Today is my 50th birthday, one I share with, among others, Pete Townshend, Ho Chi Minh, and Atatürk (sort of). Man, they would make the foundations of a good band, wouldn’t they? Anyway, you only turn a half-century once, so I have some thoughts about it. Of course I do!
I was born on Wednesday, 19 May 1971, in Abington, Pennsylvania. My mother grew up in southeastern PA, my father grew up near Wilkes-Barre/Scranton in the state’s northeast. They met in college at Penn State, got married in 1967, lived in Connecticut, Rhode Island (where my sister was born), and then in Pennsylvania. 
In May 1975 we moved to a small town outside of Frankfurt, West Germany, where Sperry-Univac, for whom my dad worked, had an office (my mother, who loves to travel, practically forced him to take the transfer, so she could travel throughout Europe). In May 1979 we moved back to Warminster, PA, where I lived for the next 14 years (the final four I spent in college at Penn State, but I still technically lived in Warminster). After graduating in 1993, I moved with my girlfriend/future wife to Portland, Oregon, and then in 2001, we moved to Phoenix, where we reside today. I’m not as peripatetic as some, but I’ve gotten around. We were married in 1994, and in 2002 we had our first daughter, followed in 2005 by our second daughter. And now I’m 50, and here we are.
It’s a nice, round number, so it lends itself to reflection. I don’t know what “50” is supposed to feel like, and occasionally I feel old, but generally I feel pretty good. I’m very overweight, but I’m working on that, so maybe by the time I turn 51 I won’t be. It causes me some health problems – I have high blood pressure and high cholesterol, but those started when I was fairly young, and good part of both of them is genetic, so who knows what will happen if I actually bring my weight down to reasonable levels. Other than that, I’m healthy as a horse – I rarely get sick, and when I do, it’s usually only for a day, and my organs are all working quite well. I get a physical every year and don’t get any bad news from that. I wasn’t terribly worried about getting COVID because of this, although I still wore (and wear, despite being vaccinated) a mask because I’m not a callous idiot and I wasn’t taking any chances. 
I play tennis 2-3 times a week and try to take walks on days when I don’t play, so while I don’t exercise as much as I should, I still do okay.
A lot of people who were born around 1970 have some memories of pop culture in that decade, but I don’t. Television in 1970s Germany was not very diverse, so I missed the great “nerd” shows of that decade, from Wonder Woman and The Incredible Hulk to Man From Atlantis and Charlie’s Angels. The first “adult” television show I watched with any regularity was The Dukes of Hazzard, which premiered in January 1979 and which I began watching sometime in the fall of that year, once I was back in the States and I realized there was a lot actually on television. I didn’t see a lot of movies in Germany, either – I remember seeing Star Wars (I refuse to call it anything but that), and I’m pretty sure it was in either Switzerland or Austria while we were there skiing, so it would have to have been in the winter of 1977/78 (it was in English with German subtitles, and we knew enough German to know that the translation was a bit goofy), but I never became an obsessive fan. I read some comics in Germany – there were plenty of Asterix comics that I picked up over the years, and I used to get those British “annuals” that often had war stories but also some oddball stuff in there – a long story about a badger sticks in my brain – but I didn’t collect comics like I would in later years. (I also own perhaps the greatest cowboy comic ever written, which I got in Germany, so there’s that.) When I got back to the States, I began watching more television and seeing more movies, but I didn’t really get into nerd culture. I’m more of a nerd now, probably, than I was when I was ten!
It’s odd – I read the accounts of many self-proclaimed “nerds,” either on this here blog or elsewhere, and a lot of what they say doesn’t resonate with me. 
I sympathize with Greg Hatcher, for instance, because nobody should have to go through what he went through when he was a kid. But I don’t really empathize with him, because it’s an alien landscape for me. I certainly wasn’t a jock – I played soccer, the least tough sport a school-age kid could play, and I wasn’t all that good at it. I sang in the choir, I acted in some plays in high school, but even that wasn’t enough to qualify me for a beating from the jocks, mainly because I went to a huge school, so the art kids formed a large bloc and they could distance themselves from the jocks, and there also was some crossover, so as far as I remember (memory is a tricky thing), it was easier to be a “nerd” in my school. (There were some people who were far nerdier than I was; I wonder what their experiences were like.) I didn’t collect comics, I didn’t read only sci-fi and fantasy (who’s Thomas Covenant?), I have never watched Star Trek in any significant amount, I didn’t know anything about Doctor Who until the last few decades, I have never played Dungeons & Dragons … you get the gist. I was a sports nerd more than anything. I loved reading and learning baseball statistics, and can still name a good 90% of the World Series winners. In 1985, if you had asked me about a TARDIS, I would have looked at you blankly, but I could tell you that Dizzy Dean is the last 30-game winner in the National League (1934) and that Bill Terry is the last .400 hitter in the National League (1930). I can tell you why Bill Wambsganss is a significant player in baseball history and I can tell you why Cleveland should change their name from the Indians back to the Naps and why Phil Rizzuto might be the worst Hall of Famer. I love football history, too, but statistics for football aren’t quite as fun as those of baseball’s. 
Throughout the 1980s, I loved sports, and I was a “nerd” for them, in the way some are about comics or sci-fi. I created players and seasons far in the future – my 2017 Philadelphia Phillies were one of the best teams in history (I correctly put expansion teams in Denver and Miami, but the actual 2017 Phillies were a huge disappointment when we finally reached that year). So I had the “nerd” gene, I just channeled it into different places than most nerds. I read my Arthur C. Clarke (“The Star” and “The Nine Billion Names of God” remain two of my absolute favorite short stories) and Roger Zelazny and Robert Heinlein, I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark and Back to the Future (but not The Goonies, which I finally saw years later and was pretty disappointed), but I also started getting into history, and of course I read books about sports, and I listened to classic rock and hair metal. Life was good. As I noted, I feel bad for people who hated school because they were picked on, because I just … wasn’t. I don’t know why. I make friends fairly easily, I’m fairly easy-going, I didn’t really get into girls until I was about 16, so I wasn’t tormented by thoughts of some girl in sixth grade not liking me, and at some point early on in my life I decided I didn’t give a shit if people didn’t like what I did. My childhood wasn’t perfect, but I enjoyed it.
I bought my first comic in the fall of 1988, when I was already 17. As I noted, I had read some in Germany when I was a kid, and the Warminster Public Library had some cool hardcover collections, so I had read the origin stories of several Golden Age and Silver Age heroes (Kubert’s Hawkman, which I didn’t know was Kubert at the time, always stuck with me, because that was a pretty awesome story). My best friend, Ken, collected comics, as did his brother, so I had read some of his, too – some of the Dark Phoenix stuff, because he and his brother were really into the X-Men. In the autumn of 1988, Ken and I were at the Willow Grove Mall, and a B. Dalton’s (or maybe it was Waldenbooks?) had a spinner rack of comics. He told me that in Batman #426, they were going to kill Robin. I don’t know why I picked it up or why it resonated so much with me – the Mignola cover is striking, but not the greatest thing in the world, Robin doesn’t actually die in this issue, and I wasn’t too jazzed by the Jim Aparo art – it was fine, but nothing special. But for some reason, I was hooked. I bought all of “Death in the Family,” started getting both Batman and Detective, moved to Amazing Spider-Man and Uncanny X-Men soon after, and I was off!
Getting into comics that late in life is, I learned, somewhat unusual. I don’t know why they stuck with me at that particular moment – I was still into sports, but maybe years of disappointment in the Phillies and Eagles (the mid-1980s were brutal for both franchises) had started to turn me away from them? I don’t know – I just know I was hooked. I think that it helped me, too, because despite my love for several characters, I’ve never been so invested in a character that I buy the comics they appear in even if they suck. I just stop buying them. It took me a while to reach that point, but after several issues of Spider-Man fighting characters like Cardiac (ugh), I was ready to move on. Dropping a title was easier than I thought, and I’ve been able to dip into and jump out of superhero series easily from then on. I also don’t get terribly offended if writers “ruin my childhood” by turning Looker, say, into a vampire (I mean, what the hell?) because I didn’t read comics when I was a child, so it doesn’t bother me if someone “ruins” the character (although when I write my epic 100-issue run of Looker, she won’t be a vampire, I can tell you that much). I love comics, but I don’t get hung up on the characters. I like to make fun about how writers are ruining characters, but honestly, I just don’t buy them if I don’t like them. It’s a radical move, I know!
I still love comics, as you can probably tell. I have half of a garage full of them, and several bookshelves inside the house holding them. I’ve gone back in time and started appreciating Silver Age and Golden Age art a lot more than I used to, I love 1970s Jim Aparo even though I still don’t love 1980s Jim Aparo, I appreciate Kirby and Ditko a lot more than I did when I was younger (I always liked Kirby more than Ditko, but I didn’t love either, but now I dig them both), and I love finding weird shit that makes me happy. 
Many people have said that I’m far too critical about what I read, but that’s what I love to do. I don’t often read or watch something and “turn my brain off” – sure, I can do that, but it’s honestly not as much fun as reading it with a critical eye. I don’t like writers and artists who are lazy, so I don’t let it slide. If I can see what’s coming in your work, and I’m not really trying to do that (I don’t mind spoilers because I don’t read or watch something just to experience “gotcha” moments), then something is seriously wrong.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more liberal, which I know is not really the way it’s supposed to work. I wasn’t born at the perfect time for white, straight men, but the early Seventies was close enough, and coming of age in the 1980s means I should be in lock-step with mouth-breathers like Tucker Carlson, who’s almost exactly two years older than I am. But I’m not. Politics meant very little to me in the 1980s, mainly because I wasn’t affected by it at all. My parents are conservative in some aspects of their lives and liberal in other aspects, and like them, I could afford to ignore politics because I was male, white, and straight, so I was more libertarian in my youth. One thing my parents did instill in me is a “live and let live” attitude – I honestly do not care what you’re doing, as long as it doesn’t harm me or anyone else. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten smarter (I hope), and I realize that we need government intervention to make sure things are working (even though they often don’t), and I am becoming increasingly confused by racists or sexists or homophobes whose lives are not affected by a black person asking to not be killed by police or a woman saying that maybe she should be paid the same as a man. 
I mean, if a person who was assigned one gender at birth feels that they’re a different gender, what the hell do I care? I don’t know if the liberal attitudes expressed in most comics has had an influence on me in that regard, but I suspect it has. Who knows? It certainly couldn’t have hurt.
I haven’t accomplished as much as I’d like in my life, but that’s okay. I’m still writing, even though it’s always slow-going because I have so much else going on. I enjoy writing for this blog, and I’m glad I’ve been able to do this kind of stuff for about a third of my life. In my life is an excellent wife, great kids, and a bunch of friends whom I don’t see often enough (as you get older, it’s harder to drop everything and hang out, plus a lot of my friends live far away from me). We’ve been able to travel a little bit, which is nice, and we’ve seen a lot of this country, which is kind of a cool place when Republicans aren’t trying to destroy it. I still love reading comics and reading books in general and watching good and bad television and good and bad movies. I feel old when I’m on my feet for six hours at my job, but not many other times. And I have no plans to stop writing for this blog, so I can annoy you with my terrible opinions for years to come!
Mr. Burgas,
Since I already FB’d you, I don’t need to repeat myself. lol
I will say that’s hard to believe that you’re only 4 years younger than I am.
Still, welcome to the “over the hills” club! Us old guys got to stick together, eh?
Is it hard to believe because of my youthful good looks? 🙂
First off, happy birthday.
It’s interesting how some of us largely avoided comics seriously until later. For me, it was a college friend. I mean I SAW comics, but they were in the barbershop, usually coverless.
I must say that baseball was a real passion of mine, though less recently. But I can name any number of Yankees in particular from 1961-1964. Tom Tresh, Joe Pepitone, Phil Linz, Clete Boyer (Brother of Ken from the Cards, and both played 3B).
So yeah, I’ll write 1.12 and you’ll say 1968. I like that about you!
Roger: Thanks!
Yeah, I’ve fallen off of baseball, although I still pay vague attention to it. I just always think of Rizzuto saying “Joe PEPiTONE!” in that voice of his.
Bob Gibson!
Freaking 6 no-hitters so far this year. They need to lower the damn mound…and stop gutting the MiLB!
Make them throw from flat ground!!!!! 🙂
I think this is also the inevitable result of the “three true outcomes” philosophy. Occasionally you’re not going to hit a home run, so the other two become much more likely, and then hits become sparse!
As they say in dutch: van harte gefeliciteerd met je verjaardag! Whoo hoo 😉
(translation: congratulations duh 🙂 )
Nice to see young Greg.
We have many similarities mr Burgas.
I also played soccer as a kid (stopped at age 19). I still play tennis and ride my bike.
I’m just a few years older (turning 58 at 10/31).
I started reading/collecting US comics 1 year earlier (’87). I visited my LCS frequently for european stuff but 1 day I took every Marvel comic on the shelve (luckily it wasn’t to large) and never stopped. DC followed soon. 34 years later only 1 floppy left (Sav. Dragon) but everything else in trade or HC.
Don’t be too hard on yourself. You have a wife and kids who love you. There are a lot of people who like your writing (including me). What more do you really need?
Eric: Thanks! I do like my life, I just really like writing fiction, but it’s harder to do these days when I have all sorts of stuff to do. And I appreciate the nice words!
Happy birthday, Greg.
“Television in 1970s Germany was not very diverse” – had to laugh out loud at that! I´m two years younger than You and remember my childhood in pop-culture terms vividly. That was such a polite way of putting it. Three programs, one of which only starting in the afternoons. There was some good stuff on, none of which were german productions though. Same with comics. The only good stuff were the (butchered) german licences of the big two and the brilliance of our franco-belgium neighbours. My first Star Wars movie that I saw in the theaters was Empire. My parents did get me Star Wars on video-tape (Video 2000) and I must have watched it i-dont-know-how-many-times. Because of that to this day I cannot watch the original English-language version. It just sounds weird to me even though everything else I watch in English. I´ll have to re-watch it paying attention to the goofiness of the german translation.
Your path to comic-book-geekness sure sounds weird. I don´t know anyone who went from sports-fan to comics nerd that late in life. I wish I shared Your superpower of being able to drop any book at a moments notice if it starts sucking.
Fun-fact: at least in Germany at the time, nobody used the term hair-metal, it was either hard rock (if You liked it) or poser crap (if You didn´t). For me it was simply the gateway drug to the good stuff:-)
Btw, Your writing is not slow going at all. Please, keep doing it.
Best wishes
I remember watching Mister Rodgers a little bit when I was a kid in Germany, but other than that, not much. I know there were reruns of some drama from the 1960s, but I don’t remember what it was (The Defenders, maybe?). So I’m glad I wasn’t the only one starving for entertainment! 🙂
I’ve always said that sports fans are just nerds whose nerdity, for years, was more widely accepted in society. Some of those fantasy baseball dudes are super-nerds, but they never admit it!
By “good stuff” in music, do you mean Falco? 😉
Thanks for the nice words about my writing. I certainly will keep doing it! 🙂
The wife loves Falco. I like a couple of songs and think he was an interesting dude. By good stuff I was refering to NWOBHM, Thrash, Hardcore,…generally noise. I still like Tesla, though.
“By good stuff I was refering to NWOBHM, Thrash”
Now your talking!!
Judas Priest was (and still is) my favorite band.
The nbest albums IMO were:
Judas Priest – Unleashed in the East
Kiss – Alive & Alive II
Blue Oyster Cult – On your feet or on your knees & some enchanted evening
Live recordings are the best.
When is comes to thrash Voi Vod and Exodus come to mind.
One of my first concerts was Accept (yes, I like german bands too 😉 ) and Judas Priest in ’81.
What’s your good stuff?
My good stuff?
Metal-wise most Priest up-to and including Painkiller plus Firepower (one of my first albums was Priest…Live),
Queensryche – Operation Mindcrime (did see them on the Empire-tour when they finally headlined and played the entire Mindcrime-album),
Sacred Reich – The American Way
Slayer – Seasons In The Abyss
Atlantean Kodex – The Course Of Empire to name something very recent
and lots of Hardcore/Punk/Death and Black Metal
I´m too young for Kiss and Blue Oyster Cult. I had already started listening to more aggressive stuff when I stumbled across them so they always seemed too tame for me. Everyone of my friends in school loved Accept.
Happy birthday. And I didn’t know that you knew Bill Burr that’s pretty cool.
Thanks, sir! I don’t think I ever made the connection to Burr before, but now that you mention it …
Happy birthday, Greg.
I have John Travolta, Molly Ringwald, and Dr. Dre to make up my shared birthday band, plus Yoko Ono to break the band up.
Chris: Thanks! That’s not a bad cohort for your birthday at all! 🙂
Happy birthday Greg.
“As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more liberal, which I know is not really the way it’s supposed to work.” I dunno about that. I was fairly liberal as a kid, but I’m more now because I can see how much unjustice is out there in the world.
I call it Star Wars still.
I actually liked Cardiac. Better than a lot of more successful villains such as Carnage. But it’s not a hill I’d die on.
Fraser: The stereotype is still that you get more conservative. That kind of makes me wonder, because it seems that as you get older, you become more informed, and then it’s kind of logical to become more liberal. But humans, as I think Spock once said, are not logical!
Cardiac was fine, but for me he’s become kind of emblematic of that late Michelinie period on Spider-Man, which was not terribly good. Michelinie has never been the greatest writer, but his early Spideys had some verve to them, helped no doubt by McFarlane. Later, he just seemed to spin in place a bit.
Happy Birthday! I’m not sure how long I’ve been reading your columns, but it’s definitely been since before my kids were born and my oldest turns 9 this week.
I’ve become much more liberal since age 18 (I’m 46 now). Not sure if that trend will continue, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t. Fox news and Trumper nonsense are working hard to radicalize me further and further left.
Corrin: I always appreciate it when you stop by to comment, and I know you’ve been doing it for a while!
Yeah, it’s impressive how Republicans seem to be actively trying to drive people away. Weird.
Happy Birthday Greg! I always enjoy what you write and I hope that you keep writing for as long as it makes you happy
I started being a comic nerd when I was older than most too. Well, actually I started buying and collecting comics when I was around your age(18-19 I think) And I read comics when I was like 12, but I wasn’t hooked on comics yet. But here I am, hooked and hoping to keep on being a comic book guy for a long, long time
Der: Thanks for the nice words! I too see no reason why I won’t be reading comics until I hit triple digits, at least!
Happy birthday, Greg!
This write up is honestly a bit unsettling, haha – I was born in Abington (albeit in the mid-90s), lived in Willow Grove till I was 5, played a couple sports in HS and can rattle off an absurd amount of baseball statistics…and was a libertarian until I got to college.
That said, I’ve been reading comics as long as I can remember – my mom and her siblings have a massive stash in her dad’s summer house, from when they were kids.
They have Archie and Captain Marvel and Batman comics from the 60s and 70s and 80s (plus, all the Oz books and a whole bunch of Edward S. Aarons’ Sam Durrell pulps).
When I started going to sleepaway camp, they’d get me a couple of trades to read at our LCS…and here I am.
Carlos: That is funny. I knew there was a reason I liked you! 🙂
I occasionally read about people who have family members who were into comics, and I’m jealous. My parents were definitely not that cool/nerdy!
My uncle was going through my granddad’s barn, and found a treasure trove of HIS uncle’s comics, including the debut of Knight and Squire!
Dang, that’s pretty cool. My mom read some Archies when she was a kid, but didn’t keep any of them, and my dad told me he had the first several issues of MAD when it came out, but of course he didn’t keep them!
It’s funny, it totally never hit me until recently just how much younger I am than pretty much everyone else who hangs around on this site (I’m 27.)
Buy anyway, happy birthday Greg! I’ve been a loyal reader for many years, first on CBR and then here. Since at least 2012, I wanna say, but I could be wrong. Here’s to many more!
Hah, I’m 27 as well.
Young-ish folks!
Yeah, we’re all a bunch of old farts here! 🙂
Thanks for reading all these years. I’m also not sure when you started reading us over there (or at least commenting), but I’m glad you followed us here!
Happy birthday! I’ve enjoyed your writing for several years now – I think maybe around 2008 or 09 during the CSBG days til now – you always have a nice mix of personality and good critical insight in your reviews and essays. I always like checking out the fiction that the other junk shoppers here write (Fraser Sherman and Greg Hatcher – keep it comin’!) so you’ll have to link something some time, man.
I’m another one of those somewhat younger dudes who reads stuff here (28 for a little while still) so it’s interesting to hear your reminiscences as a young “nerd” vs. some others’ here; I was nerdy as heck in high school but I had a great time in school and had a pretty wide circle of friends (not all of whom I keep in touch with much, but c’est la vie). No one seemed to care one way or the other what fiction I read or music I listened to, etc… I like to think that’s the norm today and I’m glad to hear that not everyone who grew up in the 70s or 80s experienced bullying or whatnot for liking comics.
Keep up the solid blogging and many happy returns!
Peter: Thanks for the nice words. It’s always good to hear from you!
My daughter still gets picked on for being “weird” – she has blue hair, wears Converse and long pants a lot instead of sexually slinky stuff (she’s a sophomore, but the girls start young with that kind of clothing these days), and doesn’t play the “tee hee, it’s a cute boy!” game, so people pick on her. So it’s not quite gone, unfortunately. Suburban Arizona is a bit more conservative than suburban Pennsylvania, even 30+ years later, so we just support her and hope it gets better when she goes to college. I suppose it’s lucky she doesn’t get picked on for what she likes or dislikes, because that would be just another thing she has to deal with. It’s frustrating.
Sorry – I didn’t mean to bring anyone down! I know what you mean, though, and I think it is a bit better because things are so much more diverse. I don’t know why things weren’t horrible for me in high school. I suspect it’s because I’m a straight white dude, but I’m sure there were other factors. For whatever reason, our sports teams weren’t that good, so they didn’t become the absolute focal point of the school, and our arts department actually was pretty decent, so maybe that helped? Beats me.
Thanks again, and I’ll keep blogging even if no one’s reading! 🙂
That is a bummer to hear. Hope things do get better when college comes around. I do have a little sister about 10 years younger than me who just finished her first year at college, and I did feel sad (though happy for the present) when she said “yeah, second semester was really good because I feel like I have a group of friends for the first time.” My sister is much more social than I am and it’s not like she had no friends in high school, but I do think adolescent girls are much more clique-y than adolescent boys and they can be pretty mean if you’re not in the clique, which I never experienced in high school. (Or maybe I was just oblivious and there were just as many male cliques that I just didn’t notice or care about if I was excluded from them…)
Yeah, my wife always tells her how much girls suck. Unfortunately, boys suck too, but in different ways! 🙂
One of the advantages of discussions in places like this or CBR (in times past) is that it makes me aware how different my concept of comics history is from younger fans. It helps keep me from delusions the comics of my youth are the definitive version of anything.
Peter and MJ are married.
Wally West is the Flash.
Xavier is a dick.
Dick Grayson is Nightwing. Superman has almost always been married.
Fraser: That’s a good point. It’s always interesting to read what various people consider “canon,” simply based on their age.
For instance I was never much of a Hobgoblin fan but reading discussion on some of Brian Cronin’s columns it became clear that for 1980s kids who read Spider-Man, he was every bit as cool as the Green Goblin had been.
Early Hobgoblin was AWESOME!!!
I’m a 1971 kid like yourself, Greg. Did popular culture stuff here in UK: making its way over t’pond were Incredible Hulk with Bixby; Spidey cartoons – original 1960’s which was IIRC on Tiswas, a great bizarre Saturday morning show which launched careers of Chris (Who Wants to be a Millionaire) Tarrant, Lenny Henry & more; plus 80s ‘…& Amazing Friends’ (Swarm!). Also watched Trek re-runs, Dr Who (although by the time I was the right age for it, it was in decline). Cinema: various Disney then Star Wars/Trek/Black Hole movies with my same-age cousin, parents etc. I distinctly remember catching the bus & seeing an awful Police Academy sequel (#5?) with my cousin.
Comics: due to brother, read his British Marvels & imported Marvel/DCs; then bought my own from newsagents/post offices I could find. My sympathetic parents let me later go to London for the comic shops once they started disappearing from the high street/corner shop. I picked up collecting habit big time when I was a student in east London, 1990’s but left in mid-90s due to Image and its knock-off pin-up pouches’n’grimaces art, speculator boom, gimmick hologram covers – the usual story.
This is the first time I’ve posted since a few years ago following you & Greg H./Travis over from your old site, due to many factors: busy with work/life; I’d thought my password no longer worked or applied/laziness!
Cheers, Pete.
Pete: We’re always glad when you comment, so we hope you can stop by more often!
I’m not saying that popular culture in the UK is better than that in the States, but there’s some pretty cool stuff over there that never made it over here, so the exchange wasn’t exactly equal. You got our best stuff and we didn’t get anything from you until years later. So sad! 🙁
Cheers, Greg, I try also to drop in on your family blog when I can. Good to see they’re doing well.
I forgot to mention the sports angle which was a significant part of your article. I was big-time into both sport – football (soccer); then cricket (the British baseball) and American football via the new Channel 4 (trendy, left-leaning broadcaster), and still love playing the first two mentioned – plus what we’d now call nerd culture: comics, sci-fi and so on.
Never really got into the fantasy part although I did buy a few of those Jackson/Livingstone choose-your-own-adventure books. Hobbit/Rings/Thrones still does little for me today.
The thing is, I was into sport, comics/sci-fi and thought nothing of it. A lot of friends and schoolmates did, too, but I understand many people are either/or.
For example, you see interviews with celebrities who are from the arty/nerdy side of the spectrum (e.g. stand-up comedians) and it’s clear most know nowt about sport. Some pretend to, and Premier League football is very trendy, ubiquitous in media and awash with cash over here, so they feel they HAVE to show/feign interest in it.
There’s a TV quiz show here, Richard Osman’s House of Games, where celebs tackle general knowledge/word games and the many ‘mee-ja’ types involved are HOPELESS at sport.
Comics/nerd culture until, say the last two decades, was verboten in the wider ‘civilian’ world. Certainly by the time I was at secondary school comics were so ‘for kids’, unhip and ‘weedy’, that you simply didn’t mention them. Last night’s Bond film on TV was about the limit of it.
Nowadays due to all manner of sci-fi, fantasy and comics being adapted to other media and the influence of Japan (Godzilla was the extent of my childhood experience), an appreciation for all aspects of entertainment, sports and pastimes seems more acceptable.
Still feel there’s some dichotomy between sports followers and nerd culture, although they do share obsessive/statistical traits prevalent in males.
I actually learned how to score a cricket match once, for one match, and then promptly forgot how to do it. But I enjoyed it, I remember that much! 🙂
Happy birthday, Greg! Congrats on your 50th. I’m turning 40 later this year and I’m not as upset about it as I thought I’d be lol. I first discovered your writing back when you did your write up on Flex Mentallo back at CBR about fourteen freaking years ago. That was back when Flex was impossible to get unless you wanted to pay a huge mark up for the back issues and your article was pretty much the only in depth analysis I could find online. I’ve been a reader ever since.
I do remember you mentioning back at CBR how you got into comics at older age. I started reading at 8 years old thanks to Tim Burton’s Batman. That summer of 89 belonged to Batman and you couldn’t go anywhere without running into some Bat merchandise. My dad bought me the comic movie adaption by Denny O’Neil and Jerry Ordway and I became a DC fan. Then the next year I picked up a pack of Marvel Universe Series 1 cards and started obsessively collecting those and to no ones surprise I became a Marvel fan. It wouldn’t be until 93 when I started getting an allowance and found a local comic store that I start reading weekly. Knightfall was the first big comic story I could follow and I’ve been reading ever since.
Throughout the years I branched out to multiple publishers but I finally I had to sell off my physical collection a couple years ago because I just ran out of room. I’ve been able to rebuy everything digitally and then some so now I have a huge back log of digital comics now. 🙂
Happy birthday!
I was born in 73 so still a bit to go before 50. I don’t know if I’m truly more liberal than when I was younger. I likely give that appearance, but I suspect it has more to do with me having taken the time form more coherent opinions on a lot of social issues as I aged than any real change in my leanings. Regardless, I also wouldn’t find it in the least bit surprising if the generally liberal leanings of the writers who crafted the comics of my youth impacted my worldview.
In 1988 the mall book store that had the spinner rack was most likely Walden’s and not B. Dalton. I didn’t have access to dedicated comic shops until the fall of 1989 so had to rely on spinner racks for my supply of comics. So I’d check every convenience store, newsstand, and book store I would get a chance to visit for comics and while almost every Walden’s had a spinner rack (and some were starting to also dedicate a shelf or two for graphic novels right about then) no B. Daltons I ever checked carried comics.
Thanks! And you think you have a little bit to go before you turn 50, and then it sneaks right up on you …
Thanks for the clarification on the bookstore. I always went to Waldenbooks more than B. Dalton’s, so I’m not sure why my mind went there first!
A slightly belated happy birthday (though I feel a need to point out that 50 is not old – I’m 55 and that is not old so 50 can’t be either)
While I was picked on at school, I don’t know whether it was because I was a nerd or because I’m disabled (mild cerebral palsy) – either way I get the impression that the people doing it thought it was a bit of fun and didn’t realise I was not enjoying it.
Re Pete Woodhouse – I don’t remember TISWAS showing Spiderman (though I don’t remember all the cartoons they showed so I can’t say they didn’t) but I’m pretty certain they did show Batman (Adam West) – I think they featured the movie in 2 or 3 instalments.
John: Thanks! I’m just joking about being old, but man, sometimes I feel it …
That sucks about getting picked on. Kids are such idiots, and it would be nice if they could be more empathetic, but it’s something that’s tough to learn. Many adults don’t have any empathy, so it’s hard to expect it from kids!
I went for TISWAS, John, because I can’t imagine the more ‘straight’ BBC rival Swap Shop showing it and have a vague memory (could be false) of the TISWAS crowd introducing it. I hazily remember a Saturday morning show called Saturday Banana with Bill Oddie of all people. Spidey could’ve been on any of these, or some other long-forgotten show, or have its own slot I suppose. Even then with few channels, airtime needed to be filled!
Happy birthday. (I know, I’m late.)
My grandmother was originally from Wilkes-Barre. While everyone from her generation is gone now, I still make the trek up there to visit a particularly good brewery.
P.S. Cardiac is awesome.
Thanks, Bill!
Cardiac is decidedly not awesome. Hard facts, sir! 🙂