I've talked about my issues with comic book stores two years ago. I started with a couple of articles in the online magazine ComicMix, specifically how many owners and employees were chasing away paying customers, then lamenting why their businesses were failing. Then a male someone sent me a note, attempting to dispute my first blog post.
Why am I bringing this all up again?
The one place I really wanted to visit when DH and I went to Denver was Mile High Comics. When I was a kid, MHC always sound like a magical place to visit--a huge warehouse FULL of nearly all the comics ever produced!
I used their subscription service N.I.C.E through the nineties because I moved a lot with my job, then DH's job. I had to give it up shortly after Genius Kid was born because I simply didn't have time to read everything I wanted to anymore.
So Saturday afternoon after DH's meetings were done, we drove out to MHC. I didn't know they were having a giant Yu-Gi-Oh regional tournament that day, so the place was crowded. I think there were maybe three shoppers besides us.
Of course, I headed straight for the Wonder Woman and X-men sections, pulled what I wanted from my wishlist, and DH offered to hold them while I browsed through the dollar bins. He wondered off to look at some action figures.
And that's when the young dude-bro employee came up and asked if I needed help. After my polite no-thank-you, he kept talking. He finally brought up the stack of books he seen me with earlier.
Okay, a loss prevention move. That I could understand having spent my time in the retail trenches. I said my husband was holding them for me while I continued to look. Which led to a description, except I couldn't remember what shirt he had on that day. Hey, it happens after twenty-five years together!
So we find DH. Then dude-bro wants to see what we had. We complied, and that's when he crossed a line.
"Wow, these are all shit," dude-bro said sarcastically. I gave him the evil glare of death. He backtracked by saying, "Just joking."
Then he tried to engage DH. It really went downhill from there. It totally didn't register with dude-bro the woman with the Wonder Woman t-shirt and Deadpool backpack might be the comics aficionado. At least not until DH bluntly said, "I just go to the superhero movies with her." At that point, dude-bro turned bright red and rushed off.
And I was disappointed and ready to leave.
However, the two guys at the cashwrap were our age, totally polite to me, and kept their opinions of my choices to themselves. In fact, they gave me a Vertigo Death postcard.
So where am I going with all this?
Despite some people's efforts to rewrite history, female fans of geek things have been around for a long, long time. We're not going away any time soon.
But on the other side of the coin, I'm now starting to run into younger female geeks with a similar prove-to-me-you're-a-real-fan attitude.
Kids, I don't have to prove jackshit to any of you. I learned how to read from Spider-man when Stan Lee was still writing it. I remember Apollo 8's Christmas Eve transmission from lunar orbit. I consumed Star Trek fanfic printed on ditto machines (google that one, children!). I'm old enough to be your grandmother, and I waved my geek flag proudly long before your parents were born.
Everyone needs to get over themselves, thank our lucky stars that geek fandom has gone mainstream, and enjoy the fact that we can talk about our passions in public, instead of hiding in our parents' basements.
No fan is better than any other. We all need to settle down and be glad we can share our loves. Because it's the stories that matter in the end.
Oh, good grief. :/ Chances are they've always had at least one or two employees like that, but you were insulated from them by your subscription. [huge freaking eyeroll]
ReplyDeleteWhen we moved from Long Beach, Jim's job paid and that included professional movers and packers. Awesome! So we're showing them around, explaining what's what and answering questions. We take them into a room that has a sewing machine, two work tables, a lot of embroidery equipment and supplies, plus three tall bookcases over-full of books. (Shelved regularly, plus shelved lying flat on top of the regularly shelved books, plus another layer shelved flat in front of the regular row.) Most of them were serious history or SFF, plus a bunch of whatever.
One of the movers turns to my husband and asks him if he's a professor or something. I look at him and say, "They're all mine."
O_O
Wow, it was like a dog had stood up on its hind legs and started to sing opera. [another huge freaking eyeroll] They weren't nasty about it, I'll give them that much credit, but the open surprise was seriously annoying. [sigh]
And that wasn't even all of my books. I had like a thousand more stacked up in corners and along walls in the livingroom, plus another... couple thousand? still in boxes from when we'd moved to that condo from our apartment, that I'd never unboxed. (We've never had anywhere near enough bookcases to shelve all our books.) Plus we had however many boxes of Jim's books, and a bunch of his stacked up near mine in the livingroom.
I suppose I can give them some credit for not assuming the woman had to be the person who used the room with the sewing machine and embroidery stuff. [wry smile]
Angie
LOL Sounds like Perry's friends and family when they saw my bookshelves (in pretty much the same condition as yours). My favorite comment was "Has she read ALL of them?!"
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