The mid-80s, for me, were spent on the volleyball court, in under-18 Death Rocker clubs, and in the comic-book den of one of my best friends, Pat. Naturally, each community made fun of my interest in the other two.
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| 1986: one of my public identities--club kid |
I rolled with the jokes, but it was hard to justify what drew me back to Pat's den, time and again. To block out all natural light, he covered the windows with aluminum foil, an extreme gesture even for me, a swarthy Arab-American who was desperate to obtain (or fake) Irish pallor. Every visit, I silently begged my olfactory nerve to acclimate to the room's dusty funk of old pulp paper and God-knows-what-else.
In that room, however, I learned about a style of storytelling that I'd never considered before, and that kept me coming back for more. Something now known as the "Graphic Novel" was taking shape, issue by issue, and I read them all as they were released, oh-so-careful not to sweat on or bend the pages, which sent Pat—who kept each new issue encased in a plastic sleeve—into a tantrum.
Alan Moore's Swamp Thing and Watchmen, and Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns gave me nightmares as effectively as Stephen King's novels, to which I was also addicted.
wanna read it yourself?
See what I mean by "Not Funny"? Unforgettable, though.
They contained images of the (so, so sexist) male loner's despair and agonizing, self-annihilating triumph over the cruelty, vapidity, and viciousness of Reagan-era capitalism. I never did love Comic Book Guy World, but I understood it, and I felt my "Exceptional-Girlness" to be allowed entry.
Ten years later, as a graduate student at Columbia University, it blew my mind to see bound-book editions of The Dark Knight Returns taught in literature courses to sincere Reagan-era-born undergrads.
Today, Pat makes a fine living talking and writing about the Japanese pop culture that he has loved since childhood. You can even buy his books:
I did! (not sure about reading them, though...)
The Big Bang Theory boy-men visit their comic book shop regularly. And of course, they have their own comic book series....
And so, it happened early last summer—triumphant after my family's first European Trip-For-Trash—I walked into my favorite Goodwill and stopped cold at the sight of 5 narrow, yard-long comic book boxes laid out on a table. $1.49 per copy, a handwritten sign indicated. No one was interested, it seemed, except me. The folks at Goodwill know me now, so I was able to work out a deal. I went home with 3 ridiculously heavy boxes, which I estimated held about 1,200 comics, for $240.
"I'm gonna get a plane ticket for our next trip with these!" I crowed to my Man.
“Great,” he smiled, ever-tolerant of my unique kind of crazy. “First thing you should do is organize and catalog them.”
Oh, yeah, Organize, Catalog: "Doing It Right" is not my forte....
As I took a first flip-through the boxes, I was gripped with terror.
Nothing—not years of preparing our taxes, not organizing a professor's 15,000 book library, not even 8th grade office assistant—could prepare me for the chaos within.
Spiderman, Superman, Wonder-Woman, X-Men, Batman, Buffy, Daredevil, Fantastic Four, Hulk, Elektra, Spider-Girl, Doom, and so very many more heroes and villains…and their over-lapping titles…in no particular order.
Let’s just take one as an example: X-Men. Easy, right? Popular, and therefore sellable. But what kind of fresh hell is in these titles, some of which started decades ago? X-Men, The Uncanny X-Men, Astonishing X-Men, Ultimate X-Men, Civil War: X-Men (They have a civil war??!), Avengers vs. X-Men, Amazing X-Men, The Amazing X-Men (YES: they are different series; the “The” makes all the difference in value), etc, etc, ad nauseum.
Was one of these really worth something? My head spun. My God, which one?
It hit me then: I was a modern Pandora with three boxes of the world’s evil in my home. I did the only sensible thing—I stacked them in a hallway and kept the lids on tight.
Copyright 2014, Tanya Monier
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