{"id":3627,"date":"2010-11-19T13:26:38","date_gmt":"2010-11-19T13:26:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/?p=3627"},"modified":"2010-11-19T13:29:42","modified_gmt":"2010-11-19T13:29:42","slug":"misspent-from-the-outset","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/?p=3627","title":{"rendered":"Misspent From the Outset"},"content":{"rendered":"

[This essay originally appeared in the second issue of Grok, the Alert Nerd ‘zine.\u00c2\u00a0 You can follow along in Google Maps here<\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153He wanted to be a grown-up, not
\nridiculous, and he did not realize you could be
\nboth at the same time, and oftentimes are.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u201c Peter David, Tigerheart<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nSo I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve caught myself reminiscing about the geography of my youth \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the wheres that I grew up in. Sixty days shy of 30 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the demarcation line \u00e2\u20ac\u201c reminiscing seems to be the thing to do. I mean, 30 is old to begin with, but in geek years, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s practically incalculable. At least, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m told.<\/p>\n

Which leads me here. Testing the Thomas Wolfe Theory, I toured the arcades, comic shops and gaming haunts of my youth,
\ncomparing them to what was, seeing how they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve grown and hoping they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll tell me a bit about how I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve grown.<\/p>\n

By all estimations, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a life misspent from a very young age.<\/p>\n

The General Hospital Hospitality Shoppe no longer sells comic books; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s where I got my first, a Frank Miller issue of Daredevil with Stilt-Man and Heather Glenn. I was 4 years old, and though I was an early reader, I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand much of what was going on except that Stilt-Man was the best villain and that Daredevil may have been the most awesome hero, even more awesome than Batman. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know who Wolverine was.<\/p>\n

The book was 60 cents, a miscalculated bribe on my grandmother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s part \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it was supposed to keep me quiet. She was pulling double duty, watching me and her husband, and neither of us made it easy on her.<\/p>\n

Today, the prominent features of the shop are the BOGO sale on WebKinz, the expansive selection of Vera Bradley bags, and the portmanteau smell of cafeteria food that wafts into the Shoppe. There are magazines and crossword digests, even the odd coloring book, but the magazine rack full of comics isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t in the store any longer.<\/p>\n

From my gram\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s house, Koronkiewicz\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Pharmacy was two blocks\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 walk, and when she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d fill prescriptions, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d tag along and usually have scraped together enough change to buy at least one book \u00e2\u20ac\u201c 65 cents now \u00e2\u20ac\u201c from the spinner racks. Haphazardly restocked and
\nguaranteed to be ransacked by older kids before I could manage to make it in, I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t left with much \u00e2\u20ac\u201c random issues of Star Wars<\/em>, Uncanny X-Men<\/em> and Dreadstar<\/em> I somehow managed to rescue from that period are a testament to my blithe unawareness of issue-to-
\nissue continuity. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what Secret Wars<\/em> was, but the editors\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 boxes talked about it a lot. Wolverine was a jerk.<\/p>\n

Today, the pharmacy is a law office. The spinner racks are gone.<\/p>\n

Around age 6, I found my first real comic shop within walking distance of school. Gema Books (so named for the married ex-hippie owners Gene and Mary) was the kind of comic shop that makes people not want to go to comic shops. Gema was a haphazard, poorly-lit holein- the-wall with an aloof staff, a layout that borders on the archaeological, and no discernable community attached to it aside from insular cliques of what we now know in this enlightened age as trolls and fanboys. For years, it was the shop of record in Northeast PA.<\/p>\n

The store, such as it was, was cramped as hell. Back issue bins, new release shelves and spinner racks all struggled for real estate in the front half of the shop, while the toys and statues, the cash register, New Age books and baubles and the thinly-camouflaged adult section consumed the back half. As a little kid, I found it difficult and exhilarating to navigate, looking for hidden gems and secret history in exactly the same way that an older me would one day pore over marginalia, journals and letters from writers who were \u00e2\u20ac\u0153better,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but never more important than the ones on display in that little labyrinthine comic shop. I discovered the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe<\/em> here, and was absolutely certain that the final issue was going to reveal all of Wolverine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s shadowy past to me (Wolverine, by this time, was awesome \u00e2\u20ac\u201c definitely more awesome than Batman and Daredevil combined; he had claws). I count it as my first great Wolverine-related disappointment in life (to be followed by many, many more \u00e2\u20ac\u201c including, some 15 years later, Paul Jenkins\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Origin<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Through the direct market, I discovered the Legion and the Teen Titans and I dutifully combed through the bins until I had as much of each team\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s back matter as I could manage. I remember thinking that it would be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the best idea ever\u00e2\u20ac\u009d if Batman and Shining Knight could team up and fight Gorilla Grodd. Being owned by ex-hippies, the shop was well-stocked with various incenses, crystals and other arcane devices. Even at a young age, I knew that these were a) utter bullshit and b) to be avoided at all costs.<\/p>\n

Today, the storefront houses a chiropractor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s office. The store moved a block away, into an actual basement, a move that managed to
\nmake it even less inviting than it was previously. That store is now vacant.<\/p>\n

Just after “Inferno” \u00e2\u20ac\u201c like any true geek, I measure time by crossovers \u00e2\u20ac\u201c my parents put their foot down and forbid me from buying
\ncomics. It affected my grades, they said. Over the next few years, my grades suffered a slight dip, and though I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t claim that it was a manufactured middle finger to parental authority, the notion is a pleasing one. It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t until about 1993 that I returned to comics.<\/p>\n

Riding the wave of the speculation boom, a sport card\/comic shop opened up near my grandmother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s house, and each weekend I
\nstayed with her, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d walk down to that store and buy a new Liefeldian wonder without understanding just how bad it was. Cable<\/em> #1
\n($3.50) was the first. Not surprisingly, the place vanished not long after the Return of Superman. Now it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a tanning salon.<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a disturbing trend.<\/p>\n

The cramped, smoke-filled arcade where I learned the intricacies of Kung Fu and Space Harrying? Now it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a pool hall with only a pair
\nof outdated arcade machines.<\/p>\n

The cool, well-stocked arcade that got me through my early teens? A Japanese restaurant.<\/p>\n

The ironically-named Phoenix Comics across from my college call-center job? It sells clothing and shows no signs of rising from the
\nashes.<\/p>\n

The Wizard Site, the card and role-playing game store that survived the harsh scrutiny of The 700 Club? Today it sells spa products, a fate shared by Dragons Inc., the all-purpose gaming store launched by a pair of my high school friends.<\/p>\n

The landmarks of my youth have all grown up. The buildings are all still there, but now they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re inhabited by doctors, lawyers, beauticians and the bitter realization that the places where I learned to be a geek have all moved on and that I have not.<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s supposed to be the other way around. I mean, in Europe, there are castles that have been castles for centuries, and I would feel much better about being a nerd for decades if my comic shop still sold comics hundreds of years later, just to offer some sense of scope and a tacit nod of approval via its longevity.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easy,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the proprietor of my current local comic shop tells me, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153to run a business like this badly.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the beginning of a digression in a discussion about Marvel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s post-Civil War landscape that involves practically every warm body in the building. Despite two moves and nearly 20 years in business, The Unknown still manages to grow its community and generally keep its head above water. Because not only is there room for frivolity in adulthood, there can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be adulthood without the shoulders of frivolity to stand on, and the trail of failed geek meccas in my wake simply couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t grasp the balance between the two. And so, when I think about packing the comics up and donating them to charity, eBaying the gaming books and hiding the other nerd paraphernalia and writing off the past 20 or so years as misspent, I stop and remember the 6-year-old poring through back issue bins and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to feel it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been misspent at all.<\/p>\n

And then, I think about telling the little brat that Wolverine is an overhyped editorial mess with no real depth, but I doubt I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have listened. Wolverine has claws, you know.\u00ef\u00bb\u00bf<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[This essay originally appeared in the second issue of Grok, the Alert Nerd ‘zine.\u00c2\u00a0 You can follow along in Google Maps here.] *** \u00e2\u20ac\u0153He wanted to be a grown-up, not ridiculous, and he did not realize you could be both at the same time, and oftentimes are.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Peter David, Tigerheart So I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve caught myself […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3627\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}