Respect, by Mike Gold
R-E-S-P-E-C-T / Find out what it means to me / R-E-S-P-E-C-T / Take care, TCB
When Otis Redding wrote that song back in 1965, I doubt he could foresee its impact on our culture. Everybody related to its sentiments, and today it’s common do see the word used as a major bone of contention in virtually all types of disputes, from labor negotiations to street gang antics. It makes sense. We all want to be respected for who we are and what we do.
Over the past couple years the comic book medium has started to receive its proper respect – but comic book fans have not. Matt Groening’s Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons is breathtakingly clever, but we forget that the guy is also a member of Mensa. I only know a few comic book fans that actually look like CBG, myself included, but a good many of those were Mensa members. One even dated Marilu Henner; sadly, that wasn’t me.
Mensa members deserve respect as well. They’re nerds; they don’t get respect. The only nerds that get respect are rich computer wizards, with the emphasis on rich. Wealth gets respect, and therefore I assume there’s a lot less respect going around this month than there was last month.
That shrine to our popular culture, the San Diego Comic-Con, is astonishingly successful. It pumps millions and millions of dollars into the local economy – a sum further enhanced by the several successful comic book publishers in the area – yet San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders felt it save to piss all over the comic fans last year. “We’ve put up with the superheroes and now we’re on to the people with actual talent,” Mayor Ungrateful Jerk said. What an ass. I guess he knew the Comic-Con was locked into a contract for several more years.
Why the disrespect? OK, we wear goofy t-shirts, but we’re hardly the only Americans who are fat. We are trailblazers of our popular culture: it ain’t only fanboys and fangirls going to all those big budget movies and HDTV-pushing special effects teevee shows. Not in the least. We are there first, but we are not alone.
Here’s some advice. Do not ever let anybody deny you your proper respect. Go ahead, read comic books in public, on the bus, in the park, in the doctor’s waiting room. What the hell, you’re already wearing a Doctor Doom shirt. If you’re standing in line for the next mega-budget movie and some clown sticks a microphone in your face and asks you why you don’t have a date, tell him your lover is busy buying up cheap real estate and will join you when the show starts the day after tomorrow.
We’re comic book fans, and we’re proud. Don’t take shit from anybody.
Mike Gold is editor-in-chief of ComicMix.
This echoes the sentiments of MotU, Michael Davis. In his Friday, July 11, 2008 column, "The Asshole Express Card," Michael Davis wrote, "For over twenty years I’ve been talking about American comic creators and publishers standing up and taking the respect we deserve as an industry." What had the Master of the Universe searching for his ZAP Gun that day was the disrespect that American Express had shown comics in an ad where a man with a Super-hero pictured on his credit card loses an account because his clients mock his "kindergarten card." This is ironic, coming from a company that had used Superman as a spokesman just a few years earlier. The ad is still running. I saw it just this week.
Amen to that! Granted there are those who give some comic fans a bad name, but most of us seem to be doing relatively well. I'm happy to be in a career that allows me to indulge in buying comics. They help relax me after a stressed out week at work (though the crud that's been coming out can be aggrivating).How is it that someone wearing a t-shirt with the Punisher emblem on it is a "loser" but the idiot who painted their face before a sporting event is mainstream? If that's the accepted norm, then I'm content in being on the fringe with people who actually know how to have some fun.I get insulted when people who will watch a film based on a comic look down on those who actually read them. I'm supposed to feel bad about myself because I know how to read, whereas they need someone to put sound and move the pictures along? Screw that!
Hey, I'm a comic-book geek (and a role-playing nerd, too) – and I met and married an amazingly hot woman who fits those categories as well. (One of our early dates was a three-day event – the 1997 San Diego Comic-Con. That, as I recall, was the one where she didn't realize until later that Harlan Ellison was hitting on her.) So far, nobody's dissed comics to my face – but if they should, I can either present my wife or (if she's not with me) pull her picture out, and tell them that this is what an interest in comics can get you… :-)
Harlan may have been flirting with her, but at that time Harlan was, and still is, happily married to a woman he admires so much that he wouldn't stray.
As it were Mr. Gold, I took a day off so me and my Unshaven bretheren could have a work day. I used a comp day I earned from working 93 hours of overtime in the last month. My boss asked me what I was gonna do today and I said "what I really wanna do… make comics." He snickered. No respect… no respect at all.
I dunno, every time I tell a "civilian" that my husband draws comic books, they're impressed and intrigued. Maybe I just travel in different circles.The thing that amuses me about that AmEx ad is that, if I recall correctly, the guy with the superhero credit card is entertaining Europeans. In real life, the Europeans might be MORE impressed by his credit card, since they seem to have far more respect for the medium over there than they do here.
Superheroes, not so much. But I'll bet you there are a lot of Tintin and Asterix credit cards out there!Personally, I use a Hulk debit card. Hulk smash, indeed.
People often seem surprised when I tell them that I read comics. I believe that they feel that as a Librarian, I should only be reading 'real books' rather than those things with guys in outfits hitting each other. Frankly, I don't even bother getting annoyed anymore, simply shrugging and telling them that I've been reading them for over fifty years and still enjoy them.I think the new American Express Card commercial is more troubling, with the ticket agent at an airport calling security because she doesn't like the appearance of the passenger's credit card. She does this even without bringing up the man's account. Do we smell lawsuit if this happened in real life? I know it's a commercial but it just seems very unfunny.
Libraries are funny beasts. More and more libraries are stocking more and more "graphic novels." But my local library is schizophrenic as to where it shelves them. Most are in "Youth Fiction." But there is no "Adult Fiction" graphic novel section. So adult graphic novels, like "Ghostworld," get shelved in with the non-fiction books on drawing and cartooning. The Manga books get their own ghetto on the spinner racks next to the romance novels. The Spiegelman "Little Lit" books are shelved with children's picture books. It makes no sense! Ah well, at least they are there. And I can now buy "Bone" through my daughters Scholastic Book Club! Progress is slowly being made.
Librarians are funny beasts, you say?