Reminiscing...
Hello again all of you Afro Stachers! It’s good to see you! Well, it’s good to know some of you are reading my words and gibberish! So here we are at another entry to the Fabulous Frog Blog!
Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of reminiscing. About what, you may ask? About being a geek. That’s right! Being a geek. Now I’m not talking about the one time meaning of a circus freak who bites the heads off of chickens. Apparently there were enough people who did that to the point where they actually needed to create a name for that. But what I’m talking about is the culture of being a diehard fan of some sort of popular culture. Believe me, there are lots of different categories of pop culture too. Comics, movies, TV shows, books, video games, etc.
I remember when I first started going to the San Diego Comic Con. Believe it or not, there was a time when you could decide you wanted to go the day of, drive down (and actually find easy parking), and buy a ticket and have a pretty good time. These days, everyone knows that it’s impossible to do that. But one thing that I do remember is when I was walking around in those earlier days hoping that comics would become a bigger and more popular phenomenon. I know. Be careful what you wish for, right? Now it seems that Comic Con should be called Pop Culture Con and that the comics part of the Con is forgotten. I say that’s not so. But that’s another topic for another blog. But believe it or not, even with the Con being so big, I like that it has grown like it has.
I’m also in awe at the fact there are comic book movies being made today. When I first started to read comic books, I kept thinking that movies should be made of the things that I enjoyed reading so much. But back then, I knew that it would be difficult to make due to special effects. Yes, we did get Superman movies a long time ago, and they were good. But now it’s so much easier to create those special effects. Then X-Men came out! And then it all began. Spider-Man is my favorite character. He’s the one that got me into comics in the first place. I remember sitting in the theater for the first Spider-Man movie and in the middle of it I thought to myself, “I’m actually watching Spidey on the big screen! This is awesome!” And we’ve come so far and so much more yet to come.
Remember when there was the Batman television show? Or the Incredible Hulk? Even Wonder Woman? There was even a Spider-Man show. Low tech, sure, but as a kid, I really enjoyed what we got. Look at what we’ve got now! Arrow! The Flash! Agents of SHIELD! Agent Carter! Even the short lived Constantine. Netflix has Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage. Comics on television again! And they’re good shows!
Even comic books are bigger. I can’t speak about sales of comics because I don’t have that kind of information. But I would like to think that sales have gotten better. I hope that because of the movies and television that more people are interested in picking up the books to see where it all began. But what I’m talking about it actually being an independent/small press publisher. When I first had aspirations of being a comic book writer, getting into Marvel or DC was incredibly difficult. I even went the way of sending in proposals to editors with story ideas and hope for the best. Out of all the proposals I sent in, I did get one rejection letter. I guess it’s better to get something back than nothing and not knowing. The idea of self-publishing was another daunting task. But now, it’s not all that difficult. Social media has made it easier to find people to work with if you’re lacking an artist or writer. (I’m lucky that my buddy, Derek, and I have the same vision for what we want to do with comics!) And print-on-demand doesn’t require a whole lot of money to print and publish your books. I’m not saying it’s not a whole lot of work, but technology certainly has made things easier.
We’ve come a long way, son! I’m really happy to see my hobbies and interests have grown. There were so many times I felt like the comic interest was going to die. But here we are, I’m writing and you’re reading and we’re making comics. It’s a good time to be a geek! If you are one, wear that geek badge with pride. There’s lots of us out there and it’s one big happy family!
