I recently had an online disagreement with someone on a political matter Shocking, I know, but it happens. Political arguments and social media seem to go hand in glove these days.
Worry not, gentle reader, this isn’t about politics per se, but about a particular comment slung at me as if it was the most staggering of “gotcha” moments.
It was the “gotcha” that struck me more than what we were debating. The subject of our disagreement is irrelevant. Reading between the lines of my many columns, I’ll wager you can guess to one degree or another where I fall on the political spectrum, but you don’t have to agree or disagree with my politics to appreciate this.
You see, my worthy opponent informed me I live in “comic book fantasyland.” In a subsequent response they indicated I should stick to comics, because I “can’t understand political narrative.”
I can only guess they connected me with comics due to my profile pic, which features the heroes of a publication a friend and I successfully funded on Kickstarter last October. A brief online search of my name might also connect me with a handful of comicrelated websites and publications. Maybe they have even read my occasional columns about the comic book medium right here in this paper.
They probably thought they had scored some searing takedown, based upon a quick, surface level assessment of my online persona.
You see, the implication is that if you love comics you’re stupid. And if you aren’t stupid, then you are somehow immature or developmentally stunted.
It’s an old insult, as weak and tired as every other lame jab thrown at readers of every stripe no matter their preferred publication (books, newspapers, comics, etc.), most often by insecure people afraid someone knows more about something than they do.
They have good reason to worry too, because comic books lead to actual books. Now, my accuser probably hasn’t bothered with books in years, but when I look at my bookshelves I’m pretty content with what I see. There are plenty of titles which are close kin to comics; Conan, Tarzan, King Arthur and others, but there is also a lot of history, science, philosophy and biographies.
Here’s a choice sampler without a single gross mint or orange creme chocolate in the box: Mann’s 1493, Massie’s Peter the Great, Balfour’s The Kaiser and His Times, Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Rayfield’s Stalin and His Hangmen, Prior’s Unity and Development in Plato’s Metaphysics, Fukuyama’s Origins of Political Order, Campbell’s The Power of Myth, Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel and The Third Chimpanzee, Thomas’s Conquest: Montezuma, Cortez and the Fall of Old Mexico, Asimov’s Understanding Physics.
You get the point. My online antagonist’s humdinger of a zinger was based upon his assumption about comics and the people who read them, which is based in turn on an old and inaccurate stereotype.
He doesn’t seem to understand, I take trips to “comic book fantasyland” because what I’ve learned about the reality of the world we humans have built for ourselves can be so utterly depressing.
Nietzsche is often quoted as saying “We have art so that we may not die of reality.” Comics are definitely art, and all I can say is “more please!”
