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Beyond The Valley Of The Nerds.

2008-04-21

This weekend I tortured my girlfriend.

(Boy , with a title like that it can only be downhill, or a quick visit by a group of Feds).

This torture didn't involve ball-gags, waterboarding, oiled whips and nipple clamps ( but enough about that-its sounding too fun). No this was  a far more insidious type of torture...I took her to THE NEW YORK COMIC CON!!!

See as nauseating as the notion of hanging out with a bunch of socially inept , perpetually adolescent fanboys who dress up as Dr.Doom and ogle pseudo-attractive (meaning large breasted) women dressed as Elektra and Huntress is to me, I invariably attend one every other year.

After the scathing (and stereotypical) disparaging remarks listed above , you'd be forgiven for wondering why I bother.

The primary reason is that I'm always trying to fill gaps in my collection, which have either disintegrated from wear or been simply ‘lost'; and there's no finer place to do so all in one place as a Comic Con.

I didn't invite Emma, because I didn't think she'd be remotely interested. But it turns out she wanted to go, giving some b-s reason about having ‘heard stories' about what goes on there. I relented and let her join me, figuring what's the worst that could happen. I wasn't able to convince her to go dressed as Power Girl though.

So she spent two days walking around with me with a perpetual look of bemusement  on her face about what she was seeing. She was also able to see me talk about an array comics topics with a variety of vendors and people I normally only communicate with on message boards. I'm sure this was an eye-opening experience for her.

I was also able to fulfill approximately 45% of the issues I was looking for, most of them for a reasonable price.

This was actually a good convention to attend apart from that. I always find it amusing to see guests, especially ones involved with ‘big stories' speak, and try to avoid giving too much away, but not say nothing at all. The catch here is that comics readers are generally so savvy , and slightly jaded, that a misplaced quote can give the whole game away.

Frank Miller was there, no really Frank's a delightfully crusty old guy. I tried to give 'All Star Batman' a go Frank, really I did. 

Grant Morrison was there too, which I was particularly interested seeing as his current Batman run has got me hooked. I even got to speak with him , albeit briefly, because of a friend I know who writes for Wizard. And no I didn't have my Dictaphone on me, or you could be sure I'd post a transcript.

 I asked what's been nagging me about his overarching continuity, and that was what he thought about the ‘90's Batman comics (which I still consider the best era). He said something like he personally thought it was fine but it went a little too dark towards the end with the whole, Cataclysm-No Man's Land stuff.

Stan Lee and John Romita Snr were there too, which was kinda cool-because they're so little alike that it baffles the mind how they worked together so well. Say what you like about Stan; that he's a huge self promoter, a glory hog and that he's spent much of his latter years trying to perpetuate his own myth. This may all be true, but he is really the comics equivalent of St.Peter. You may hate him (though probably not as much as Steve Ditko)  but come on, the guy created ‘The Fantastic Four', ‘Spider-Man', ‘The Hulk', ‘The X-Men'  and probably others I' forget. The point is he's got reason for being  slightly conceited. Plus if you give me a choice between Stan talking possibly apocryphal stories about writing comics in the 60's and a German pope talking about the sinfulness of anal sex, I'm going to choose Stan every time.

Even Emm seemed to have more fun than she thought, in fact she actually seemed to get into it once she overcame her feelings of displacement. In fact she even commented that it was nowhere near as bad as she  thought it'd be, whatever the hell that means.  

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