2011-08-01
Why comics matter
You hear someone talking about their complete recruitment software package . You hear someone else talking about their mortgage, their trip to Thailand, their children and how they won’t misbehave. Then you open the door and walk into the world of comics and you don’t hear any of those things anymore. Inside here it’s like only comics exist: marker pen on paper, printed pages, violence, action, entertainment...RELEASE.
I’ve always loved comics. I was never one of those people who got into them later on. I was committed to this cause all along. I pretty much found them the moment I opened my eyes, seeing as my dad was a fanatic.
Scratch that: a junkie.
He loved comics in a way which even troubled me sometimes. In the loft were boxes and boxes and boxes of comics. But not in dusty boxes that were never seen, and this was not a loft left to go to hell with cobwebs and spiders. This was the domain of my dad and my dad only.
I can put myself in his place and understand all too well how nervous he must have been to have a son who knew nothing of comics and what they meant to him
Dad wouldn’t let me up there until I could see over the kitchen counter, that’s the truth, and I was a real pain in his arse about that fact just because I was so curious. He said he didn’t want anything touched and he couldn’t trust me until I could trust myself. At the time I vividly remember not having a clue what he meant, but now I can see it. I can put myself in his place and understand all too well how nervous he must have been to have a son who knew nothing of comics and what they meant to him.
Often, when the shop is vacant, I’ll be a the counter leafing through a new comic that’s just come in and I’ll think about dad and how he spent hours up there in our loft dusting the comics and slipping them in and out of their neat paper folders. Paper, it had to be. Plastic allowed condensation to build up – paper was what forensic teams used to collect DNA evidence from blood-splattered crime scenes. You don’t forget things like that when the entire world you care about is contained in a single space.
I don’t have a loft, but I do have a spare room, and in it sits my collection of stuff. I don’t let people in there, not until they trust themselves. And not unless they love comics like I do. Which isn’t everyone, thankfully.
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