"Like Sunday comics?"
"No. Comic books."
"Like graphic novels?"
"No. Comic books. Like come in 22 page episodes. Collected in massive tomes? Loved the collection of Wonder Women by Jodi Picolt..."
"Woah! When did this start?"
~~~
National Read Comics in Public Day was a few weeks ago.
Or, like, a month ago. Whatever.
I found out about it from Monkey See, one of the few blogs that I refuse to put in my reader because I like going to the website. And know when to limit my visits so there is something new when I bop over.
This is the part that got me hooked.
~~~Look; I read comics on the bus, on the subway and while waiting for chronically tardy friends at coffee shops, bars(!) and restaurants. In any of these places, I'll talk about comics loudly, forcefully and at considerable length to anyone who'll listen, and to many who won't. Compunction about comics, I got none.
Or so I thought.
Earlier this week, on my way to record the latest Pop Culture Happy Hour, I stuffed into my bag a handful of comics to read on the subway. Didn't think about it, just grabbed a bunch as I ran out the door.
When I took them out to read, I noticed something. Unconsciously, I had selected books of a certain type. A type that can best be called: I am a Special Smartypants*, Comics Edition.
They were, all five of them, dense, serious, black-and-white comics about war and art and history and social class and blah. Again: I did not deliberately leave behind the superhero comics, and the manga, and the fantasy books, and the classic comic strip reprints I regularly read.
But as I sat there, staring down at the faithfully and exquisitely rendered landscape of some war-torn country or another, I tried to remember the last time I had read any superhero book, with its bright, colorful, spandex-clad mesomorphs facing off against aliens, or super-apes, or robots, or Nazis or alien super-ape robo-Nazis, while on the subway or at a bar. And I couldn't come up with one.
Clearly, then, my subconscious is a rank poseur. Who still cares enough about what others might think about his reading material to unconsciously self-edit his public choices. My subconscious, bless him, also clings to the downright laughable idea that the kind of tiresome, ungenerous people who'd judge me for reading comics would distinguish between, say, Footnotes in Gaza and Fantastic Four.
Here's the thing, though: I love the Fantastic Four. Jonathan Hickman and Dale Eaglesham are doing some fun, trippy, literally fantastic stuff on that book. So why pretend I don't? To strangers on the friggin' SUBWAY?
So. I'll be seizing Read Comics in Public Day as a chance to overcome the last lingering shreds of my internalized geekophobia. It'll be me, the dog and a pile of shamelessly goofy, high-concept, boldy colored, alien super-ape robo-Nazi-smashin' adventure.
To be fair to the friend on the other half of the conversation excerpted at the beginning, I have half a shelf of Sunday comic collections. That he flips through on a regular basis. I don't own many graphic novels, and read them quickly enough he hasn't seen me with them.
And the comic books are a new thing. Because they looked like fun to try on for a day.
And, let's be honest, reading about heroes is AWESOME!
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