Comics and stuff
Picked up a few books last night. I was just going to drop the habit, but I've been reading The Adventures of Kaliver & Clay on the subway, and toward the end there's this really great scene where Joe Kaliver ruminates on his love of the medium and how wrong-headed the criticism of them as nothing but mere escapism are, as if escapism was any bad thing.

Comic shops have a unique vibe. I've been in other specialty bookstores, specializing in science fiction, poetry, travel, mysteries, or the like, and they seldom gave me the same feel a comic store does. Comics have so long been considered the stuff of geeks that entering one often feels like entering an adult bookstore, as if your reputation could suffer from being seen there, but there's also a great sense of community. People are always talking to each other in there, total strangers talking about comics, movies, sports (yes, comic readers do follow sports).

And yet, last night, I felt shut out. It's like the folks there weren't equipped to deal with a pretty girl in their domain. It didn't help that I haven't seen the third Matrix movie yet, I suppose, but I do know this - back in May, when people were having the same conversation about Part 2s, I was at least listened to when I made my case for why I liked Attack Of The Clones more than The Matrix Reloaded or The Two Towers, and folks would admit that, yes, it has an ending and even if they didn't agree, they saw my reasoning. Last night, I just got dismissed like "how could this girl who obviously wandered into the wrong shop and then couldn't even find the manga or Sandman stuff possibly have a valid opinion?" It's not the first time, but it irritated me, because I'm pretty sure I know more about movies as well as sci-fi than any of those twerps.

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Speaking of comics and me, here's the first illustration someone has sent in for the blog - Ipkiss found some elements on the web and composited them together like so:



I kind of like it, although I didn't feel that down about the situation until later.

-Marti
- posted 8:32 AM - - (archive use only)