How I knew I was finally an adult.

Nah…just kidding. Im still pretty sure that despite how 18 year old girls at the mall see me, Im not an adult. That may be one of the first signs of this mental disconnect for me…

Scene: The Regal Cinemas, Phillipsburg, NJ. It is a sunny Friday afternoon.

Me: I've just left the bathroom and am heading towards the counter. I'm staring at an 18 year old whose body it seems was manufactured by a God that hates me to my core.

Her: “Mister, can I tell you something”?

Me: “Certainly”. (meanwhile thoughts of what parts of her I want to bite first are racing through my deranged head).

Her: "Your zipper is open and your pants are around your ankles".

Me: (acting like I had planned this)…“Thanks for noticing, isn’t this how all you young kids dress today”?

Her: "You’re gross".

So that’s just one of the ways I know that even though I still like lightsabers, comics, vampires, Legos, Playdoh and Star Trek, Im apparently still seen by those around me...those who don’t really know me, as an adult.

Sometimes there are people who stop me in the street who are probably thinking…”Here is a regular adult who I can ask directions from”. Little do they realize that I may physically appear to be a grown up but in reality I still get so excited when I see my wife’s perfect boobs that I drop the TV remote.

As a related aside, I tried to explain this to her, making her understand how every time I see them, it's like I’m twelve and I’ve just looked at my first Playboy and realized the amazing epiphany that out in the world women are (wait for it) naked under their clothes.

It is a realization that was surpassed only years later when I discovered the sheer volume of free porn available to me (at most 3 mouse clicks away) online.

Scene: Online discussion with a relative’s 17 year old teenager.

Me: So, it’s cool to see you online. How is school going?”

Him: “ok bt I rlly donnt like my mtahh class Numbers is hard, dude”.

Me: “I see… so is your keyboard broken cause there’s a bunch of fuckin letters missing in your response”.

Him: “Nah,. Ima juist writing.,. I don’t got time to check spellin don count in emailz lol”.

Me: "Well it certainly does when your emails read like they were written by an epileptic woodpecker on amphetamines”.

Him: “What is amphetimenes?”

Me: “Really?…you misspelled a word that was right in front of you… Maybe we should just go back to nodding politely at each other during family get togethers?”

Him: “kewl”.

Me: “Yes…kewl, indeed”.

So I wouldn’t say I’ve had a mid-life crisis yet but I do find myself thinking of what comes next and what I’ve done so far. And while those internal dialogues are constantly ongoing in my giant brain, I don’t dwell on them unless something happens to remind me that despite how I see myself, others see me in a very different and somehow more superficial way.

I think the thought progression is the same for a lot of people. No matter what age you are, you think at some point that the Gates O’ Knowledge will swing open and you will feel, look, sound and act like your “idea’ of what an adult is.

When you’re a teenager you think no one takes you seriously and you cant wait until you’re in college but you spend almost all your time fucking around and drinking and then you leave school and you get into your early twenties and then you spend a lot of time fucking around and drinking and then you get close to thirty and if you weren’t fucking around and drinking, you’d realize that you don’t feel any more like an adult then you did when you were 16.

And then you’re in your 30’s and you’re established at a career, you have a freakin mortgage for gods sake and you find yourself examining your hairline on a semi-daily basis and you’re wondering if it's getting closer to the dreaded prostate exam and worse than that the Starbucks girl keeps giving you weird glances and you're trying to make the best of a car that’s always on the verge of sucking your wallet dry and you think…is this it? Am I a grown up now?

Then you’re 40 and you’re wondering if you have enough fiber in your diet and the mortgage seems to be the exact same amount even though you’ve been paying into it for 10 years and your friends are all discussing whether its better to have more than one kid and you find yourself debating things called 401K’s and SARSEP plans at the only kids-free-dinner you’ve had this year AND you have a kid, a kid who by the way thinks she is already an adult judging by the way she talks to you and that above all makes you feel like you’re wading through the raging waters of irony that are threatening to engulf you.

Ok…take a deep breath…

So…I’m 42… and I still like lightsabers, comics, vampires, Legos, Playdoh and Star Trek.

Oh… and I still really like boobs.

Scene: In the TV department of the local Best Buy.

Me: “So, I’m looking to buy a TV, and I brought some media to test the screens”.

Him: "Whoa, whoa…old dude…we don’t have a phonograph or whatever to play your records”. (He uses air quotes when he says “phonograph”). Actually I’m amazed he knows what a phonograph is.

Me: “No, misguided doofus. I brought some Blu-Ray disks to test before I buy a new TV. Should I speak slower”? (I use air quotes when I say “slower”. But he doesn’t get it.

Him: “Ummmmmmm…

Me: “OK, let’s try this again. Can you show me one of two things? Either the new Samsung 55” Plasma or someone who has perhaps climbed a little higher than you on the evolutionary ladder”? Any chimp will do”.

Him: “…”

Me: “Thanks for your help, could you help an old man to his car”?

One morning in the office kitchen...

Me: So have you shown your son your new tattoo?

Michelle: Not yet, he wasn’t in a good mood on Sunday. He came by to drop off his laundry and…

Me: Im gonna stop you right there. The boy is grown and lives in another town and you’re STILL doing his laundry?

Michelle: You don’t understand.

Another employee comes in for coffee.

Me: Can you believe this, she is still doing her 26 year old sons laundry?!

Joe: Wow…you know I saw something like this on 60 Minutes about italian men who are in their 30's and 40's but live at home where their mothers wash their clothes, cook their meals and clean up after them.

Me: Yeah, I saw it too.

Joe: I thought it was kind of…

Me: Sad and pathetic?

Joe: ...Inspirational.

Me: Uh…..

Everyone should read Warren Ellis...

At the Zoo by Warren Ellis

28/03/2468 2225.18 Universal Time Code. The Human Reservation, in temperate London, England, considers the breeding of the last two baseline humans a vindication of its hard work in identifying, isolating and protecting the ‘pure,’ second millenium strain of human being.

“The cusp between second and third millenium is vital,” explained the baseline humans’ head keeper, Daybreak Sigridsdottir, in a brief radiotelepathy interview conducted during the act of disposing of the couple’s physical waste products, known as ‘mucking out’. “The emergence of practical biotechnology happened right at that point. The introduction of artificial and alien material into the human genetic structure began barely ten years into the new millenium. You can’t trust anything after 2001.”

Sigridsdottir is an accomplished zoologist, whose text about the rescue and subsequent massive sexing of the population of New York City after the release of the Genital Babel terrorist bioware won her the William Gates VI Truth Prize for 2461. Her work was crucial in sifting through world records to locate humans who remained utterly unchanged by modern biological technology. She well remembers the conflict of feeling when it was discovered that the only two humans on Earth still possess a pre-2000 biological make-up.

“We stopped thinking about the way we live a long time ago. We take a deep breath to oxygenate enough for winged flight, but we don’t consider what we left in that lungful of air. In 66 cases out of a hundred, a cubic meter of sea-level air will contain an airborne genetic trait, engineered in a lab or spored from a working organ, capable of applying itself to the biology of the respiring individual.

“And now here we are. Most of us are at least 0.5% of our DNA away from the human baseline. Some are more. On the other side of the human species, if you go a percent or two of DNA away, you have a chimp. By the same token, many of us are no longer human. We are something else entirely. And the horror and surprise and sadness that has been expressed are artifacts of our refusal to accept that.”

Nine Nevada Rockets, spokesgroup for the Transhuman Association, relays a different perspective on the event from its spawning territory in the Pacific Ocean. “This is nonsense. I could make a case for the genome being ‘untrustworthy’ post 1945, with the introduction of trace elements from nuclear detonations into the environment. Human genetic structure changed with what new immunity we developed and passed down to our descendents. Who is the Human Reservation to say what is human and what isn’t?”

Sigridsdottir, who points out that Rockets is responding via a telepathy organ derived from whale and eel biologies, responds: “Look at us. We’ve adopted mechanical traits, we’ve taken on animal traits, we’ve invented new abilities and new internal organs to perform then from scratch. Rockets is nine neo-dolphin bioforms sharing a single brain on a local access network run by organic modems located in their beaks. We are as far removed from these two people as they are from chimpanzees in the wild.”

The unnamed couple, existing in a large and heavily secured enclosure dressed to resemble the urban environment they were found in, have not had an easy captivity. They have endured terrorist attempts to corrupt their genome, abortive assassination strikes, and even bomb threats. One suspect in the latter in Laura Magdelene Manson, amanuensis for the non-denominational Assembly Of Mysterious Devotion and barely visible cloud of femtotechnological machinery: “We were created to adapt and change. It was our appointed role to take on the traits of animals - to contain within ourselves all the abilities of the machines we have conceived. We do this to become more worthy companions to The Mystery. To propagate and preserve inferior iterations of the human being is sick.”

Sigridsdottir is dismissive. “It’s all part of the ongoing psychosis of the culture. Despite the fact that we take for granted physical abilities that the second-millenium human could find only in outrefiction, we somehow feel threatened by the notion that someone is ‘purer’ than us. And the Assembly hasn’t been the same since it was banned from using the word ‘ God’ and other inflammatory antique terms. Preservation is a vital function of a civilized culture.”

Why was the physical, ‘classic’ breeding required? “Because it’s now almost impossible to guarantee the absolute purity of laboratory environment. And even if we could clone them in complete protection - that kind of defeats the point, to me. Using the classic method seems to me to be the most aesthetic way to accomplish this. It’s the organic way. And, personally, I found it fascinating. No-one in my family has had actual traditional penetrative sex in seven generations. And now I see why.”

So how difficult was it to implement the breeding? “Well, it wasn’t as easy as you’d think. Sperm counts were remarkably low in the late twentieth-century human male. The genetic imperative to reproduce was slowing over much of the world is due to the rise in live births and changed in societal mores. Frankly, we had to get her drunk and promise him a pizza.”

The man is a genius...check out his other great stuff at Warren Ellis http://www.warrenellis.com

I think she means "brother"...

Classy? I got that covered...

I am 42…let me qualify that, I am a 42 year old Fanboy….capitol “F”.
And you know what that means?

That’s right, time for the old fossil to rant and rave in no particular order and with complete disregard for a proper train of thought about how good it was in the good ole’ days.

Crazy Old Man Dave has seen a lot, kiddies. I started collecting as a 7 year old. Used to get my comics at Joe’s Discount Books in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, under the tracks for the B train. 25 cents a book and Im not talking about a 21-page book from today. I mean those 80-page Giants DC used to put out with ten different stories using 2 dozen characters. All for 25 cents. I used to get 20 books a week for $5.00.

I can’t even get 2 books for that now.

They weren’t in pristine condition when I got them. This was the 70’s. (It’s true, there are people who come from that time, ask your parents!). This was before the whole “Buy three copies… one to read, one to hold on to and one to have hermetically sealed in a glass chamber filled with rare gases and protected by a concrete bunker housing guard dogs, robotic sentries and a giant tyrannosaurus on a leash” era".

Actually the giant dinosaur sounds pretty cool.

That was the time of course when the comic book industry was almost flushed down the crapper by a handful of financial advisors who saw a single CNN story about comics. You see a copy of Action Comics #1 had just sold for almost a half million dollars. They thought they had just discovered a new way to make money except they didn’t understand a damn thing about comics and so told their investors to buy multiple copies and after just a few years said copies would be worth tens of thousands of dollars.

Except they weren’t.

And anyone with half a brain knew that.

And somehow that didn’t stop the disaster from happening all the same.

Marvel and DC like money a whole bunch and started churning out record numbers of their books because now they wanted to keep up with the sales. So there were readers who were buying 3 copies and people who didn’t even read the books were buying 3 copies and old ladies were buying 3 copies and the comic stores were holding back dozens of issues because even they thought they could make money from holding on to them.

And to further entice everyone, every other issue had some sort of weird cover (remember the month where all SpiderMan issues had a hologram on them?). I do. I still have them. In Mint condition you can buy one for two bucks.

And then the black and white covers because…well I’m not sure why really. I guess people wanted to see the covers in less color?

And then the foil covers and then of course you had the different artists doing different covers on the same book and then the you had the scratch-n-sniff Ant-Man’s Panties issue and then….

…well maybe not the last one but if they did that, I’m sure it would have sold.

Then people who actually read the books and in some cases were actually collecting to have something of value noticed the problem. See, the reason that Action Comics #1 is worth 1.5 million dollars today is how few copies exist in even average condition. Worldwide, there are 4 copies in 4.0 CGC condition and only one copy in 8.5 CGC condition.

People who thought that the new X-Men run at that time (1990’s – Jim Lee) was going to be worth something were mistaken as they printed well over a million copies of the issue. Today you can get copies most anywhere online for 90 cents... in Mint condition, bagged and boarded.

Great, huh?

Anyway…sorry to drift there…After Joe’s Discount Comics, I started getting my books at a local ice cream shop (sacrilege!) that was on my way home from school. Because so few people went in there for comics, I was always able to get my books with no worries. I remember being able to collect the whole original 15-issue Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, it was and is the Bible for Marvel. Every character laid out by a different artist with their whole back story, powers, weaknesses. It was awesome.

Want to know how big a fanboy I am?… here we go…I still have:

All those original issues bagged and boarded as well as:

The 20-issue Deluxe Edition

The 8-issue Update Edition

The Official Handbook Master Sheets Edition which were individual hi-gloss, double sided, 3 hole punched sheets of each character for which I created custom binders and artwork to store them in. All 840 pages of them!

I also bought the Trade Paperbacks of the original series, that was another 10 books and finally...

I bought the 3 volume black and white only version, each book being 300+ pages.

Obsessed? I think not.

After college I gave up collecting. Sold the majority of my books, maybe 2,000 issues. Many of which I ended up buying back years later, I’m sure at a higher cost than what I made on them. Bagged the rest and put the long boxes into storage.

And so there was no Super Wednesday for me for quite a few years.

In 1996, I started a new job on 24^th Street off of 6^th Avenue and one day at lunch I crossed the park and saw the sign for Cosmic Comics. I’m sure at the time I didn’t think much of that moment but I was about to drop back into the frenzy again after a 7 year lapse. Looking at those loaded shelves, I started to remember why I was hooked in the first place.

I joined the club and every week, rain or shine, I was there getting my new books.

Sadly, Cosmic is gone now. Mark sold the place recently to some (less than honest guys, I understand) and so that particular shop has gone the way so many others have. There is a tiny collection of comic stores in Manhattan now, Jim Hanley, Midtown and Forbidden Planet seem to be the biggest and even they aren’t doing amazing business anymore. Evidence of that is in how much of Forbidden Planet is devoted to comics and how much is toys, games, models, apparel, posters, DVD’s, action figures etc.

Of course none of this is why I started writing this post in the first place. What I wanted to talk about was how bad the books have gotten lately. I am so tired of collecting a series issue by issue only to have it end up being a mediocre series unworthy of keeping because I have no intention of reading it again.

In fact during the past 6 weeks, I have purchased a total of 7 new books. This from a guy who used to buy 10-15 books per week. It seems that the resurgence in comics has come solely from the movies based on the properties and that is not a good thing. There are more books based on toys and TV shows and movies than ever before (Star Trek, Transformers, the freaking Smurfs) more books that are epic-scale crossover series that require you to buy the 12 issue series itself, and then all the crossover books which in the end can mean buying every issue put out by a publisher, sometimes for a whole year or more. (Civil War, The Siege, Blackest Night, Brightest Day).

There are hundreds of books published each month and somehow I cant seem to find anything that isn’t derivative or worse, plain boring. What am I doing wrong? Not looking hard enough? Not trying new stuff?

The bigger problem of course is the utter disconnect that is being suffered by the industry. While both major houses are hiring better and more expensive writers, (in many cases traditional prose authors like Brad Meltzer and Orson Scott Card have been hired to write new stories) there isn’t enough out there to keep me excited week after week.

Better writers and artists are great for the adult, educated readers out there but that is generally people past their mid-twenties and the industry isn’t signing up many new readers. The books may be too hard to follow and are in many cases contain content that is not meant to read by kids without supervision.

I go to Forbidden Planet every week and the average age is probably 30 or older at this point. I cant remember the last time I saw a kid in there. I’m sure part of that is price… $2.99, 3.99 per book. (a 6-issue mini series can cost $24) and I’m sure part of that is the dearth of material aimed at a younger age group.

It’s ironic that we geeks and fanboys get made fun of for reading comics…”How childish” people say. “Aren’t those for kids”? they say but in the end they really aren’t written for or marketed to that group at all. And not for some time.

What does that mean, you ask? Well I believe that we are at a point where collectors are mostly men in their 50’s and older and until the younger generation gets older and hopefully starts to pick up the books there wont be enough readers to subsidize the industry.

Crazy Old Man Dave has spoken and he kindly asks you to get the hell off his lawn.

In my humble opinion, here are some books that are worthy buying and reading again and again.

Marvels
Crisis on Infinite Earths
Watchmen – no surprise there.
Marvel Boy
Civil War
Silver Surfer – Requiem
Kingdom Come (no kidding)
Y The Last Man
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Wolverine (Miller/Claremont)
All Star Superman
Daredevil: Born Again
The Dark Knight Returns (well duh) but not The Dark Knight Strikes Again
The Authority
Planetary
The Ultimates (first series)
Thunderbolts (Ellis run)
We3
Rising Stars
DMZ
Ronin
Preacher
Cerebus
The Losers
The Walking Dead
Astonishing X-Men (Joss Whedon run)
Powers
Secret Wars (original run)
Teen Titans: The Judas Contract
The Eternal (Chuck Austen)
Squadron Supreme (Waid)
The Incal (Jodorowsky)
The Nikopol Trilogy (Enki Bilal)
Midnight Nation

We are experiencing technical difficulties...

To: The Best Staff in the World
From: Your Trusted Friends in Management

As we enter these uncertain times, we feel its best to try and curtail some costs so that we may emerge from this economic slowdown in a better position to keep doing what we do. To that end, we have instituted some new (hopefully low-impact policies) to help us reach our goal.

We have purchased sets of glassware and metal utensils to cut down on the monthly costs of papergoods.

Company meals are now limited to $10 per person for reimbursement

The company nurse has been furloughed. First Aid Kits are now available in each studio.

We have switched to a slightly cheaper brand of toilet paper for the time being.

On sunny days we will open all the shades and turn off the lights to conserve electricity.

We must insist on no new purchases for the library at this time.

Company Insurance will no longer cover cosmetic procedures such as teeth whitening.

To: Those Still Employed
From: Us

As you’ve noticed, our economic slowdown is turning into a depression. On the downside we have had to let go of 50% of the staff, on the upside only 50% of those people are suing us for unfair termination. But keep your heads up, we have a plan. We have some new (and Im sorry to say, stricter) policies which we must enact. Remember this is only temporary.

We had to sell the glassware and utensils. Please drink directly from the faucet and eat your meals over the sink with your hands. This costs $2 per person, please leave your money in the tip jar next to the fridge.

Company meals are no longer reimbursed.

We have abandoned the First Aid kits so if you cut yourself, please go outside to bleed. Your salary will be docked until your wound clots and you can return to your desk.

We have replaced the bathroom toilet paper with low-grit sandpaper. It’s quite bracing!

On cloudy days we will work by candle.

We will be selling books from the library so we can keep the heat on this winter.

Company insurance will not cover hearts attacks unless they are actively happening at the time of the claim.

To: The Savages on the Fifth Floor
From: We Who Sit in Judgement

Ok…its basically a giant hairy financial shitstorm out there and this is how we're gonna deal with it…

Please do not eat in the office anymore, the larger rats have become quite bold. Emma from Accounting was dragged off last week and no one has seen her since.

Company meals? Ha!

First Aid now consists of 4 assorted bandaids and half a bottle of Mylanta

No toilet paper. Please rinse the rag after you use it

Work must be completed by the glow of the EXIT signs.

The remaining library books will be burned for heat this winter.

Company insurance no longer reimburses the families of those employees who are carried off by rats.

With your cooperation and understanding, there is no reason why we cant weather this storm together.