As I've mentioned a few times here before, I've recently started using ComicBase to catalog my comics collection. The previous option I'd been using was shut down at the end of 2019 and, despite experimenting with a few (considerably lesser IMO) alternatives for a year or so, I essentially put aside the endeavor of even trying to keep cataloging my collection until recently. In getting back to it, I've chosen to effectively start my cataloging over from scratch instead of attempting to utitlize the export I had done back in 2019. In no small part because the various attempts I made to merge that export into other existing systems resulted almost as much as starting over in the first place.
With a collection that's in the tens of thousands of individual issues, it should suffice to say that it's taking a while to get my entire collection cataloged. It's easy enough to just tick off long runs of something popular like Uncanny X-Men but any books that are not already in the system can take a while to log in. Things like a ten-year-old, photocopied mini-comic with a print run of less than 100 copies by creator who stopped doing comics entirely shortly after that mini-comic was printed for example. Zero surprise that's not already in the system.
I touched on this about a month ago, but mostly just as a bit of surprise in some of what's not included.
My collection is a bit of an odd mix, at this point. Much of it obviously revolves around things I am personally interested in. (Or, at least, I was interested in them when I bought them!) But my collection also includes that of a friend of mine who passed away a few years ago. Part of it came from a cousin who stopped collecting. Part of it from my father who was just trying to clear out the basement. Part of it came from someone up the street who literally just dropped a couple dozen long boxes on the curb for garbage pickup! So I have a lot of books I know little to nothing about.
I have titles I've never heard of, from publishers I've never heard of.
I don't know if I'm not finding an issue in the database because it's genuinely not listed, or because it's filed under a 'stealth' title that's not immediately obvious. (As a more famous example, The Death of Captain Marvel graphic novel -- what everybody knows the story as, and what's printed on the cover -- is officially listed as Marvel Graphic Novel #1. It went back to print over a dozen times under that title, until it was reprinted in 2010 when they formally switched it to Captain Marvel: The Death of Captain Marvel. So where it shows up in the database depends on what version you have and, even then, it's never listed under "D.")
I have hundreds of Transformers comics, but
I have never read any of the issues or even sat down to watch any Transformers cartoon, so I have no real sense of how that license bounced around through different publishers over the years and what's original versus just a reprint. What about variant covers? Now some issues comes with literally dozens of variant covers -- how do I know if I've got Variant G or Variant Q?
I don't mention this to complain, only to offer a bit of context to say that just ticking a box next to Detective Comics #36 is often not as simple as one might expect!
But -- and here I get to my actual point with this blog post -- I've become accutely aware of what has/has not been given attention by the broader comic book community. (Or, at least, the comic book community that utilizes some version of the ComicBase software. While you might think that since it's paid software, the user base is exclusively people a little higher up in income brackets, they offer a surprisingly good free version as well. To be fair, it probably does still skew the demographic metrics a bit but it's not explicitly exclusionary.) One interesting thing I've found is that very little in the way of "alternative" comics are represented. While that's no surprise when it comes to something like that theoretical mini-comic I mentioned earlier, I am surprised to see so little from significant publishers like Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly. Fantagraphics has been around since 1976 and D&Q since 1990. They've both published numerous award-winning books. These are not obscure publishers producing small print runs; these are long-standing publishers with solid histories of well-known and respected works. And yet I find they have minimal representation in the database; I'm constantly having to add new entries with almost every title either of them have put out.
By contrast, I have yet to add any entries for anything that might be considered porn. I mean, sure, I expected "adult" comics like Heavy Metal to show up in the database, but even the most poorly drawn, let's-just-depict-as-many-overt-sexual-acts-as-possible comics that I'd never heard of before are included as well. Manara? Sure, expected. Serpieri? Expected. But some random comic that's barely distinguishable from an unsigned Tiajuana Bible? Honestly, I'm kind of surprised some of this stuff has even made it into my collection in the first place (with a few exceptions, I honestly couldn't say for sure which of the collections I absorbed any of these came from) but regardless of how widely distributed they were or what size of print runs they had, they have all been consistently more likely to have already been included in this database than any random title from Fantagraphics.
To be clear,
I'm not against porn and I'm not about to judge anyone who buys/has bought it. I've kept all these books that have come into my collection, after all. But that it so consistently shows up in a comics database that has been in operation for decades while titles from folks like Fantagraphics and D&Q so consistently do not says something about comics fandom that doesn't get talked about much, I don't think. There are innumerable columns and videos and academic papers talking about Acme Novelty Library and Love and Rockets and Ducks and King-Cat, but virtually nothing on Penthouse Comix or Doctor! I'm Too Big! or The Spider Garden. Yeah, there's some level of apples and oranges there, but that porn isn't discussed at all despite apparently being more commonly owned is noteworthy.
Sure, some of the stories are flimsy excuses to draw naked people. But is the superhero genre all that much different? With the stereotypical body sock that most superheroes wear, they might as well be drawing naked people, and the stories not infrequently are just as flimsy as the ones in porn. Just focusing on violence instead of sex. And regardless of your subject matter, there's some level of craft that can be discussed if nothing else. Can the reader follow panel-to-panel or scene-to-scene transitions? Are characters drawn consistently? Does dialogue flow smoothly or does it feel stilted? These types of questions are still valid whether you've got 32 pages of Spandex-Man hitting President Supervillain, or 32 pages of Buck Nekkid getting his freak on with Boobs MacUnty.
I won't get into today all the social reasons WHY we have so much porn but refuse to talk about it. Because that's a much larger discussion that goes well beyond comics. But it's something that I don't think even gets acknowledged very often, and maybe it's worth taking a few moments to do at least that.
Emerald City Comic Con announced that in 2027, their show will use only digital badges instead of more traditional physical ones. As noted at The Beat's coverage of this, there has been some pushback from potential con-goers: "What if my phone dies, what if there is no service, what if I don’t OWN A MOBILE PHONE." All of which are valid concerns. The show claims it will have provisions for that last concern, but I don't see how any provision could be a practical one since you can't prove you don't have a phone and a convention would therefore need to rely on an individual being truthful about it, therefore meaning you'd also need to have some kind of physical badge system in place anyway. So you'd need to run a system where anyone who just wants a physical badge can get one. Which puts us back to where we are now anyway.
The main reason why a show might set up a digital badge system is financial. As noted in that Beat article, some shows express the concern about individuals swapping badges. A show would then theoretically miss out on a sale if a person bought a one-day ticket, used it for half a day and then gave it to someone else who used it for the other half of the day. I'm sure this does happen, but in the first place, the people who do act as that 'second ride' for an existing ticket were never going to spend money on a ticket so we're not talking about 'lost' revenue here. And in the second place, the shows that are big enough where that might be a concern are primarily attended by fans who spend a significant portion of the day at the show in the first place, so there's minimal opportunity to swap anyways. I think this idea is a minimal problem at worst and more likely a phantom one for most shows that have this concern.
Again we're not talking about lost revenue here, despite the concern; we're talking about trying to extract as much money as possible out of the fandom as cynically as we can.
The other financial incentive is in the badge creation and distribution process. A digital badge sysetm would obviously cut down the costs of manufacturing badges since there'd obviously be nothing to actually manufacture, but it would also cut down on distribution costs. A show wouldn't have the costs of physically mailing badges, and they wouldn't need to hire as many people to work at the convention itself to pass out badges for anyone who doesn't have it mailed to them. Anyone who's been to a larger show has seen the couple dozen people they have just to handle badges; this would effectively get cut down to one guy standing at the entrance checking your phone.
Towards the end of that Beat piece, Heidi mentions, "I’m sure people won’t like it at first, but soon they will forget that there ever was a thing such as attendee badges." I don't think this is quite right. Yes, people won't like it at first and complaints will dwindle over time. But only part of that dwindling levels of complaints will be people 'forgetting' badges were a thing. The other part is that anyone who can't participate in the system will essentially just be excluded from it. They won't complain about problems with the show because they simply weren't able to attend in the first place. It will seem as if people have stopped complaining when, in fact, the ones with the issues will be shut out of the conversation entirely and go unheard. Conventions will basically be forcing their loudest audience to self-select out of the system so they won't be able to offer feedback. That's why complaints will die down before too long.
Yes, there are benefits to digital badges beyond the cost savings to convention organizers. I am 100% on board with not creating a crap-ton more plastic that will largely wind up in a landfill. But eliminating a physical option entirely is going to force out a notable segment of the population. Having an "accomodation" method won't be sufficient and will not work at a larger scale. A digital option is great, but it needs to run in tandem with a physical option in order to not alienate a significant audience.
Do you know G.B. Love? Let me borrow this snippet of his bio from the Inter-Fan website...G.B. Love was the driving force of comics fandom in South Florida and one of the main forces of comics fandom in its infancy.
G.B. published The Rocket's Blast, a comics fanzine, in the early 1960s, which later merged with another fanzine to become The Rocket's Blast ComiCollector, known to most simply as the RBCC. The RBCC was an expensive ($5) magazine-size publication with fan (and future pro) art and articles and tons of ads from comics fans and dealers. It was one of the first and largest forums for fans to buy and sell comics through the mail. This was in the days before comic stores and before The Buyer's Guide (later known as Comic Buyer's Guide) existed. Often, the only way for fans to get back issues was through ads in RBCC. The RBCC also showcased fan art and many whose work appeared within its pages often went on to professional comics careers. The RBCC was also an educational forum, with rich articles devoted to comics and creators long absent from the newsstands, such as EC Comics.
If that were all that G.B. Love had done, he would definitely have earned his place in the annals of comics fandom, but he was also active on the local level. He organized the first comic book conventions in South Florida, beginning in the late 1960s in the unairconditioned Fireman's Hall in Coral Gables, and later at various American Legion Halls in Coconut Grove.
Now
bear with me as I run down a quick timeline...- 1939 - Love was born
- 1961 - Love launched The Rocket's Blast
- 1962 - Love launched Fighting Hero Comics
- 1964 - The Rocket's Blast merged with The Comicollector
- 1965 - Love launched Fantastic Exploits
- 1967 - RCBB went to photo-offset printing, so Love no longer had to collate and staple each issue himself
- 1968/69 - Love organized the first comic convention in South Florida
- 1971 - Love launched The Golden Age Collector
- 1974 - Love moved to Houston and launched Trek: The Magazine for Star Trek Fans
- 1974/75 - Love helped organize Houstoncons
- 1980 - Love began editting Trek: The Best of Trek books
- 1990 - The Americans with Disabilities Act was passed
- 2000 - Love was seriously injured in a car accident
- 2001 - Love died at age 61
You'll note that the I've included passage of the ADA in this list. Why is it relevent? Because Love had cerebal palsy. The fanzines, magazines and books he published, the conventions he organized and worked at, everything he is remembered for in fandom happened before passage of the ADA. It's worth noting, too, that his case of cerebal palsy was pretty extreme. His friend Earl Blair later said: "Walking was difficult as was merely picking up or handling a pencil... a Coke can... or just about any object. His speech was difficult and most folks would find nearly unintelligible." Keith Sillman mentioned that Love "couldn't really use his fingers, but he would sit at the admissions table and grasp the dollar bills with his gnarled hands. When he spoke, his speech was so badly affected that it often sounded more like seal utterances."
Yet, by all accounts, he was a very successful writer/editor/publisher. In a time well before people with disabilities had a collective voice. When "handicapped" was a derogatory term. You might recall that even into the early 1990s, In Living Color felt comforable enough to regularly try to get laughs with Damon Wayans' Handi-Man character.
In more recent years, some cons have gone out of their way to ensure people with all sorts of disabilities are being treated well. So things are better, right?
Well, that's hard to say. While we (or at least I) don't really hear any stories about bad experiences from people with disabilities, that could well be because they're superceded by sexual harassment of women. Or discrimination against racial minorities. Or any of the other issues that caused me to start an -isms column in the first place. I'd like to think things in comics fandom are better than they were in general -- I tend to view the past with whatever the opposite of rose-colored glasses are -- but the sparks of progress are frequently countered by increased reports of people being asshats.
Love faced a challenging life and managed to succeed far beyond anyone's expectations. But that was in spite of the society he lived in, not because of it. After all, how many other examples like his can you point to in fandom. And while there still aren't people with disabilities crowding out others on the convention floor, I can see a greater number of them in attendance than even ten years ago. So that has to be some kind of progress... right?
As I've noted before in a few different places, earlier this year I began using my "media server" (i.e. an old laptop that I've thrown a bunch of music and video files on) to host a local comics database as well as any digital comics I have. And since my prior database died back in 2019, I was not only several years out of date with cataloging of my collection but my data set had developed some problems from my various attempts to reconfigure it for different databases. So for the past month and a half, I've been re-cataloging my entire comics collection.
This has been exceptionally tedious. It's easy enough to tick the box next to Avengers #372 to mark it in my database, but anything that's a little more off the beaten path and isn't already in the database requires a decent amount of data entry. One of the last books I had to manually enter last night was Jason Walz's Homesick, which was an Eisner Award nominee back in 2014! Over a decade and you don't have Eisner nominees included yet?!
Having to input any single issue or graphic novel isn't that big a deal. But you multiply that by hundreds or thousands, and it gets repetitious. And annoying when some of those issues are exceptionally-small-run mini-comics where the creator didn't even bother to include any information on the comic itself besides the URL of their now-several-years-defunct Tumblr. There's been more than a couple instances where literally the only reference I can find anywhere online to the comic is an old blog post I myself made when I first acquired it!
But as tedious as it's been and continues to be -- a month and a half with virtually all of my free time going towards cataloging, and I've logged nearly 20,000 individual pamphlet comics and 2,000 graphic novels with at least a few thousand more to go -- and despite my complaints here, I will say that it's also been very enlightening. By having to go through each book one by one, I'm better familiarizing myself with my collection. Books that I didn't realize were limited editions, autographs I didn't know I had, obscure mini-comics by creators very early in their careers before they got any notoriety... My copy of Hicksville is signed to me personally by Dylan Horrocks and includes a color sketch of the lighthouse, and I don't even remember ever meeting Horrocks! It's like a book from Hicksville itself!
Some of this comes from the volume of books in my collection, some from the passage of time since I picked these up in the first place, and some from the nature of how I acquired other people's collections in a more bulk process. But it's the first time I've really sat down and actually examined my entire collection since the last time I did a full inventory 20 years ago. (I checked; I made a post here on this blog about starting to use ComicBookDB back in June 2006!) Which, on the one hand is bad because I really should be more familiar with my collection, but on the other hand is understandable because it's a good sized collection that would take a much larger, more concerted, more ongoing effort to fully become familiar with. Which takes away from the actual reading and research that I get comics for in the first place!
I had Kurt Busiek once tell me that he's not a comic book collector; he's just a voracious comic book reader who just doesn't get rid of his comics. I feel similarly. I don't get these comics to collect them; I get them to read! This collection angle -- the cataloging of everything -- is more about being able to understand and find things I need/want to revisit when I come across something I need to cross-reference. Whether that's an old story being referenced by a new one, or an old work by a creator who I just re-discovered via their newer work, or part of a general research project I might be working on. The entire point of my setting up my own library was to actively make it a working library; the cataloging is part of that, both by recording what's in the library and by forcing me to become more personally familiar with everything.
I've happened across more than a few instances recently of comics fans who are out there talking about their favorite hobby online. They've got their own channel/outlet and they're doing their own takes on Jimmy Olsen and Jack Kirby and the Eternals and Wally Wood and any/everything to do with comics. There's nothing new with this, of course; fans have been talking about comics LOOONG before the internet was even a thing, so it makes sense that it would translate online. In fact, many -- if not most -- of my interactions online back in the late '90s centered around talking about comics. I began my own Fantastic Four themed site in 1996, and I spent time discussing characters and creators and issues both past and present on a variety of message boards. Several of the people I talked with back then are still in my circle, and I still talk with them about comics.
But these folks I've come across more recently are a bit different. Beyond the obvious things like their using social media, which wasn't even a thing back in the day, but rather... well, basically that they weren't even there back in the day. I don't mean that as a slight or anything; they're simply too young (probably not even born in some cases) to have been part of the conversations I was having back in 1996. For them, Jack Kirby has always been a legend that already passed away, Chris Claremont has always been a former X-Men writer, Image Comics has always held a significant piece of the comics market, mega-crossover events have always been the norm, Wednesday was always New Comics Day, etc. The people who I've been discussing comics with have obviously aged with me and, while there may be as much 10-15 years between us in age, there was still enough overlap that we saw many of the same comics experiences in real time. We read Watchmen as a monthly serial, we watched as Judge Dredd get juggled from Eagle Comics to Quality Comics to Fleetway Comics, we saw DC run a 1-900 kill-your-partner hotline to vote on Robin's life, we debated whether Marvel Comics would sell off some of their characters to help get them out of bankruptcy, we saw comics drawn on a computer for the very first time... Even there were several years between us, we had those touchstones that were part of our comics background and makeup.
By contrast, I just caught a video providing an overview of the original Secret Wars series. It wasn't a review exactly, it didn't reveal any previously hidden background details, it didn't have any new interviews with the original creators; it was just an overview of what happened and some of the context around it. That's a piece that would never have occured to me to write because... well, why? Everyone I know read it as it came out back in the '80s. More poignently, I would never think to write a piece like that because there's little for me to learn in the process. I read the comics back then, I read articles about the comics back then. From a strictly fact/content basis, I could've dashed off the same info of the video I watched without even doing research.
But then, there's the real key difference. These people I'm talking about? They've got the perspective of someone in their late 20s/early 30s. Meaning a) they're reading these stories in a notably different (post-Y2K, post-9/11, post-comiXology) context, and b) they have a different form and style of communication than we older folks do. The most obvious differences are a much heavier dose of snark and the regular use of (borderline reliance on) cutaway gags. I'm not opposed to these ideas, mind you; I'm conversant enough in their language that I get it, even though it's not engrained nearly enough for me to sound natural or casual with it. Those are both styles that really didn't show up on my radar until I was an adult and had a writing/communicating style already pretty firmly established; they're just not an inherent part of my media background.
That combination of things is what I find striking. That they're talking about comics that are just part of my background growing up, as well as having a better set of language components to speak to a younger crowd. I haven't noticed much of a difference between myself (firmly planted in Gen X) and Millennials, but I do see a much more pronounced break between Millennials and Gen Z. (Well, as pronounced as these type of broad generational classifications allow; I expect several of these people I'm seeing are technically Millennials, albeit ones from the tail end of that period.) There's a markedly different approach they're taking, one that's more media-literate, where digital editing has always been the norm and remixing content is something they've been doing they're whole lives.
To a degree, this has always been how aging works, right? Folks get older and start seeing how younger people are doing things differently? "These kids today..." and so on. I think it's much more noticeable now, though, because younger folks have access to a much wider platform than literally any generation before them. My initial thought when I saw some of these videos were out there was to question why they were doing them; the topics they're spelling out in the titles have been covered to death already. Which they have, but by older people who don't speak Gen Z fluently. These younger folks use a different media language, and it takes someone speaking in that vernacular to connect in a way that an old fart like myself wouldn't.
Ultimately, my point is that, while it's easy to dismiss "these kids today" as being wholly unoriginal and simply re-hashing the discussions we had decades ago, they're actually having different talks. Ones that come from a different media landscape. Ones that come with an entirely different way to unpack its baggage. Ones that still rely on and reference those discussions we had on USENET, but with emojis and memes and Snapchat filters instead of just, you know, Courier.
Maybe it's easier for me since I was never "with it" in any capacity, and no one listened to me even when I was a marketable demographic. But don't dismiss "these kids today" as just covering the same ground you covered decades ago. There's some new and interesting approaches out there, and I'm eager to hear more of what these folks have to say.
I was just trolling through the Library of Congress website (as one does) and found a few photos of possible interest to comics folks...
Winsor McCay sketching for the Actors Benefit for Crippled Children, 1908...
From a school for refugee children, 1942. Photo by Marjory Collins...
Wanda Newman and Teresa Phillips at Do Dah Day in Birmingham, AL, 2010. Photo by Carol Highsmith...
Maybe it's just me, but I find this kind of stuff fascinating. How they show the cultural and social impact of comics over the course of American history.
If you're bummed that you can't attend Comic Con in person this year (it formally kicks off tomorrow, but there are some unofficial parties starting this afternoon) I might suggest looking back at this Foxtrot strip Bill Amend did back in 2009. Jason and Marcus* had the Comic-Con@Home experience figured out a decade-and-a-half ago!
* There's a coloring error here -- Marcus is supposed to be Black. I believe this was corrected in the books, but they've never gone back and adjusted the version online.
I mentioned back in June that I had recently returned to using ComicBase as a way to catalog my collection. It's had some substantial improvements since I'd last used it in the early 2000s. (I just double-checked; I still have the physical manual to ComicBase 5, which was released in 2000.) Partially because of that and partially because of what I do differently, I'm setting this database up to be a more functional research tool.
The basic use of such a comic book database like this is pretty simple and straight-forward: to track which comics I have and, as a secondary consideration, which comics I want to look for. Theoretically, a basic list or Excel file would be sufficient in many cases, but that does get a bit tricky when you're considering alternate versions of the same issue or multiple series with the same title. Differentiating those can be done in a variety of different ways, but those could vary quite a bit depending on the publisher and the time period. Do the covers use different artwork, are the cover prices different, did they come out on different dates, do they have different publishers... So to account for all those variations, you need to expand the amount of data you need to track for each issue, and those Excel files can start getting unwieldly and downright ineffecient pretty quickly.
I don't think I need to get any extended explanations on all of that. So let's get to the research angle.
As I'm working on something, I might want to reference a story point I nominally recall, but couldn't pinpoint off the top of my head. But I can use the database to hunt down the issue in question. "I think it was the first story to introduce [character X]." "I'm pretty sure it was drawn by [specific artist]." "I know it occurred right after [some other storyline]." Instead of having to rifle through long boxes trying to track down a specific issue and relying on a half-faded memory, I can do the tracking work digitally and only go to the long boxes (or bookshelves) once I've figured out what precisely I'm looking for. That's almost inevitably going to be a faster process, and I'm less likely to cause additional wear and tear on (particularly) older issues. And in many cases, I might be able to find that the story I need was reprinted elsewhere and I don't have to touch my original issues at all.
As ComicBase also allows for digital comics to be added, there will be many cases where I do not need to even get up from my computer. I have years worth of digital comics on my hard drive already. Some are public domain pieces that have been uploaded for free online, some are review copies I've been sent. I even found a decent stash of more independent comics on my hard drive dating back to 2006-2008 and had Wowio advertisements embedded in them! (For you youngsters, Wowio was an early attempt to act as an ad-supported digital comics hub, but it really started to stall by 2008 and was all but defunct by 2009.) Which means that, as I'm doing those searches that I mentioned above, I can immediately access the digital versions right from that database entry whether I have a physical copy or not.
As a real-world practical example, as I was cataloging my collection, I came across a couple issues of Radio Shack's History of Electronics comics. I have three copies, each from a different year, but the database points out all the other versions I'm missing. Mine were ones I'd picked up from Radio Shack first-hand back in the day, so they're all pretty close content-wise. But seeing that they ranged from 1972 up through 1990, there must have been some pretty radical changes in the story to account for actual technological changes. Having digital copies of a wide range of them, I can directly compare the full range of them to one another and determine what changes needed to happen and how the 1972 version evolved into the 1990 version.
Yes, I could theoretically track down physical copies of all of them and make comparisons that way, but this is MUCH faster and more efficient!
And, furthermore, because I've got all this on a database running locally on my home network, that means that I can continue working on things if there are problems with an internet hub or my ISP or something. Or if the digital copies of those books that are currently available online get removed. You hear about it more with movies and TV shows, but the services hosting online media are increasingly juggling licensing agreements all over the place, so what may have been readily accessible one day is gone the next.
(My personal example -- which still annoys me -- I was watching the Marvel show Runaways on Disney+ when they abruptly removed it from their platform just as I was about to begin season 2. The show remained available on Amazon Prime, but only seasons 1 and 3 for some inexplicable reason. After over a year of that being the status quo, all three seasons only recently popped up on Tubi. Who knows how long it will remain there? I mean, it's a show produced by Disney -- you'd think they wouldn't pull down TV shows they actually own!)
My point being that the few years I spent without having a working comics database was more than just an annoyance in not knowing all the comics I had in my collection. It was limiting the amount and type of research I could do, and making much of what I did do more tedious than it needed to be. If all you need is something to keep track of what issues you have or want, that's great -- you might not anything more complicated than a notepad. But in doing the type of work that I do, a robust database can be invaluable in getting quicker and more ready access to the sources I need to do the research I'm trying to do.
The most memorable comics to me remain the ones I read a few decades ago as a kid. The images etched into my brain and the dialogue still ringing in my head. Some of those books were indeed note-worthy. The O'Neil/Adams Green Lantern/Green Arrow for example. Others I kind of wish I could forget. There was a particularly bad 1976 issue of Archie that still haunts me -- especially that splash page of Archie racing down the stairs crying about his broken platform clog. But both of those types of comics, as well as all the not-great-but-not-bad ones in between, stick out more strongly in my memory than some more recent works that are particularly well-done. Why should I have better recollection of a mediocre comic I read decades ago than a stellar one I read last month?
I suppose nostalgia plays into that at some level, but a lot of the bits I remember don't hold any emotional weight with me. I can remember the stories and the art, but not that they really spoke to me in any significant way. There are some books I certainly do feel nostalgia for, but not most of them.
When I was in my early 20s, I was at a comic convention and came across a copy of Fantastic Four #76, which had been on my "want list" along with a host of other old issues from that title. I don't recall what I paid for it, but I'm assuming it must have been reasonably priced. When I got the issue home, though, I discovered that I had already bought a copy sometime previously. TWICE! I bought one, read it, forgot it, bought another copy, kicked myself for buying a second copy, forgot that, and bought a third copy! That was when I realized that I was no longer able to keep track of what I did or didn't have with an easy mental checklist. My want list had grown too large and too varied to remember.
When I was I kid, before I was really a deep fan of comics, I would only read a new comic once every few months on average. I couldn't really afford any on my own, so I basically had to rely on gifts at that point. When I first started getting into them, I got exactly one new comic a month. A year or two later, that got upped to three comics a month. It was six by the time I graduated high school.
But that one new comic a month bit? Twenty-two pages of story. I re-read books, of course, but new material (for me) was coming at a rate of less than a page a day. These days, I regularly read a minimum of 40-50 pages of new material every day (via webcomics) not to mention various manga and graphic novels when I can. In fact, I've only been able to read one 168-page graphic novel and half of a 142-page one this week on top of those regular 40-50 pages because it's been an especially busy week. I'm not saying that to try to brag -- I have no clue how that compares to others' reading habits -- but to just to point out that it's a phenomenally huge increase compared to what I was reading as a kid. In the past five days alone I've read 20 times the volume of new material that I used to read in a whole month!
So it should come as no surprise that I don't recall stuff from last week as well as from last century. I had more time to commit individual comics to memory because they weren't competing with each other. Any given issue of Superman or Action Comics that I might've gotten needed to tide me over for a couple of months, not a couple of minutes. So I'm certain I spent much more time with each book back then. The relative isolation in which each comic was read back then made them stand out more. I read through so many now that they wind up blurring together a bit more, and it's harder to remember them.
Just like it was easier to remember which Fantastic Four issues I was looking for when I was ONLY looking for Fantastic Four back issues. And how I started re-buying issues because I was also trying to look for their appearances in other titles, back issues of Avengers and the first appearances of Moon Knight and Punisher.
I do enjoy the comics I read today. I'm a little disappointed that I can't retain the memories of them more vividly, relative to those books I read as a kid, but only inasmuch as it's a failing on the part of my memory. I don't care to dwell on what's already happened, and I'd rather spend my time looking forward to new cool things. I'll enjoy the new books as they come out and move forward.
Say, how soon until the next volume of
The Moon on a Rainy Night
comes out anyway?
Back in the late '90s, I had this idea to write the definitive article about Skrulls. Everything from their basic history to their psychology to an appendix of all the known Skrulls. Basically, it would be a Wikipedia article about them several years before Wikipedia was even a thing. So I dug out all my comics with Skrulls in them, and bought any issues that I knew had significant Skrull-related stories. I read through everything, and I spent weeks writing something up. I recall having keep all the relevant comics stacked on the floor next to an old drafting table that I was using as a computer desk. And as I learned about or remembered more appearances, I'd have to go to the other room where my comics collection was, dig out the relevant issues and head back to the desk. That was something of a chore since I had my long boxes just stacked on one another, so I often had to shift several of them around just to get to the right box.
It was then that I started form the idea of setting up a comics library of some kind. Where I had my comics readily accessible and didn't have to move six boxes just to get the one I needed.
Where I had everything I needed to read and write about comics without having to keep moving to different rooms just because I forgot to grab that one issue.
That wasn't really feasible at the time, though, since we were renting , and space was something of a premium -- I had to work with what we had.
After I got my first house in 1999, though, I was able to eventually able to set up a space for exactly that. Once I determined that the basement wasn't actually very damp even before I put a dehumidifier down there, I set up a corner of the large unfinished area for my comics. I jerry-built some shelves using old hollow-core doors and some concrete blocks I picked up from a contruction site. It was cheap and relatively unattractive, but it got the job done.
I did notice a problem after a bit, though. Namely that if I was working on something like that Skrulls article, it still required me to grab the comics I need and carry them up two flights of stairs to my office where my computer was. I spent a fair amount of time trying to set up a computer down there. This would've been before wi-fi was commercially viable, so I was literally running cat-5 all over the house to make sure it had internet access. Once I did get that all sorted, though, the physical set-up of the computer itself wasn't comfortable to write on. I could do quick things like log new comics into my database, but writing extended articles about anything? Forget it!
When I sold that house and moved to the Chicago area, I made a point of ensuring I put effort into making a good comics library for myself. That meant nice, clean-looking shelving. A solid and stable work space where I could comfortably write, while still having access to my whole collection. A second area set aside just for leisure reading. My wife was very supportive of the whole endeavor and encouraged me to do what I needed to do in order to get everything set up properly. And once I did, I immediately began using it like I'd hoped -- working on comics related writing, and just rolling my chair a foot or two to the side to grab something else to use as reference.
I ran into another issue in 2019, however, when Chris Siefert sold ComicBookDB.com which I had been using to catalog my collection. Back when I set up a spare computer in the basement, I used a program called ComicBase. It was, at the time, the only real comics database software of its kind. It did work well, but it ran off your local drive, which meant that you couldn't access it anywhere else. Which was a bit of a challenge when you're rummaging around the back issue bins on a convention floor! So around 2006-07, I switched to ComicBookDB because it was online. And for a little over a decade, I was able to reference it from my library to catalog and/or look up individual issues, and continue to refer to on my phone while I was at conventions. After ComicBookDB.com, I tried a number of other solutions but nothing really checked off all the criteria I needed (which now included having control over the database itself if/when the next guy decides he wants to sell his set-up too).
And so I'm back to ComicBase. I've got it running off my home media server, so it's housed alongside my collection of music and TV and movies. And not only is it just running the database, but I'm able to connect it to all the digital copies of comics I have been saving for years as well. So I can search through the database looking for an issue and, once I find it, can just click a link to pop a digital version right up if I've got that one on hand. (I currently have about 70 gigs worth on my hard drive, and I've got a collection of about 50 older CDs with additional comics on them! Including most of Tintin, nearly all the Marvel superhero books from 1961-'67, and a complete run of Amazing Spider-Man up through 2003!) And since it's on a central, networked systemm I can access from any computer in the house and I can partially cloud-share it, so I can look things up on the go. Not to mention that ComicBase is -- still somehow in 2026 -- NOT a subscription service and I can (theoretically) keep running this same software until my computers all freeze; even if they sell the company off or shut it down, I can continue using the database.
Now, while this looks like a series of incremental upgrades to my setup over the past 30-ish years -- and from a functional perspective, it is -- where I'm at now (well, where I will be once I get my collection fully cataloged!) is what I've been aiming for this whole time. I'm just executing now on an idea that I simply could not bring to full fruitition until decades of progress caught up with me. Some of the limitations were technical, some financial, some just based on my meager skills and knowledge. But this was always the end goal. I couldn't have articulated that in any great detail back in 1997, but that's what I ultimately wanted -- a place where I could read and write about comics, regardless of what form those comics took (print, digital, microfiche...), and have ready access to both the broad information available from the world as well as the specific details of my personal collection. All of it in one place that's both comfortable and functional.
Could it be made better? Sure! I'd love if I could use a single database for music, TV, movies, AND comics. I'd love if there were a way to incorporate my original art into the same catalog, linking high quality scans directly to the issue they're from. I'd love to have even faster, more robust computers running the whole backend instead of leftovers not good enough to use in my day-to-day work. And I'd love more physical space so it feels a bit more open. But that's really just nitpicking. I liked my setup before I had a networked database helping me to keep track of everything; this would make 1997-me plotz!
A lot of what we experience as kids impacts us as adults. I sometimes find myself wondering why I like or dislike a particular thing, or why I grew up to think a certain way -- what did I experience as a child that impacted me in a way that would cause me to think/feel as I do today? When I stumbled across my old copy of Justice League of America #90 the other day, I realized that probably was the first major encounter I had with environmentalism. I probably haven't cracked it open in thirty, maybe thirty-five years, so I decided to re-read it to see what exactly may have struck a chord with me.
As it turns out, I must have totally mis-read the issue as a kid. It wasn't really an environmental story at all, despite my recollection of it being one. Probably due in large part to the cover. The gist of the actual story is the military (it's never specified which branch) dumped a bunch of "obsolete" poisonous gas into the ocean just to get rid of it. The dumping happens to crush the sacred "Proof Rock" of the underwater Pale People, and one of them takes that as a sign to use the gas to conquer Aquaman's Atlantis. They quickly take over, but the death of an Atlantean found on the shore alerts Batman, Superman, Hawkman, Green Lantern, and Atom to a potential problem. The heroes go save Aquaman and take back Atlantis. Hawkman then instructs the Pale People how they might use the broken Proof Rock in a different manner than before.
There are a number of problems with the story. The two beach-goers who find the dead Atlantean immediately recognize her as such, with no indication of how since she looks exactly like a human. How the Pale People go from having a boulder crushing their Proof Rock to using the gas weapons (which they'd never actually seen) to conquer Atlantis isn't really explained. How a gas weapon even works underwater is pretty murky as well. And somehow the Proof Rock becomes a Proof Rock Plant at the end of the story, and Hawkman seems to think that eating it is a sign of the faith they must have in their own souls. How do Hawkman's wings work underwater anyway? Batman is actually absent for most of the story because he's off searching for Flash, whose "special services" he suspects "will be needed on this case" -- um, since when does Flash have any powers that are unusually useful underwater? Not to mention a number of other smaller assumptions and leaps of logic writer Mike Friedrich seems to make.
But, hey, it was 1971. Comics were still considered kids stuff and not given a lot of thought. On the plus side, there's a moment of gravity and emotional realism towards the end. After the Pale People are defeated, Green Lantern notes, "Looks like everything's okay now!" to which Aquaman goes off about how 43 people died...The next page shows Aquaman and much of Atlantis attending a mass funeral. So big props for including that sequence showing actual consequences.
But the various storytelling problems, I think, led to my thinking it was more actively an environmental story. I thought the Proof Rock had been destroyed by the gas itself after it had been dumped, not some boulders that had been knocked loose by the gas canisters. The couple panels later of the Pale People letting loose the gas were drawn in such a way that I didn't really make the connection that they had fully harnessed the gas as a weapon; I think I must have thought they were only redirecting the already exposed gas.
I suppose I must have read more into the cover, and made some assumptions about the story itself based on that. And I wonder if that's why I'm not more of an environmentalist. I got the basic message I think cover artist Carmine Infantino was trying to convey, but since it wasn't well reinforced by the contents, it only left me with a base level concern as opposed to being more activist about it.
Or else it had no impact at all, and I got whatever concerns I have from other sources entirely. Regardless, I do find these types of inquires interesting to explore, even if they don't turn up any conclusive proofs.
I was recently pointed to this article on How to Avoid Becoming a Weeaboo and thought I should point out the utter horseshit of it.
Let's start with a little background. The definition, according to Know Your Meme, is "a Gaijin (foreigner in Japanese) displaying a heavy bias towards everything from Japan or virtually exiling oneself from the indigenous culture (also known as “outside”) in pursuit of the “superlative.”" It's a little different than "otaku" in that otaku tend to be more focused on a certain aspect of Japanese culture (e.g. anime, manga, etc.) whereas a weeaboo is more indiscriminate, taking an extreme interest in all-things-Japanese. Basically, a weeaboo is a person who is such a fan of Japanese culture to the extent that they regard everything else as inferior.
I don't know that I've ever met anyone who might be considered a weeaboo. Stu Levy is probably the closest, but while he has a clear appreciation for Japanese culture, I don't know that I've seen him eschew everything else as inferior. But I'm sure there are people out there who would generally be considered weeaboo; I just don't travel those circles very regularly.
So why is this "Avoid Becoming a Weeaboo" horseshit?
Well, first, there's nothing wrong with liking Japanese culture. Beyond manga and anime, they have deep, rich culture with a history at least as fascinating as anyone else's.
Second, there's nothing inherent in one's own culture (whether you're from America, France, Egypt, or anywhere else) that's necessarily superior to Japan's. We're generally taught a sense of patriotism, or even jingoism, wherever we grow up and it's infused so pervasively at such a young age that we rarely have the wherewithall to step back and recognize it as the propaganda that it is. There's no fundemental reason that says we have to accept that at face value or, for that matter, that we have to accept it at all.
By calling someone weeaboo, you're effectively saying that their value judgements are fundamentally wrong. That they're not allowed to consider Japanese culture, traditions, language, and mores better than their own. There's nothing wrong with disagreeing with that judgement, but we're not talking about anything quantitative here. It's no different than claiming someone's an idiot because they prefer vanilla over chocolate. If anything, it displays more small-mindedness on the part of the insulter because it shows how they can't accept that anyone might have a different set of values than they do.
Take a look at that How to Avoid Becoming a Weeaboo piece again too. Most of the "rules" center around not being a newcomer. If you want to actually learn Japanese, don't you have to start with just a few words? Don't many cosplayers start with relatively easy costumes using store-bought products? Doesn't everybody adopt different styles from other people as they're discovering what works for them? Don't many authors consider using Mary-Sue characters as a viable way to train yourself to write better? This list of Don'ts that we're presented with essentially says that you're not allowed to start becoming interested in Japan; you have to skip over the education portion of becoming a fan and simply be an expert without any learning curve. They're basically laying down club rules that say you can't be a member of the club unless you're already a member of the club.
And what a shitty way to treat fans! Look, I've gotten annoyed with comic fans who asked very obviously newbie questions. I used to moderate a Fantastic Four message board, and I got really tired of answering the same dozen FF questions every 6-8 months for the new guy who just discovered how awesome the comic/cartoon/movie was. But I still recognized that I had that level of excitement when I first discovered the comic as well, and I didn't want to potentially kill that excitement and sense of discovery for this new person. That's not fair to them, and it robs fandom of someone who could have a lot to contribute.
You want to roll your eyes when somebody online tastes Pocky for the first time? Fine. But don't try kicking them out of the club before they've even had a chance to see what it has to offer!
The original idea for a comic award came from writer/editor/historian Roy Thomas. (Although he had held none of those titles before that point.) Thomas has suggested the idea in a 1961 letter to Jerry Bails as a kind of feature for their then-only-months-old fanzine Alter-Ego. They were originally going to be called the "Alter-Ego Award" but, realizing that no comics award had ever been done before, they decided on the "Alley Award" after the character Alley Oop. Thomas' rationale was that "surely a caveman had to be the earliest superhero chronologically."
Voting was solicited through Alter-Ego and sent directly to Bails who counted the ballots himself initially. By the third year, however, he was receiving so many ballots that he invited several other fans to his house to help. The so-called "Alley Tally" wound up being the first recorded gathering of fans (including Ronn Foss, Don Glut, Don and Maggie Thompson, Mike Vosburg, and Grass Green) and is generally considered a precursor to the first comic book convention.
The first Alley Awards were announced in Alter-Ego #4 and the cover featured a drawing by Foss of the statuette he created. He'd originally carved the sculpture out of wood, made a cast of that, and then produced a series of the finals out of plaster, which he then painted gold or silver.
Beginning in 1965, an actual awards ceremony was held at Academy Con, switching to Phil Seuling's Comic Art Convention when that began in 1968. As both shows were based out of New York City, a number of comic book professionals were able to attend over the years, including Stan Lee, Burne Hogarth, Otto Binder, Hal Foster, Bill Finger, Gardner Fox, Mort Weisinger, James Warren, Roy Thomas (by then having moved to New York and becoming a professional), Gil Kane, Bill Everett, Carmine Infantino, and Julius Schwartz.
By this point, an interconnected comics fandom had become relatively well-established, and Bails' original intentions of getting everything rolling had been very successful. There were several venues open to comic fans, and interest in Alter-Ego and the Alleys dwindled as fans sought other, more narrowly focused options. Both the magazine and awards ended in 1969, with a final awards ceremony for the '69 Alleys conducted the following year.
I would make a terrible sociologist. I do okay when it comes to armchair psychology if I know the person, but sociology is just like a big black hole for me. I just don't get people in a broad sense. I'm actually rubbish at armchair psychology, but compared to my skills in sociology, I'm amazing there.
I'm speaking from a practical sense here, by the way. I took psychology and sociology classes in both high school and college, and did pretty well in them. But that was all the rote memorization stuff. Who was Sigmund Freud, what was David Berlo’s model of communication, etc. In terms of practical application? Let's just say I can be very socially challenged.
But, I know this about myself, and continue working to improve where I can there. One of the ways I do that is by trying to learn about other cultures and societies that I don't really know very well, in order to understand them and how they do or don't relate to the culture(s) I'm an active part of, which are often difficult to analyze precisely because I'm an active participant.
This I why I'm always on the lookout for new comics that come from a different perspective. I mean, yeah, Jeff Smith turns out some fantastic work and I really enjoy studying what he does, but he's still a cis hetero white guy from suburban Ohio and not all that much older than me. He's going to come to the table with a pretty similar perspective as me. Which is fine in and of itself because, as I said, he does some fantastic work, but it's not going to provide any great insights into other cultures.
Manga, of course, is a good source of insights into another culture. Reading through Barefoot Gen or Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san teaches you something about Japan. And we're fortunate that manga is relatively popular in the U.S. right now. Popular enough in fact that we get some manhua and manhwa out the bargain too!
There's also some European work here in the States, but not nearly enough for my tastes. Some British work, and a few French and Belgian pieces but not a whole lot else. Russia and Australia are woefully under-represented, as are pretty much all of South America and Africa.
So I'm generally pleased when I can find something that speaks to a mindset very different from my own.
I'm even more please when someone writes a comic specifically to address the cultural differences.
I've seen a lot of biographic pieces -- both extended works and short mini-comics -- that speak to individuals' experiences that I might otherwise know nothing about. Whether that's coming to grips with austism as an adult or people pushed to the fringes of Russian society or simply the history of the Black resistance in the US.
It's human nature to surround ourselves with similar individuals. It's more comfortable to be around people who come at life with the same basic perspective as us. But it doesn't help our understanding of people in general; it's just a reflection of our own perceptions.
Maybe because I've never really felt like I belonged to a culture like that, I'm more open to seeing how other people approach the world. But given all the hatred that's been stoked the past few years and continues to be acted upon in a horrible, daily manner, maybe we could all try to pick up a little more understanding of cultures outside our usual comfort zone.
My wife was chatting with a co-worker the other day, and mentioned in passing the town I grew up in. The co-worker stopped her to verify she heard the name right. It turns out that her son had visited the town on a couple occasions as a member of the high school band. Kind of a "battle of the bands" thing, I gather.
Besides the serendipity of my growing up there and being a member of the band myself once upon a time, what stood out in the conversation was that the co-worker recalled the name vividly mostly because the locker room her son's band was given to use had been graffitied with a number of racial epithets in preparation for the mostly Black band. This was not decades ago, mind you; her boy just turned nineteen. Furthermore, when the issue was brought to the attention of school officials, the response was essentially, "Get over it."
This is the town I grew up in.
Obviously, I still know people who live there. And I know people who used to live there and still live nearby. I've tried talking to some of them about racial issues, largely to see how far away from the local norm I was in my attitudes. Most of them said racism and bigotry were bad things, but had little to no first-hand experience with it personally. (The area is still predominantly white, not surprisingly.) One woman did relay the story of another friend of hers who was in a mixed-race marriage, and his parents cut ties with him entirely. Slammed the door on his face, and years later still refuse to talk to him. Another person expressed what struck me as pretty bigoted comments, and when I confronted him about it, he literally said that he wasn't bigoted, he was just relying on negative stereotypes because he didn't really know the individual in question.
(Which, to be 1000% clear, is literally what bigotry is.)
I was fortunate that I was able to leave behind this town of closed-minded people when I turned 18.
I didn't choose to leave the town because of racism or bigotry. At the time, it was largely a non-issue because the town's population was 99.9% white. But I did leave because of the overall mindset that tends to go along with bigotry. That anything different than the majority is to be reviled and ridiculed. That there's no place for anything beyond what's most common.
I credit comics for allowing me to appreciate diversity. I've written before about how New Mutants #45 contained a powerful message of inclusion for me, but it was more than that single issue. The Fantastic Four would regularly encounter alien races that they treated with respect, and racial minorities like Black Panther and Wyatt Wingfoot regularly wove their way through the stories as well. Even just the basic set-up of a non-traditional family unit showed me that "family" didn't have to be Mom, Dad and 2.5 kids.
There were undoubtedly other comics that influenced this line of thinking as well. I had the Green Lantern issues that introduced John Stewart, and I caught bits of the story where Tony Stark was replaced by Jim Rhodes as Iron Man. Certainly, all of that contributed. Especially with having read them as far back as I can remember, probably well before I could actually read the words on the page.
Was it just comics? No. I'm sure the likes of Seasame Street and The Cosby Show have their place. But I know those shows were also watched by some of the same people who continue to profess bigoted ideas. (Or, at least they did the last time I talked to them.)
I suspect comics had more to do with opening the door to the possibility of new ideas. It opened enough for me to see how truly small and petty the town was, and helped convince me to look towards broader intellectual and emotional horizons. The school I went to was considerably more cosmopolitan, boasting a student body roughly four times what the entire population of my hometown was. And that's where I found a need to be more receptive to new cultures and ideas, where I regularly encountered people of different races and sexual orientations.
I don't know that comics writ large taught me to be discard the bigotry that surrounded me growing up, but the specific comics I read taught me about understanding, and by leaving to go to a larger, more diverse community, I was able to find direct and immediate applications of that understanding. I'm sure that not everyone who read the comics I did took that same path, and I'm sure that not everyone who has a similar understanding followed the same path. But I think it does speak to the power of comics (or, for that matter, any media about which someone is deeply invested) to help create a more progressive and accepting society.
People are called courageous for doing things that many others won't do. Running into burning buildings to save someone. Defending a stranger against an armed assailant. Reporting an injustice even under the threat of bodily harm. There's no end to what can be considered examples of courage. And many look to those so-called courageous people as individuals who have no fear. They're real world Green Lanterns, charging into to save the day without even the benefit of a power ring.
But that's not courage. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is not the opposite of fear. Courage is having the inner strength to do something IN SPITE OF fear. In order to be courageous, you need to be first be fearful of something so that you can overcome that fear.
You can still be heroic without being courageous, mind you. Superman is very heroic. He goes around saving people all the time. But it's not courageous for him to stand in front of a bank robber's gun since he knows that his skin is hard enough to deflect every one of the bullets without so much as leaving a bruise. Heroism ≠ courage. And it's fear without courage that's driving a lot of our problems today.
"I don't really know any gay people. Their culture includes things I don't understand. I don't know what to say or how to act when they display those cultural touchstones that are unfamiliar to me."
"I don't really know any Black people. Their culture seems different than mine, and I do not want to risk theirs superceding mine. I'm very comfortable with my own culture, and not comfortable with theirs."
That's essentially what racism and homophobia and that kind of hatred all boils down to: a mechansim for justifying treating someone poorly because they look/act/sound a little different than what you're used to. They're reacting out of fear. They're reacting fearfully because they have no courage. They fear what they don't know or understand, and don't even have the courage to try to learn about it. They don't have the courage to say, "Just because it's different doesn't mean it's wrong." They don't have the courage to say, "Just because it's different, it doesn't invalidate my preferences."
And perhaps that's part of the problem in comics. There are so many out there that talk about heroism, but don't touch on courage. Spider-Man doesn't fear going against the Green Goblin. Batman doesn't fear confronting the Joker.
Those characters are/were absolutely acting heroically, but not courageously.
I can't help but wonder, then, if we would see fewer instances of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. in the comics community if the stories were less focused on heroism, and more focused on courage.
Over the weekend, I came across this post on LinkedIn, referring to a recent quote by one of TikTok's brand managers...
Dr. Carroll is right, of course. Even just a cursory knowledge of fandoms highlights this. Honestly, even if you don't study fandoms at all, did you not see news of late night release parties for every one of the Harry Potter books? Did you not see coverage of all those "weirdos" who dress up in costumes and travel to San Diego every year? Are you completely unaware of fantasy football leagues?
I did think, "OK, maybe I'm taking that one statement from Dean out of context." It's part of a larger article, after all.
But when I went back to read the original piece, I saw that
Dean is also quoted as saying, "We are already seeing broadcasters and streamers provide quick and easy access to data — ball-tracking, player speeds, distance travelled."
Yes, because box scores in baseball haven't been a thing since 1859! Because announcers never mentioned every player's key stats when they came up to bat. Because the back of every baseball card doesn't have any metrics on it. Because fans wouldn't sit with notepads in stadiums and update that information for themselves in real time during games! Yes, those stats are available more quickly and easily to a general population that doesn't pay close attention to every game than they used to be, but for the types of people we would generally call "fans," they've been doing exactly this for over a century!
I don't mention this to call out Dean specifically. I don't know him at all, nor have I ever had even the remotest interest in TikTok as a platform. But this is ultimately the problem with the vast majority of corporations that own/manage brands have trouble with: the people they generally have working at that level aren't fans. And I don't mean they're not fans of that particular brand that they're trying to promote, but they're not fans of anything!
The specifics are different from baseball fans to comic book fans to Star Trek fans, but the root passion of it is all the same. You don't have to understand why an individual loves a particular Lord of the Rings character, but it's not hard to relate if you say they love them in the same way you might love your favorite football player. But if you don't have that type of passion for anything, then you get comments like Dean's, which show a complete obliviousness to the idea. Which is maybe fine if your job is the accounting department or in production or something, but not having a base level understanding when your job is engage -- either directly or indirectly -- with the folks using your product or service seems to me like a massive failure.
We had another successful CXC this year and we want to thank all of you for being a part of it. From the world class exhibitors who came from all over the country to share their art, to our scholars and presenters providing free groundbreaking programming, to all of our amazing Special Guests, and the attendees who make us great. We are so proud of the show we were able to put on.
This year we made the decision in response to scheduling conflicts and for the continued health of the show to not host a festival in 2026. We will be returning in the spring of 2027 for our twelfth iteration of CXC. This move will allow us to bolster the festival, and maintain lower costs for our exhibitors and attendees. We will be, in the meantime, continuing to do our part to elevate the comics community, and are working with a variety of organizations to continue to bring high level comics programming to Columbus year round. We have a couple big announcements on the horizon that we’re excited to share with you!
This Wednesday, the 19th, The Thurber house, in association with CXC, will be hosting New Yorker cartoonist, Tom Toro in conversation with Jenny Robb, head curator for the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum. The event will take place at the Thurber Center in downtown Columbus starting at 6:30 PM. Come listen to a great conversation between two comics powerhouses! Meet and get a book signed by an all time great New Yorker Cartoonist! The Thurber house will also be hosting a cartooning workshop with Tom himself! We are so happy to be working with the Thurber Center, one of the great institutions of cartooning and arts advocacy in Columbus Ohio, and we hope to see you all there! Tickets for the event can be purchased through this link or on the Thurber Center’s website at thurberhouse.org
In other news we're working hard with our media partners to finalize preparation of video recordings of almost all panels and programming from this year's show. All videos will be uploaded to our youtube channel @CXCFestival as soon as they are available to promote the accessibility of CXC to everyone, even if you weren’t able to make the trip to Columbus this year.
We have plenty more very exciting surprise announcements on the horizon. Stay tuned in as we look forward to sharing more good news, cartooning events, and world class programming over the course of the next year.
Thank you so much for your continued support, and we hope to see you this Wednesday at the Thurber House!
I was reading through an old post of mine from 2007(!!!) about how I stopped going to my Local Comic Shop every Wednesday because I "needed" to get the latest issues immediately, and flipped a sort of mental switch where I would hit the shop most (but not all!) Wednesdays as a matter of ritual. That it was the act of knowing what I was going to do on my lunch hour once a week that provided a modicum of stability in a turbulent world. (And good grief, when I compare what I thought was turbulent in 2007 versus what I consider turbulent now... YOWZA!)
It might not be terribly surprising that my comics habits have changed considerably since 2007. When I moved up to the Chicago area in 2013, for example, I actually lived in several different places before finding and moving into a permanent residence. Because I kept moving, I wasn't able to establish my local comic shop. And unfortunately, once I did finally find a place, the physically closest comic shop is an unironic real-life version of Android's Dungeon.It's cramped and dingy and dark and unorganized and the owner seems sketchy as hell. So I don't go in there very often.
Now, I certainly could go to any number of other comic shops. Chicago has a number of really good ones; many are closer to me now than one of my previous local comic shops was to me in Ohio. But by the time I had settled down from moving, and figured out where everything was... well, my buying habits had somewhat forcibly changed. At that point, I wasn't getting any ongoing titles any longer and the ones I was getting had been winding down anyway. Once I bought the last couple issues, I wasn't in the stores enough to see what new books might replace them. And I had plenty to still read thanks to webcomics. So between shop signings and sporadic conventions, I was still able to get all the new physical comics I wanted, with maybe an occasional order on Amazon for a good trade paperback I might hear about.
My comics ritual had dissolved entirely. It wasn't that it had changed or morphed a bit; it was just gone. I was still reading comics, but there was no ritual tied to the process at all. Whenever I had time.
I started using a subscription service (Lone Star Comics' MyComicShop for those interested) when I was laid up for several months after my accident in 2018. This inadvertently created a new potential ritual for me -- receiving a package once a month with all my new comics. I could establish some new process for opening the box, checking the new issues, and reading them. Give myself a little much-needed stability to stabilize the super chaotic couple of years I've had.
But for some reason, I've never done that. Some months, the box would arrive when I was home, some months not. If I was home, the dog would usually alert me to the deliverer's presence so I could retrieve the package whenever it arrived (usually in the early afternoon) rather than always waiting until the end of the day or something. I could've set aside some special time to open each box and sort through the new issues. Also not done. I could recognize the boxes pretty much immediately, so there was no real surprise in what was in them, so they would sometimes sit on the kitchen table for a day or so before I could get to them. "Yup, I know what that is. Nothing that requires my immediate attention." Or maybe, "I won't be able to read these until the weekend, but it's garbage day tomorrow, so I can open it now and make sure the box gets in the recycling bin right away."
And that's all been... fine? I guess? I mean, I don't really miss the weekly trips to the comic shop, and I don't feel like things would necessarily better if I developed a ritual for how I read comics now. But given how stormy the waters have been -- and how we've collectively had very little stability for the past several eons, i.e. 2025 -- maybe I really should make a point of making my comic book reading a more ritualistic process. To provide a period of grounding that I can give myself once a week or so. An hour or two every week that I can count on, regardless of what the most recent dumpster fire that fills up my news feed is.
Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy,
has long had a website that he's run himself, offerring various books and merchandise featuring his most famous character.
The site has been in its current form for around twenty years at this point, and Griffith has been offerring for most of that time the ability to buy an original 5" x 7" pen and ink drawing of Zippy with a word balloon that you can ask to be filled with whatever 'Zippyism' you'd like. Either by selecting one of a dozen Griffith-written phrases or writing your own.
I don't recall when I first saw that exactly, but it likely was in the two-decades-ago ballpark and I thought a fun, original phrase that would be completely personal and still sound very much like Zippy would be, "Kleefeld is just dlefeelk spelled backwards!"
I can't recall if it was a cash flow issue or some kind of problem with the site, but I never pulled the trigger on that.
Until last week.
I was actually looking at getting a copy of Griffith's new Photographic Memory book and I saw that he still had that commission option available. Still using the circa 2004 preview image. Still charging $100. And so, twenty-ish years after having the idea, I received in the mail yesterday...
For as much as my copy looks almost exactly the same as the preview, it is an original piece of art. The pencil sketch is visible underneath the ink, and there are indeed a couple ink marks that have been corrected with white paint.
Griffith is in his 80s now, and his artwork isn't showing any signs of faltering. And that he's only charging $100 for a piece like this in 2025 strikes me a steal.
It's a fun bit of original art, and Griffith apparently has done so many of these that he can do them in his sleep. I put in my order on Friday, and he had it in the mail the very next day!
I recognize that things are fiscally tight for a lot of people right now, but I'd recommend taking advantage of the opportunity if you're able.
By contrast, I have yet to add any entries for anything that might be considered porn. I mean, sure, I expected "adult" comics like Heavy Metal to show up in the database, but even the most poorly drawn, let's-just-depict-as-many-overt-sexual-acts-as-possible comics that I'd never heard of before are included as well. Manara? Sure, expected. Serpieri? Expected. But some random comic that's barely distinguishable from an unsigned Tiajuana Bible? Honestly, I'm kind of surprised some of this stuff has even made it into my collection in the first place (with a few exceptions, I honestly couldn't say for sure which of the collections I absorbed any of these came from) but regardless of how widely distributed they were or what size of print runs they had, they have all been consistently more likely to have already been included in this database than any random title from Fantagraphics.
