My Friend the Comic Nerd
Trigger warning: use of swear words in direct quotations so as to not take away from the conversation.
I didn’t grow up reading comics. The closest I got to being “invested” in Comics was the Bones series and a few mangas here and there as my ever rotating friend group would sometimes include “comic nerds” depending on the season. As I entered into more adult relationships however, I realized that people I considered close friends had been impacted by comic books throughout their formative years and beyond. Lucky for me, that means a quick text to any number of people could end in the perfect candidate for a comic driven interview.
My dear friend who I fondly refer to and for the sake of privacy will refer to as JTK within this post.
I started by asking what he would describe as his earliest memory of comics impacting his life. On the way to a birthday party when he was a child, he stopped by a comic book store and bought his first ever comic book. The comic was volume one of Batman 52 and that night he went and got the second. That night, however, he also picked up the first of Aquaman and immediately fell in love. This was interesting to me. I know JTK and have known for awhile that he loves Aquaman more than almost anything else, in his own words,
“I spent all my money on it, and yeah it’s a hobby but it’s also an interesting culture, the online presence is interesting, comic book fans get as mad as star wars fans, they hate what they love.”
When asking him how he uses comics in his own life JTK expressed that although in his down time comics are a brilliant way to pass time not in front of a TV, more often than not he isn’t reading comics but reading about comics, “because [within the online community] it’s similar to how people look up news about sports without watching the game”.
Back to his love of Aquaman JTK explained how, “it’s become a bit of a meme, but I really do love Aquaman, it’s a part of my identity now, people I don’t know will know I like Aquaman, it’s a part of my identity so much so that when my friend needed someone to interview they thought of me”.
He was talking about me of course, we will now pause for a warm chuckle.
Thank you.
I was interested in asking him about his views on film adaptations. I know with almost all other adaptive art forms there is this anger when movies don’t follow books perfectly. JTK explained that he doesn’t see it that way and doesn’t think others do either. Ultimately, we came to the conclusion through a minor discussion that where comic books differ in mass media is that the characters aren’t a device for a plot to exist but the plot exists to heighten the characters, therefore, movies are no longer adaptations but extensions of the world they live in. Of course Aquaman came up and what he said stuck with me
“As a huge Aquaman fan, when it came out I cried in that movie, and that movie was dumb, but it was exactly what it needed to be, it’s f*cking Aquaman, tears welled up, that’s him, that’s the thing I care about.”
He told me that no one cares about direct adaptations as much as they care about little easter eggs or nods to the original comics. People want more stories, they don’t need an exact representation in a movie of what happened in the comic, they want more adventures for their favorite heroes to experience.
“Batman v Superman f*cked up because Batman just merks people, and people got so mad because that’s not Batman, same with Superman, the writing is trash so even if the casting and costume is perfect it’s not my Superman, you know?”
I loved hearing this perspective. I loved hearing about how people relate to these characters and can’t stand when the character is transformed into something they clearly aren’t. My friends eyes lit up talking about comics and their impact on his life. We discussed women in comics and how they are sex tokens, while men are power fantasies for men. He expressed excitement at where the world of comics is heading as well as (again) his undying love for Aquaman. I left the conversation with a different appreciation for what comics truly mean to people. At the end of the day they changed the life of someone I love very much, and if I knew even just that, that would be enough for me to recognize comics as a hugely impactful aspect of an ever changing society.
