Who Wants to be a Geek?

Who Want’s to Be a Superhero? Such a polarizing show among comic geeks. It appears either you think the show is a fun silly take on the reality show genre, or you think it is so dumb you wouldn’t watch it if someone paid you. Today on Strange Visitations, I want to talk about geekdom and the deeper meaning that it has for a lot of us, especially yours truly.

I happen to love Who Wants to Be a Superhero? I love the ridiculous challenges. I love the terrible acting. I love the hammy Stan Lee. I really love the weird logic used in eliminations. Most of all I love the contestants. These are truly my people. At least the ones left at the end are. How much of a comic book geek do you have to be to get dressed up in some really BAD costumes, and then humiliate yourself on the Sci-Fi channel doing silly stunts and being lectured by the 20 foot tall talking head of Stan Lee? You have to be a real geek.

This season, I was rooting for Hyperstrike. Besides the fact that he really “got” the joke, I love how he hated his new costume but quickly realized he had to say he loved it. He just seemed to be laughing along with me through the show.

I was happy with Defuser winning the contest, mainly because I did not care so much for American Maid…er…Hygena. She cried way too much. Unless you are Superman in a DC event book, there’s no crying in comic books.

During the next to last episode, the winner was probably decided during Stan Lee’s interviews with the contestants. It was at this point I realized that no matter how much I liked Hyperstrike, his story was just not the compelling tale that the show seems to love. Remember the three finalists from last year? Major Victory wanted to prove to his daughter that her daddy was a hero. Fat Momma wanted to show people that chubby people can succeed, thrive and be heroes. And the winner, Feedback, had the gripping story of feeling unloved by his father and turning to comic books, in particular Marvel books, for a father figure and someone to look up to. I found all three tales very powerful. This year’s three finalists were different. Hyperstrike basically said he really enjoyed being a superhero and it was a reaction to being picked on as a child. Hygena talked about how she had lost a baby and in that process, lost a lot of her self-confidence. Being on the show made her see her own value. Finally, Defuser talked about how he wished the superheroes in the comics he read as a child could come to life and help his sister come back from a dangerous lifestyle. Again powerful.

What I see in these interviews that for many of us geek types, be it comics, video games, paintball, airsoft, Renaissance Fairs, whatever, for many of us, some geek activity filled some kind of void at a young age and now, as adults, it stays with us, even if circumstances have gotten better. In pondering this, I realized I was really pondering my own life.

I freely admit that I am a geek. I love comic books, I collect Superman memorabilia, I collect The Simpson’s junk, and I have way too many DVD’s. You can’t hurt my feelings by calling me a geek. Not when the geek side of me was what helped me get through my early life.

When I was a young lad, growing up in the seventies, I lived in a big Italian family. I had two older sisters, a stay at home mom, and my father was the guy who wore a suit and went off to work every weekday, and took his kids to the zoo or to the city on weekends. Things began to change when Mom and Dad separated. Suddenly, Mom had to raise three kids on her own. Mom was a German immigrant. She learned English when she came here but for most of her adult life, she did not have a job other than raising us kids. So suddenly she had to find work and keep us together. She did that. My Mom was a remarkable woman. Some sacrifices had to be made on all our parts. Mainly we couldn’t have all the great new toys and clothes every year but one thing I did have was my comic books. Mom loved to let me read and she would always find money to buy me a comic book or two each week. This was before the direct market so I got my comic books from a magazine rack. Also the number of titles was somewhat small so it was easy to pick what to read.

Early on, I was a DC guy. I loved Superman and the JLA. Especially when Superman was in that month’s issue of the JLA. As far as Marvel goes, I did read Marvel Team-Up and The Fantastic Four, but I somehow missed the Spiderman phase. Oh well.

A lot of times, when Mom had to work, she would have to take me along since my sisters had school or work and she could not afford a sitter. She mainly worked in places like Diners and Bowling Alleys where if a kid was well behaved, it was ok for them to hang out. So on those days, we’d stop at the drug store and Mom would buy me a comic book. Just one. They generally cost about 40 cents back then. So we would go to her work, I would find someplace to sit, and I was off to Superman’s world.

I devoured my comic books. I could read that one book four or five times on that day. Sometimes I’d break out some paper and trace some of the images from the book. For a chubby ten year old whose family was falling to pieces, comic books were a safe place to visit. My buddy Superman understood me. Superman never lies. He never forgets to call you. He never takes your sister on trips while leaving you behind.

He never left me. If I needed Superman, there he was, in my stack of comic books.

It was not until years later that I understood that this is where my love of the genre springs from. As an adult, I have tracked down most of those books my Mom bought me back in the day and I treasure them still. Talk to me a bout the JLA versus the Construct and I may tear up a little.

Mention of Doctor Destiny and the Key may cause me to get misty.

Try and bag on Superman or the kooky satellite era JLA and you can expect an argument. It has that kind of meaning to me.

So I embrace my inner geek and I encourage anyone reading to do the same. Why fight it? Having Wolverine, the Punisher, Spiderman, Batman or Superman with you on this journey through adulthood is really not a bad thing. In fact, it’s pretty cool.

Peace out.

AntiFanboy

I was trying to wrap my brain around how to write about my favorite podcast but it took frustration with my day job to show me the way.

AntiFanboy is a podcast about comic books. Every week they sit around and pick their favorite books, argue about comics stuff, and do some really funny and smart comedy routines. I seriously enjoy this podcast. But it is not for everyone. They do cuss quite a bit and you will occasional hear someone call someone else “gay”. But if you get past that, or if you like that sort of stuff, these are some smart guys who have a real passion for comics. I have spoken to most of them on Skype and the AntiFanboys are not racist or mean or gay bashers. They are just young and passionate.

Jon Suarez is the ringmaster and we seem to share a love for Superman and Strangers in Paradise. He doesn’t get on board my Aquaman love train but that's forgivable. Steve Oteri (the sixth funniest man in podcasting) is the go to guy for song parodies, spontaneous riffs on comic characters, and absurd humor. Devon Kopek is the Marvel guy who, when he gets a word in edgewise, is very articulate and weathers the DC fanatic attacks from the other three. Chris Galanti will one day be an evil genius and he is definitely thinking about comics on a higher level than most of us mortals. That and he is the film freak of the group.

For the full AntiFanboy effect, I recommend going here:

Ghoulstock

...and downloading Episode 22. In this episode, not only do we hear some great opinions on Civil War and 52, but right in the middle is the funniest segment I ever heard on a podcast involving pro-wrestler Dean Malenko and a mystery date. Lots of cussing to boot! Yahoo!

I guess the reason I wanted to write about the AntiFanboys is that they have really gotten me back into comics. I would say that in anticipation of their weekly episodes, I burn through my comics that week to be sure I have read whatever they are reviewing. Also, they have reminded me of when I was in college and my friends and I sat around and talked comics, movies, heavy metal music and pro-wrestling. Good times.

Next we return to my long box of love.

The Longbox of Love (Part IV)

I am running out of longboxes so this week I am including some more recent stuff from the Longbox of Love.

Local is hard to categorize. You pick up a given issue and not much happens. But like a lot of great fiction, something is going on under the surface. Local is the story of a very damaged but very real family that is coming to grips with their own flaws. It may sound dry but I find it totally gripping and crushingly real. I highly recommend it.

Also on the recent side is Manhunter. You might not know this but Manhunter is sort of The Punisher meets She-Hulk. But not funny like She-Hulk at all. But by day the main character is a tough as nails attorney (in one arc she defends Wonder Woman for killing Max Lord) and by night she is a tough as nails vigilante who kills a bad guy in her first adventure. Mark Andreko has created a great fully realized character who is battling her own demons while fighting for her child (she is a divorced Mom). A book that is fast paced and thoughtful all at once.

Finally in the recent category there is this total gem of a book. Adventures in Service is a Mini-Comic created by Chicagoan Matt Fagan. I am not really into mini-comics but I found this book so delightful, I hope more people check it out. It is a collection of short episodes about two super powered Butlers (yes butlers as in Man Servants) and their adventures against crime and in love. You can get in touch with the author and check out his other work HERE

I suppose I do not have to say much about DK2. I hated it. I think Frank Miller has been on a downward slide ever since. Probably his last really good book was Sin City: To Hell and Back. I think the only reason I hang onto these back issues is when I go to throw them away, I remember how much I paid for them and toss it back into the box in disgust.

I already discussed how much I love the Animal Man. During the late Eighties/Early Nineties, DC put out a bunch of series like Secret Origins. It was sort of a retro wave but really really crappy. Every now and again a gem sprung up and lookie here, Grant Morrison! Since this was done by the Animal Man book team, this issue fits right in with the main book.

Speaking of Grant...wasn't his run on X-Men great! One day I will do my full X-Men rant but for now, know that when I was a lad, X-Men was the best superhero book out there. Somehow it all went to utter crap and never rally came back from that place until Morrison took the reigns. Of course as soon as he left it went back to crapville. Morrison focused on the X-Men as a school for outcasts and a really dysfunctional family. To me, that is the best angle to take when writing the X-Men. I think this run was better even than the really good Astonishing X-Men run by Josh Whedon.

So they make a Wanted movie based on a comic book which featured characters based on the appearance of Enimen and Halley Barry, then they cast James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie? Ok, whatever. I never cared for books that focused on bad guys unless they got their comeuppance in the end. Wanted is all about bad guys. Bad Guys vs. Bad Guys. I guess I like it because the dialogue is snappy and the art is really gorgeous. JG Jones is a great interior artist. I wish he would do less covers and get back on a regular book.

Being a child of the 70's, I love the anthology comics. I so miss them but to their credit, both DC and Marvel still attempt to put one out regularly every few years. No one buys them. These Holiday specials were always fun. To me they were sort of yearbooks that captured where the DCU was that year. Look at the ornament and you can see Kyle in his weird GL mask, Wally as the Flash, and Batman with his old school logo.

I know I have already talked about Supreme but my love for this book knows no bounds. If Alan Moore and Chris Sprouse had been able to continue their run, Supreme might be up there with Superman, Aquaman and Captain America among my favorite Superheros.

Cerebus is going to be the subject of an upcoming entry here on Strange Visitations but I love this little ditty I found. The Cerebus Jam features Cerebus interacting with Popeye (yes Popeye as in Olive Oil) and the Spirit. It sounds wierd and it is but totally fun at the same time. Track it down on Ebay. While you are at it, track down the Todd Macfarlane Spawn issue which featured Cerebus.

New Effin Frontier! When this book came out, it was very under the radar. Darwyn Cook was not an A-Lister yet and DC had some other JLA mega events going on. But eventually, everyone recognized the enormity of what was accomplished in this book. It is very close in theme to "The Golden Age" graphic novel about the JSA in that both books tell a tale of the end of the age of innocence for Superheros as they move into the modern age. This is a dense read that, like Watchmen, gets better with subsequent reads. I must get the absolute edition one day. A gorgeous and engaging read.

This book rocks! Why? It features one of the few modern instances where Superman is unleashed. No holding back, fists flying, put the beatdown on Darkseid kind of action. Best part? Even though it is loaded with action, in the end, Superman beats Darkseid with a trick. I love when Superman beats his opponents with his brains.

One of the great things about writing these is that I get to dig out all these great old comics that I have not read in years and enjoy them all over again. During the early 00's, Batman mini's were everywhere. Batman seems to go through these waves every few years. Death and the Maidens is THE definitive Ra's al Ghul story. Greg Rucka writes the most interesting and detailed backstory for both Ra's and Talia. The art is by Klaus Jansen and while many people do not care for that school of art (Which includes older Frank Miller and Howard Chaykin), because the story takes several turns for the creepy, the art totally works here. Basically this is a tale of the downfall of the demons head. Along the way we learn all about Talia and Bruce Wayne literally confronts his ghosts. One of the best Batman stories out there.

Speaking of reprints...

I love them! I found this little gem at Wonderland. I sure miss the goofy superhero stories of the silver age. Look how ridiculous these stories look! I know these days people appreciate a more "realistic" story but for me, the days when Superman could move a planet or when Superboy could restart a burnt out star with a gigantic match were gold. Since I don't want to leave you hanging, here is how Superboy deals with his monster:

The magic of headpieces.

I have said before that I have a lot of Fantastic Four. This issue is particularly good and it is unusual in that the Fantastic Four are hardly in it. This is the issue where Galactus is about to die from hunger because he foolishly made a vow not to eat worlds with thriving populations of life. Amazing John Byrne art.

When I was a child and I saw this book being advertised, it confused me. The Worlds Greatest Flying Heroes? Huh? Shining Knight? It seemed to me that a lot of flyer's were missing. Years later I actually bought the book and finally saw the back cover:

Oh!. Well that's better. Of course this issue being at the end of the Silver Age, Wonder Woman still couldn't fly so she is not on the cover.

Is there anything better than a Superman imaginary story? Ok sure there is but they are definitely up there in the fun factor.

Word!

When writers get blocked!

Ok well that's enough of that. Thanks for reading. What's in YOUR longbox?

Before I get back to the Longbox of Love, I thought I’d collect some thoughts on what we’ve discussed so far.

First off I felt like a TOTAL dweeb when I listened to the Comic Book Queers episode 43 (here) and the feat5ured guest was Robert Rodi. It was at that moment I made the connection that Mr. Rodi wrote two of my all time favorite books from my Longbox, Codename: Knockout and The Crossovers! I guess he is officially one of my favorite writers, as long as I ignore Identity Disc. Unfortunately, despite the tendency of Vertigo to trade everything, Codename: Knockout has not been traded or at least it is not available in trade right now. The Crossovers apparently are in limbo with Crossgen going bankrupt. I perused my LCS today for back issues and The Crossovers don’t look to be that common in the bins. I did find some Codename: Knockout though. Anyway, if you run across either at a con, grab them. I promise you they are fun and satisfying reads. Also I now need to get some of Rodi’s novels. Check out his site here.

The Batman: No Man’s Land stories have all been traded though I don’t think they are currently in print. DC is pretty good about rotating things back in print so keep your eyes open. I know that big event crossovers generally suck but this was different.

All of the Fantastic Four I have is available in trades, and a lot of it is in hardcover. Weird how the FF are such a red-headed stepchild to Marvel yet there is so much in the after-market for them. The John Byrne run can be found in dollar bins. To me, those were the tail end of Byrnes great art period, plus the stories were just right. Grab them!

Remember when EBay was a good source for cheapo comics? Not so much anymore huh? These days, Dollar Bins at conventions seem to be the best places to find back issues. At least once you wade through the 100 copies of The Brigade or some crap like that.

In other news, my LCS had their 18^th birthday today! Hurray Heroes! They served birthday cake and punch and there was a squad of Stormtrooper's doing something. Those were some short chubby Stormtrooper’s. Dave (personable owner operator) had 18 percent of anything in the store so I snagged Essential Nova and some T-Shirts for Rob and Liz (Nothing cool for Frank though)

I am almost embarrassed to say that when I was a kid, besides Marvel Team Up and Marvel two in one, the ONLY Marvel I bought were Nova and Dazzler. I got into both mainly because I stumbled upon issue one of both series and ended up collecting for a couple years. They both got cancelled. But Nova and Dazzler will always have a special place in my heart. Looking back I know in my head they are terrible but through my childhood glasses they totally rock. I’m reluctant to pick up the new Nova series because I am scared it will be like messing with my childhood. I wish I still had my original issues.

Two things in comics that are bugging me have to do with DC. First of all, the new creative team on Supergirl is already being replaced. Sigh. How sad. That run really had some potential. I don’t know why Superman has all these rules for how he is portrayed in comics, yet Supergirl can be a teenage sex kitten. Frustrating. The other book I worry about is Robin. I was worried when I heard Adam Beechen was leaving. But now they say Fabian Nicieza is taking over. Uh oh. Worried! Nicieza is an ok writer but for me, he will always be associated with the horrible X-titles and the Marvel explosion of crap that immediately followed Heroes Reborn.

Ok I got off track there but let me hook up the old scanner and get to talking Longboxes…of love…

Leadership and Podcasts...

I work for the IRS. I actually work the area that levies bank accounts and wages. We’re the people who send you the letters asking where your taxes are. I love my job. No seriously I do. A misconception about what the IRS does is that we go after the little guy. A discussion about the Earned Income Credit audits might end up with that resolution, but overall, in my part of the IRS, if you fail to file or pay your taxes, and you are honest with us about why and how you can get caught up, we will work with you and you won’t face any nasty levies or undo penalties. Try and cheat and hell yes we will come after you. Back in they day when I worked cases I did it. We decided some joker was just stalling and was never going to pay so I levied his bank and garnished his wages.

These days, I am a manager so I do not work cases anymore. But I still love what I do. Well as I briefly talk about in my profile, part of my job involves a yearly event we call the Leadership Conference. Basically all 140 or so managers who work in my building get together and celebrate the accomplishments of the past year. While we are at it, we hopefully get fired up for the coming year. The conference is a lot of hard work to organize.

Of course since we are the IRS, the event is not well financed. Basically HQ pays for the location but the rest is largely paid for out of whatever funds we can squeeze from our local budgets or straight out of the pockets of upper management. This means that most everything from designing the printed materials to making the decorations is done with a budget of zero. Where I come in is with the multimedia presentations.

I am no expert with making videos or PowerPoint’s, but I have some knowledge of creating presentations and I work for free. So in the weeks leading up to the conference, I work with the other managers making presentations that celebrate the work they have done and when the actual conference comes, I work the multimedia displays and the soundboard.

This year was quite frustrating as I had to deal with a TON of PowerPoint issues. What a lot of people don’t understand is that when you make a PowerPoint on your own computer, when you copy that presentation to the computer we use at the show, none of your music or fonts will be there. Not unless you get there ahead of time and install everything and adjust the file references in your PowerPoint. So half of the presentations we had were not fully functioning 24 hours before the show. Big headache since fixing them ate up hours of my time and basically eliminated any rehearsal time we may have had to run through the entire show before the big day. Very Frustrating!

Anyway, the main speaker at this year’s conference was a guy named Les Wallace.

He is a really well known speaker with a penchant for helping group’s breakthrough whatever barriers they are having with achieving success. He is what they call a dynamic speaker. Les was a lot of fun. As the multimedia sound guy, I got to spend a lot of time next to him and we exchanged little quips and bantered throughout the conference. He seems like a fun, smart, funny guy.

Problem. At the IRS, we have a culture of non-discrimination and all managers are hyper aware of the need to not use bad language or make any inappropriate comments. Les was 99 percent into this. But he did let a few bad words slip. I mean just a few and nothing major. But sure enough, as we looked at the feedback left by the people at the conference, the one complaint people did have was about the verbal slip ups.

The message is that no matter how mind blowing the content of something is, if you frame it in a certain way, some people will tune you out and never get anything out of what you are saying.

Fresno, Fresno, oh how I love thee…

How did I end up in this place and what do I really think about it?

I was actually born in Los Angeles to a poor family who gave put me up for adoption. My Mom and Dad adopted me through an agency, and when I was 6 months old, I became an East Coaster. At first we lived in Willingborough, New Jersey but Dad worked for US Steel as a lead project manager, so we ended up moving quite a bit. We lived in Jamaica New York, Levittown Pennsylvania and finally ended up in Coram New York (Out in Suffolk County on Long Island).

My Dad worked on at least one famous project to people who live in the NYC area.

When I was 12, my first job ever was working in a comic book shop. How amazing is that? Peaking career wise at 12.

Anyhow, by the time I was thirteen, my Dad had passed on and my Mom decided that we should visit my Sister, who, at the time, was married to a Navy man and lived in someplace called Lemoore California.

This was Christmas 1982. For some reason, I packed two suitcases. One full of clothes and one full of my most treasured comic books. Knowing my Mom, I had a creeping feeling that she secretly wanted to move there. By this time, I had been living in New York for 8 or 9 years and I had zero desire to move to that wacky California. But once I thought about it, I could see the obvious advantages; I mean this is CALIFORNIA right? Beaches everywhere and the weather is always nice. Also, like most New Yorkers, I was sure tired of shoveling snow in the winter. So maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

Well I learned very quickly that when people talk about California they really mean everything in California on the coast south of San Francisco. We flew into California via Fresno. The first thing I noticed from the airplane window was this:

Fog. Fresno was socked in. Lemoore is about 30 miles from Fresno and en route to Lemoore, I found out that in Fresno, there was a lot of this:

Rain. Fog and rain in the winters. At first I was ok with it since it sure beats snow, sleet, and ice. Of course then the summer came. The 110 degree summers. This was not the California I was promised! There were a lot of other things about the Central Valley that weirded me out:

Where are all the black people? When I went to school in New York, I would say one third of my class was Black, one third whitish, and one third Puerto Rican. My first class in Lemoore was entirely white except for a few Mexican kids. In my entire class there were 5 black kids. Fresno is more diverse than Lemoore. Fresno has large Asian and Mexican communities. Lemoore not so much. Homogenous. I also learned that Kings and Tulare counties were home to some large KKK branches. Yikes!

The schools have breezeways instead of hallways. I went to Longwood High School in New York. The school had a huge fence around it and we had security guards on premises. Also each teacher took a shift of hall patrol. At Lemoore High, the campus is totally open. The classrooms open to the outside and you walk across courtyards to get to your next class. You can also walk across the street to the little store or even hop in your car and drive to downtown for lunch. I felt so unsupervised!

People spit. I mean seriously. Lemoore is largely made of Navy personnel and farmers. The farmers spit. A lot. Even if they don’t chew tobacco (which a lot of them did) they spit. Little puddles everywhere. For a polite Italian Catholic boy, I was grossed out most of the day.

Lemoore High School had a paddling policy. Yes paddling. If you got in trouble, you could take detention, suspension of a whack across the ass with a wooden board. When I heard this I was totally amazed. In New York, if a teacher touched a kid and it was a huge scandal.

There once was a six car traffic jam on one of the main streets because tumbleweeds were blowing across the road.

So High School was a big change in culture for me. I was known as the city kid. I survived and went to the local community college. I graduated, got a job at the IRS, and moved to Fresno (long story short there but this is running long). Fresno is definitely an upgrade from Lemoore. As I said Fresno is much more culturally diverse. If you live in Los Angeles, San Francisco or any other major city, Fresno is always going to be Smallville. This despite the fact that Fresno is the 36^th largest City in the U.S without counting Clovis, Fresno’s attached little brother city. So Fresno is a larger city than Cleveland, Miami, Oakland, St. Louis, Pittsburg and Newark. We have no professional sports teams here. We for have a minor league Arena Football team though! Go Coyote’s!

Everything in Fresno revolves around the weather. Seriously. The summers here are murder. In New York the summer got hot for sure, but it occasionally rained. Here, sometime in May or June, the temperature goes over 100 degrees and stays there through September. Even at night, it sometimes does not go below 90. And no rain. Twenty years ago, Fresno had a rainy season that ran all winter. Not so much anymore. We have been in a drought for over a decade. So now, our winters are dry but bitter cold and foggy. In other words, Fresno weather is nothing like the California most people dream of. This tends to mean that people stay indoors a lot. There really are not a lot of outdoor geared attractions. We have a Zoo which is small. We have very few parks.

I know I have been sort of down on the Central Valley up to this point but seriously, I love Fresno. Sure the weather is a challenge. Sure there is a lot of backwards thinking individuals around here. We call Fresno a little bit of Oklahoma surrounded by California. Hell we have multiple rodeos.

But for me, Fresno is a great mix of small town coziness with a little big city attitude. The people are pretty friendly. The streets are easy to get around. The graffiti team keeps the place from getting too ghetto. We have Alan Autry for a mayor! Bubba!

He’s buddy with the governor so we get plenty of love from the Govenator.

The cost of living is the big draw for Fresno. The cost of living in the Los Angeles or the San Francisco area is just amazing. Rents for small apartments can be $1500. So a lot of people buy houses here in Fresno and commute the 180 miles every day to the big cities. It is actually cheaper than living in those cities. For 1500 you could rent a house here. Plus as you can see, it’s about three hours to Los Angeles or San Francisco, 4 hours to Lake Tahoe and about an hour to Yosemite. Great location! It makes it easy to plan a day trip for fun.

We only have one decent comic shop but at least it’s an awesome one.

So yes, this displaced New Yorker is living and loving his new hometown. Stop by for a spell but dress in layers! And bring a sports team of two please…