I had a thought, the other day, upon realizing that a bunch of comics I’ve been buying in back issues lately aren’t ones that I collected back in the day, but ones that I read from the collection of my best friend in high school; I realized that I had inherited the issues originally when he quit reading comics himself, and I thought, back when he outgrew comics, just like everyone else at the time except for me and the other shy, painfully quiet loners I’d see at the local comic book store.
I thought that, and then I realized that… that probably doesn’t happen anymore. At some point in the decades since I was a teenager, buying and reading comics became, if not mainstream then at least not something that is a topic of open derision by your peer group. I’m almost nostalgic about the whole concept now, looking back.
I remember the point when I thought to myself, oh, I’m a comic collector now, and I can even remember the specific comic book issue when I realized that I wasn’t just reading comics off-handedly; it was something that was specifically an active interest, something that I wanted to do and do intentionally. (That was Uncanny X-Men #185, by the way, by Chris Claremont and John Romita Jr.; I don’t know why that issue was the one, but it was. It still took ten months for me to call myself a collector, though; I didn’t do that until I bought Uncanny X-Men #195.)
Throughout my late teens, I remember that buying and reading comics was a particularly solitary activity, that I’d find the stores and go there myself or drag along a friend or even family member despite their obvious disinterest. It was something that I kept to myself, as much as I’d occasionally attempt to convert people I thought could be like-minded and easily convinced. It rarely worked; for the most part, it was something I did and kept to myself.
There’s really is something I almost miss about all of that. As lonely as it was — and it was! — there was also something… exciting about feeling as if I spoke a secret language that no-one else around me understood, or the thrill of realizing that other people could understand, when that connection was made. The world is different now, where everyone doesn’t just recognize Spider-Man and Superman and Batman, but Metamorpho, Shang-Chi, and Moon Knight, as well. How did that even happen?