The Cold War
We need to come in out of the cold.

I thought I fell in love again tonight.

Or more accurately, I remembered that I was already in love with something: winter. Now this actually suprised the hell out of me, for a number of reasons. Once the temperature drops below 70 degrees Fahrenheit, I tend to become miserable. Nearly everyone who knows me is aware of this, and they've all probably heard more than one earful about "how God-awful winter is, I can't wait for June," et al. But tonight it's snowing again here. This is our third good snowfall in about a week, and last night I went sledding. I stood way out in the open under a clear sky, looking around at the nearby woods, and the only thing I could do was smile from ear to ear.

It was absolutely beautiful out in that field, under the hill. I was a little boy again, back in the days when I knew I loved winter. And the thing is, that I never really thought about until now, a day later, was that my being unhappy during wintertime had nothing to do with the cold after all. It had to do with my just not admitting to the fact that I loved the season for a variety of reasons, and focusing on what really is a single aspect of it. I forgot all about everything else in looking at the one thing.

Of course, now my bitching and moaning of the past years seems really ridiculous to me, and everyone who's had to listen to my mouth run is going to give me a world of grief when they read this. But I'm hardly the only person out there who does this sort of thing. Who doesn't really like something, but instead puts up a front to others--intentionally or unintentionally, actively or passively--of disliking it? You all have something like this, I'm sure. You truly like and enjoy it, whatever it may be, but either no one knows about it, or you make a show of not liking it. If it comes up in conversation, or if someone asks you about it, it basically gets swept under the rug.

I used to be like this with comic books as well.

I was once into every comic book you could think of, and then almost completely stopped buying any titles. About four years went by where I'd hardly buy a single issue of anything, and then one day a friend let me read some books he had. Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN trade paperbacks and TRANSMETROPOLITAN by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson twisted my arm and dragged me back to the comics shop. It's now been almost two years since then, but something is different now. When I used to be into comics, I would always downplay them to some degree. If I was with my comic-reading friends, we'd talk about them openly. If I was with the non-comics readers, I almost made a conscious effort to not talk about them, as if I had something to hide.

But now I talk about them. Someone asked me at work what I was doing on my computer one day. "I'm writing a comic, and I'm going to try to get it published," I said.

"Like a comic strip for the newspaper?" They asked.

"No, like a comic book."

What she said to me was the last thing I expected: "Oh, that's awesome." This, from a person who didn't read comics at all, was said with total sincerity. We started to talk about comic books. Something shifted upstairs, some defective piece of machinery in my brain started working, and it occurred to me: what the hell was I embarrassed about before?

It was the same with wintertime. On one hand, I was almost making myself unhappy because of what I thought I didn't like. On the other, I was unwilling to put what I liked forward because I thought others wouldn't like it. Many people I know that are comics readers never talk about them with others who aren't.

Now I'm not saying we have to run up to everyone we know, waving our new week's comics, showing them off. Anyone who focuses on something to the exclusion of almost everything else--be it comics, sports, sex, theater, gardening, you name it--is going to be labeled a fanboy. That in and of itself isn't automatically a bad thing. If you love something that much, more power to you. If you're willing to talk about it nonstop to anyone within earshot, I'm going to respect you for being that devoted to your hobby. But most people who read comics aren't like that. We have a wide range of interests, just like anyone else. We shop with everyone else, we eat with everyone else. We drink from the same water fountains. Why should we be ashamed of what we love?

And in truth, it should be like that with anything you care about, comics or otherwise. Part of the problem may be that comic books carry the automatic stigma of being considered children's fare. But that really isn't the case, is it? Would you be worried about people making fun of you behind your back, snickering at you when you weren't paying close attention, because you were reading the latest issue of SUPERMAN during your lunch break at work? Would you feel the same way if you were reading a novel about the life of a World War II Holocaust survivor? What about a comic book about a Holocaust survivor? Go and read MAUS during your lunch break. When someone asks you what it's about, tell them. I'm willing to bet they'll be taken completely by surprise that you're reading about a story like that in a comic book.

Too many people who read comics today treat their hobby as if it was a dirty little secret. They almost act like they were Cold War era Communist party sympathizers. When they discuss comics, they keep to their own little circle of like-minded people. The worst thing is that this is the exact sort of thing that serves to further marginalize comic books.

We have this belief that people will look down on us because of something we enjoy reading, and so we become secretive about it. In truth, we're simply focusing in on the one individual detail--others' perceptions of comic books--and we're allowing it to affect our own overall view of something we love. It's something that too many of us do with too many things, and it's not doing any of us any good.

Joe Szilagyi, February 1st, 2000

Joe Szilagyi is a regular contributor to PopImage.

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