Dave's Fanboy Sermon

Occasionally someone from the outside comes into my store. Usually this is by a mistake of some sort. Perhaps they thought that we carried video games or novelty items. Sometimes they appologize, saying that they mistook us for "a real book store". A few of the bravest outsiders has remained in the store to ask such questions as "What is your most expensive funny book?" or "Can you really do magic with those cards?" The most common question I get is the one asked with the most sincerety. They will lean closer to the counter and ask is a quiet voice, "Why don't these people get a life?" Depending on how surly I feel on that particular day, I usually respond with the observation that "these people have an interest that they love and are passionate about. They have a life that they enjoy very much."

As a general rule, fans of comics and science fiction and all the related areas have been some of the most voracious and passionate fans of any art. The only comparisons that I can think of are jazz fanatics and those guys who paint their faces to go to football games. Comic fans are bound together by a sense of unity that has always been somewhat intimidating to anyone outside the hobby. We have our own language, our own shared frame of reference. We can be a pretty tight group of people, even as we argue violently over who made the best Batman. This sense of community has always been our strength, but it has also served to exclude the more casual public. Perhaps the time has come for that to change.

There has been a lot of hand wringing and doom saying lately about the shrinking audience for comic books. The sales figures certainly support this. Twenty years ago a book would be cancelled if its sales figures dropped below 200,000 copies, now a book is considered a success if it sells a quarter of that number. The common logic on the decline of comic sales is that the rising price of comics has eliminated the younger reader, who is much more interested in more passive entertainment like video games anyway. As the number of outlets that stock comic books continues to decrease, comics have become a luxury for a select group who will seek them out. Where you once saw them at every grocery store check out lane and every drug store magazine rack, now you have to venture to a specialty shop to find a selction of comics. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to deduce that if they're not in front of people, then the public at large is not going to buy them. Simple as that.

The question was recently asked on our forum "what have you done for comics lately?" Is it the job of fans to actually do something to keep the art form vibrant, or does their responability end when they plunk down their $2 for the latest X-Men? As our society gets busier and even faster paced, we lose touch with more relaxed pleasures such as the joy of reading. We hurry from one thing to the next and only have time for the most passive forms of entertainment. We are a consumer society, swarming like locusts to the next thrill and then leaving it behind when a new fad comes along. We forget that an art form depends on its' fans as much as its' creators. Like any form of communication, true art is meaningless without someone to receive and understand it.

In years past, comic fans were a much more active bunch. They wrote letters to their favorite books, drew their own comics, spent much more time arguing over the best inker. Somewhere along the line, we became more introverted as a group. I think that too many of us assume that comics only have an appeal for those of us who are already comic fans, not realizing that there are potential comic fans everywhere who simply haven't been exposed to it. A few years ago, I stopped giving out candy at my door on Halloween. Instead, I gave out comic books. They're better for your teeth and I certainly have plenty of them. I really expected a lot of the kids to be disapointed. After all, my 10 year old son is the only kid in his class that even knows who Captain America is. I was really suprised when our house quickly became the most popular stop that Halloween. It was a thrill to hear the children leave and excitedly tell their freinds "Cool! They're giving away comic books!" They couldn't eat them or play them on their Gameboy. All they could do was read them and they were still excited. Sometimes I think there's hope for our youth yet!

People are always asking me what they can do with comics that they don't need anymore. Certainly we buy some of them, but we are pretty well stocked and more often the books are just more of the same stuff that we already have heaping piles of. Rather than throw them away, I tell them to give the books away. Find a neighbors kid or a nephew and introduce them to the world of comics. If you don't know any children at all, find a school that can use them or an organization like Boy Scouts. You not only do a good deed, but the comics go to someone who will read them rather than to the trash. You would be suprised in how interested they might be. If you can sell your books and make a fortune, great. But let's say that you have every Valiant comic printed and you simply can't do anything else with them. Spend a few moments remembering what comics have meant to you and think about what they might do for someone who has never even been exposed to comics.

Do we owe anything to our hobby? Absolutely. So what can we give back to our hobby? That is the simplest question that I have ever been asked: Share it. I don't mean that you have to give away all of your comics, but you can still make sure that people are at least given the exposure to it that you had. Often someone will see a friend in my shop and say "Wow! I didn't know that you read comics!" We are too willing to keep our passion to ourselves. I have passed around countless copies of Watchmen and the various Sandman books. It doesn't convert everyone into a rabid comic fan, but it does expose a few more people to an art form that I feel is strongly underexposed. I love the art form of comics too much to do any less.

So... what have you done for comics lately?

Illustration by Gerald Kelley