Wednesday, October 12, 2011

My comic book Confession.

   Today, I'll admit to you all a secret that I've kept from the nerd community for a long time. I'm a wannabe, a know-nothing, a fake, fraud, and whatever other insult that you want to include.  What it boils down to is this.  I claim to be a well rounded geek (feel free to insert random fat jokes if you must.) yet I've barely read any comic books in my life before the last year.
   Growing up comic books were not accessible to me, there were no local comic shops in small town rural Temperance, Michigan. I know I claim Monroe, that is where I was born, and lived until about age 7, but after that it was all Temperance baby. But I digress, unlike past generations of nerds, I had many options of where to spread my geek to. I got to 'watch' my comics as there were more animated shows based on comic characters than ever before, many of the stories were ripped right out of the comics. Comics were expensive, and I grew up sans the silver spoon needed to properly feed my nerdy obsession.
   Video games were huge in my generation as well, sure there was the Atari before us, but most advancements in home gaming game happened during my generation as well, that meant another thing to split my time with.
   Then came the internet, and soon after wikipedia. I know that it's not a good source for a journalist or a research paper, but it's great for a nerd. Mostly it's edited by the more nerdly among us, and we self moderate our selves and and massively fact check each other. The great thing about wikipedia is that it allowed me to catch up on years of history in a few hours, and very cheaply.
   Unfortunately that meant I still didn't dive into comics as much as I wanted to, and it allowed me to sound knowledgeable among the community I so wanted to be a part of, simply because I knew the story lines, and if something were mentioned that I didn't know, I'd simply claim to not remember, or that I must have missed that issue.
   Pre-2010 I had probably read less than 20 comic books in my life, and maybe 5 or 6 trade paper backs. A lot of that has changed in recent years, as I've figured out I can get TPB's from the library, and that the library has deals where I can get books from just about anywhere. I'm loving it.  I currently have 33 trade's checked out, and I rip through them in about an hour each.
   I'm catching up mostly on Batman and the Flash right now, but I will soon move on to catching up on more stuff. Please leave me a comment and let me know your suggestions of what I should check out. And please don't chastize me to much, for being 'in the closet' for so long with my secret. I'm out now, and looking for help to fix the whole in my geek playbook.

4 comments:

  1. Welcome to the disease.

    Things to check out: Avatar's Black Summer, DC's Watchmen (cliche, but cool nontheless -- most Alan Moore is amazing), DC's Crisis on Infinitive Earths, Marvel's Civil War, Image's Walking Dead and DC's Kingdom Come are a good handful to start with.
    Happy reading ...

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  2. Almost forgot, possible the most iconic of all graphic novels: Marvel's Wolverine by Frank Miller and DC's The Dark Knight Returns, also by Frank Miller

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  3. I've been trying to help out as much as I can, though I've only really been reading comics since 2005 and most of those are from libraries since Australia's not a huge market for comics.
    I agree with The Dark Knight Returns being iconic, Frank's other best Batman work being Year One. All-Star Batman, however, nearly undoes all his good work.
    My personal choices for trades to read are Batman: The Long Halloween, Batman: Hush Volumes 1 and 2, Flash: The Secret Of Bary Allen, Identity Crisis, JLA: Tower Of Babel, Green Lantern: Rebirth, the first few arcs of Ultimate Spider-Man (though I loved most of the run, read 16 trades so far), Fantastic Four: Hereafter, Iron Man: Demon In A Bottle, Runaways: Pride And Joy, Invincible: Family Matters (that's an Image book) and Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life.
    And that's just for starters, lol

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  4. Thanks Komer, I've actually read the graphic novel versions of DKR and Watchmen. Watchmen several times.

    I really appreciate all the suggestions though. I'll keep you all posted.

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