The Hard, Cold Truth
The Hard, Cold Truth
Oct 31We comic book fans occasionally suffer under the delusion that someday, and soon, the mundane world will “get” comics. We see Watchmen earn a spot on Time’s list of the 100 greatest novels of the century, and we see American Born Chinese snag a National Book Award, and we imagine that at long last, our hobby and artform that we hold so dear won’t elicit another “Bam! Pow! Zap” headline in a national newspaper. We won’t get oddball looks at Subway when we whip out the latest Marvel Civil War crossover and read it over lunch. We won’t be seen as drooling man-children clinging to the relics of our youth with an unsettling vigor.
We’re so fucking crazy.
That’s my local Barnes & Noble, right there. (Sorry for the shitty cell phone pic.) A big ol’ sign announcing “Graphic Novels,” and what’s beneath it?
Piles of manga, aimed square at the kiddies, and How To Make Money Like A Porn Star, a recent release that’s been garnering some negative coverage, to put it kindly.
That table sums it all up, don’t it? Kiddie fare piled alongside an objectifying book of trash, complete with tit-lathered full-color cover.
Shit, if I didn’t already love comics and I saw that table, I wouldn’t want anything to do with them either.
I nearly dropped dead from shock the day I discovered DC’s Hardtime TPB on the shelves of the local Chapters mega-store.
I sometimes day dream of starting a bookstore when I retire, and I’ll have a section for series collections.
Say, let’s get International Nerd off the ground – I think our contribution to this problem is helping to organize store info.