When I was a kid I was always super excited at the thought of going to the convenience store down the street (Bushy John’s – for real), to pick up new comic books. On special occasions, my father would drive me across town to the comic book store – Dragon’s Lair (named after and including the arcade game) where I could go to town on obliterating my allowance. I grew up wanting to be a super-hero, someone like Hawkeye, because I knew that I probably wasn’t actually going to develop super powers (although a part of me still holds out hope). As I grew up, I took a hiatus from comics when I discovered girls, and my entertainment outlet shifted to movies and TV. About a decade later, I came across a Wizard magazine where I learned that one of my favorite artists as a kid (George Perez) was drawing one of my favorite childhood comics (the Avengers). I’ve been buying comics every week since.
I always dreamt of going to Comic-Con as a kid. Back then it was just comics, but now it is a pop culture touchstone and covers more non-superhero entertainment than it does the spandex set. It’s the perfect representation of my problem. One of the more difficult things for me to reconcile, as a massive devourer of all things entertainment, is trying to serve the comic book fan in me while also serving the movie fan in me. This is not as easy as you would think, as a fair number of comic book movies are crap.
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excellent awkward 