Originally published January 11, 2002, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1469

 

It has been said that time travel is not only possible, but routine. Because, in a sense, we are all time travelers, heading as one toward a future destination. It’s just going to take a while to get there, that’s all. And once we’re there, we look behind us, see where we were, and marvel at how we managed to get to the present point.

You and I have been doing some time traveling in this column. And now we’re going to reset our minds to where we were while simultaneously keeping hold of where we are. Thus we have achieved time travel… or, at the very least, a couple of columns.

Back in the year 1992, I ran a survey in this column that took its cue from a weekly news magazine. That magazine took a poll of its readership, endeavoring to project what the shape of the world would be like ten years hence. I decided that it would be interesting to do the same with CBG readers. To take a whack at discerning the state of the comic industry in the then-unthinkably far future of 2002. It seemed a lark. First, just the year itself: 2002. It sounded so… so science fiction. One year past the iconic 2001. Second, who even knew if there would be a comic book industry at the time (although sales were certainly strong enough to indicate that everything would be fine.) And third, I knew beyond question that I’d never be able to follow up on it because, hëll, there was no flipping way that I was going to be writing the column ten years down the road. Fifty-two weeks a year, year in, year out?

In any case, to the astonishment of not a few, most of all myself, I’m still here. CBG is still here. The column is still here. And we are now rolling into the far-future year of 2002. We know where we are. I thought it would be interesting and instructive to compare that to where we thought we’d be. As John Lennon said, life is what happens while you’re making other plans. And he should know, because look what happened to him.

So let’s set the Wayback machine to the dim past of 1992 wherein we posed questions that got the following results. The whole number represents the total respondents, the percentage the total percent of all votes tallied.

Continue Reading “The BID Poll Revisited, Part 1” →

Originally published January 4, 2002, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1468

Christmas is coming, yes, the most dangerous time of the year. Dangerous in that the suicide rate supposedly spikes, and dangerous because people get reeeaaaaal sensitive about it. I once described Christmas as a “mythical birthday.” What I was referring to was that Biblical scholars doubt that December 25^th is the actual date of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Instead I got deluged with mail from people claiming I said that Jesus didn’t exist and that I obviously hated Christians.

But you know what’s safe to talk about?

Presents.

Continue Reading “Holiday Gift Suggestions, 2001” →

Originally published December 28, 2001, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1467

I was both surprised and not surprised over the reactions I received to my column about my frustrations with fans.

Michael M. of Mechanicsville, MD, wrote in to say, “A few weeks ago you wrote in your CBG column about comic book fans and how basically we’re all a bunch of jerks. Being a fan for well over half my life, I kinda agree with you. Some of the things I have seen at conventions and read online are pretty nasty. For such a wonderful (medium) as comic books, why are so many fans such imbeciles?” Michael then went on to discuss an exception to this fan overview, namely his eight year old son, Jonathan (who obviously is exceptionally bright since his favorite comic was Spyboy.)

I am not surprised that Michael believes that I think fans are “all a bunch of jerks.” I had a feeling that would be the impression derived from the column, mostly as a result of the following paragraph:

Continue Reading “BID Mailbag: No More Mr. Nice Guy continued” →

Originally published December 21, 2001, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1466

Various thoughts…

Continue Reading “Legends of Tarzan, Harry Potter, and more” →

Originally published December 14, 2001, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1465

The name of the restaurant in Berlin was, of all things, the American Western saloon. Never in a million years would have I gone anywhere near the place, even in America, but I had been doing my Q&A with the German audience at the Nexus Resurrection convention while my daughter Gwen had gone on ahead to get something to eat. This was the restaurant at the convention center. So that’s where they took her.

I walked in and was stunned.

The décor was beyond belief. The “saloon” was jam packed with all sorts of icons of the American west… such as the 1997 Queens phone book, or a statue of Abraham Lincoln. Clearly they’d simply decorated it with anything that vaguely smacked of America. What was even more bizarre, though, was the spectacle on the dance floor. Germans, about a dozen, clad in cowboy hats, boots, gaudy western shirts that looked like something you’d see on Grand Ole Opry, were out on the dance floor, and they were line dancing in perfect synchronization to “Achy Breaky Heart.”

Continue Reading “In Germany for Nexus Con, Part 2” →

Originally published December 7, 2001, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1464

Back in the 1930s, there was a small shoe store in the heart of Berlin, run by a soft-spoken, unprepossessing Jew named Martin David. He had a wife, Hela, and a small boy named Gunter. The political situation had been deteriorating in Germany, and there were concerned noises from members of the Jewish populace, but there was a general belief that everything would calm down. How bad, it was figured, could it get?

And then one night a brick was hurled through Martin David’s store window, and the shouts of “Dirty Jews!” were heard from outside. Martin looked at the broken glass, at the brick with the word “Juden” etched upon it, lying upon the floor like a still-steaming animal dropping, and then he turned to his wife and said, “Start packing, get everything together. Sell what you don’t need. We’re leaving.”

All the neighbors told them they were crazy. That they were overreacting. That things would go back to the way they were. The Davids, despite the nay-sayers, left anyway.

All the neighbors died in concentration camps.

Continue Reading “In Germany for Nexus Con, Part 1” →