Assault of the Comic Book Geek

I have a confession to make. I'm Stuart and I used to be a comic book fan. There. I said it. It's kinda weird, though. When I used to be a comic book geek, there was a certain uncoolness and shame attached to it. Nowadays, it's considered cool, even chic. Figures. That's me, always falling and drowning in the wave of cool.

Anyway, thanks to the ginormous Comic-Cons and shows like The Big Bang Theory, comic book geekery has achieved new levels of acceptance. Hollywood goes out of there way to court the army of geeks.

But I'm going to let you in on a little secret...comic book geeks can be downright mean, scary, even.

I know, right?

Let me lay down some hard to believe facts.

You know, when I was a kid, my parents would drop me off at the local big comic book store once a month. There I'd lose myself for hours, adrift in a sea of four-color tights and fights.

Yet the cranky old guy who ran the place hated me. I wasn't sure if it was me or he hated kids in general, but he was downright mean to me. He made me feel like I shouldn't have even been in the store, always yelling and barking at me around his cigar. Huh. Funny. You'd think that comic books were, oh, I dunno, kinda aimed toward kids.

But that's not even the worst comic bookery transgression that had happened to me.

I once saw a couple of older comic book fans nearly get into a fight over who would win in a battle between Submariner and Aquaman. Harsh words were shouted over the comic book counter, the Marvel fan nearly in tears. I left before blood was drawn. (Personally I'd root for Aquaman to kick whiny Submariner's arse.)

Comic bookery can get mean.

The worst comic book trauma that happened to me was at a cheap comic book convention in a Kansas City hotel. I don't even remember why or how my brother went with me (he was as anti-comic book as they come), but somehow I'd talked him into it.

I was looking around, searching for rare back issues of an independent artsy-fartsy comic book called "Zot (years later, my tastes were exonerated in that the auteur behind Zot, Scott McCloud, produced a critically acclaimed and land-breaking "bible" on the art of comic book storytelling)." 

Anyway, I was mulling over one kid's boxes of comics. He asked me, "Is there anything in particular you're looking for?"

I said, "Back issues of Zot."

This fat, pimply-faced kid whosevoice had barely just broken shrieks in laughter. "Zot! Ha! You're looking for Zot! Zot!" He turns to the dealer next to him. "Zot! Can you believe that? He wants Zot!" Unbelievably, this assault went on for minutes while I just stood there dumbfounded, shocked into silence.

But my brother, hot-head that he can be, sure didn't stay quiet.For once he defended me. "Shut up, Beaver!" (He did kinda look like Jerry Mathers.) "What do you like? Do you get off on She-Hulk? Take the X-Men to the bathroom with you?" It went on and on and got very ugly.

Beaver did shut up, turned into thirty shades of red, and sank into his folding chair. I grabbed my brother and we got the hell outta there before the comic book police showed up.

It's pretty sad when comic book geeks turn on one another, so much for brotherhood in comic bookery.

See what I mean? Comic bookery isn't for the faint of heart. It's a deadly business.

While I'm on the topic of deadly business, Leon Garber's possibly in the most deadly kind of business (outside of comic bookery, natch). Accountant by day, he's a serial killer by night. Not to worry, though, he only targets the worst possible people around. The problem is someone's hunting him now. Worse, it's his former employer, Like-Minded Individuals, Inc. It's complicated. A trilogy's worth of complications. Check out the first book, Secret Society, here.