closet were only good for supporting the weight of guitars, German novels and cool clothes laid on top of them. One day I would get them out of there. I’d bring them to the Sally Anne or maybe the dump. They were useless to me.

But after that fine clearing period where you pass through insolence and rebellion to take the full measure of your life, I returned to those times lying stomach-flat to whatever surface I happened to be standing over with a comic opened between elbows spiked to the floor.

Someone once asked me about my inspiration for writing dialogue, and I confessed that the first wry, funny and rich banter I’d ever read had come in the bubblespeak of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s Spider-Man.