#GeekSpeak: A Retrospective or How Smallville Made Me a Comic Fan

<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy LaShaun. We play trivia together every Tuesday, and HOLY HELL this dude is good!! For reals, he knows a lot of random things, and is genuinely also a rad human being. I only have one more thing left to say ... HIT IT LASHAUN!!! </editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @Maj_G

This past Saturday, on a whim, I decided to rewatch the pilot episode of the WB/CW’s super-hero series Smallville. I have actually seen it once before a couple of years back. I had downloaded it from Playstation Network because I remembered at some point that I had missed the first half of it when it originally aired in 2001. No matter what the haters will say about it, I will always appreciate Smallville since it’s the reason I officially started reading comics. I mean, I’d read comics before and I was semi-familiar with characters and storylines based on the movies and cartoons that I’d seen, but I’d never actually been to a comic store before. Despite that setback, I did actually have a few comics while growing up. I believe the count is at around 8 including an issue of Web of Spider-Man, a couple of issues of Horus: Son of Osiris, the comic adaptation of RoboCop 2, and about 4 issues of Fantastic Four.

So why hadn’t I ever been to a comic store at that time? Well, to be honest, I didn’t know of any comic stores. Even though I’ve been a super geek all of my life, up until my sophomore year in high school, I was the only geek I knew. When you’re the only geek you know it could be INCREDIBLY difficult to meet other geeks, especially back in the Dark Ages of dial-up internet.

You see, for you young folks out there, in the dial-up era, being on the internet busied up the phone lines which means that to spend a lot of time on the internet, you had to either be a recluse (which I was, but my parents weren’t), or have a separate phone line (which was relatively expensive). Not only that, but we had to pay in minutes for internet time. Yes, this was at home.

Getting back on track, there are very few major events I can remember which inspire me, but this I remember. A good chunk of the first 4 seasons ofSmallville love to do wink, wink, nudge, nudges towards Clark Kent’s future as Superman. In a specific first season episode of Smallville, an elderly woman is reading characters’ futures and at the very end of the episode, young Lex Luthor catches up to her and asks her to read his future. We’re instantly brought into her vision as she sees Lex Luthor casually browsing his Oval Office and creates a field of death with his Kryptonite hand. If you’re like me at the time & haven’t read any of DC’s comics or for whatever reason (I didn’t have cable) didn’t see Justice League Unlimited, you’re probably saying to yourself something along the lines of, “LEX LUTHOR AS PRESIDENT?! NONSENSE! WHAT AD WIZARD WOULD ELECT THAT MAD MAN PRESIDENT?!”

So I did research. And much like Smallville‘s (as well as Justice League Unlimited and Lois & Clark‘s, in fact) portrayal of him, the modern Lex Luthor is both an ad wizard and a mad man, so his ambitions are not as obvious as they are in say, the Christopher Reeve movies. However, I still didn’t quite believe what I was reading on the Smallville forums (Wikipedia didn’t exist yet), so I decided I needed more proof. I looked up the nearest comic stores and decided to pay them a visit.

click here to watch

I ended up visiting Graham Cracker Comics, a small Chicago chain. I rifled through the Superman issues looking for proof of Metropolis flooding or Lex being the PotUS and was very surprised to find it all true. However, I was in for an even greater surprise when I discovered thatTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was reprinting their comic series. And to top it off, I was there just in time to discover that a cartoon I was a big fan of, Static Shock, was based on a comic and that comic was making a new limited run. Because of that, I wanted to find out more about the old Staticcomic series which apparently was originally published in the 90s.

(Trivia: the back wall of the pool house in Fresh Prince of Bel-Air has the premiere covers of 4 Milestone comics, one of which was Static)

After discovering these things about Superman comics, I realized I didn’t want to have the wool pulled over my eyes like that again, so I tried to find a place to start and decided to start with the original Crisis on Infinite Earths from the 80s, which [was supposed to] cements the entire DC universe. That succeeded in getting me interested in the Legion of Super-Heroes and more parallel universe versions of comics. That lead me into reading Kingdom Come (GREAT story, by the way). Then Kingdom Come made me realize just how cool Batman is. Somewhere around then, I found The Death and Return of Superman and read that. Needless to say, I became a comic fiend, trying to read as much as financially possible (which wasn’t much). I finally found a nice balance in occasionally reading trade paperbacks and keeping up mostly with non-major comic titles. For example, the new popularity of The Walking Dead‘s tv series is strange to me since I actually started reading it about 3 years ago. But things I wear hipster glasses for are a whole new story.

#thatisall

Agree or disagree with LaShaun? Tweet him!

#GeekSpeak: The sometimes random misadventures of @Abby_Cake

<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy Abby. I met her in Chicago at the #20SBSummit, and this chick is raaaddddd!! She considers herself more of a nerd than a geek - but I think she's just all shades of random and awesome. Oh and FTR, the TNTML stance on nerds versus geeks are that nerds are products of a genetic predisposition, and geeks are raised. BOOH-YAH!!! I only have one more thing left to say ... HIT IT ABBY!!!</editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @Abby_Cake

When I was in college, there was much emphasis placed on Sex and the City. With our budding freedom and experimentation with our sexual identity, naturally, came the communal watching of Sex and the City marathons.

I always had female roommates and, before college, did not know what Sex and the City was. My parents did not have HBO, actually, until I moved out, we only had eight channels. I was more well-versed in PBS documentaries than Manolo Blahnik. But I was initiated into the culture of Cosmopolitans by pretty much every female friend I made. They saw it as their mission to make sure I understood the super-chic culture of Manhattan, a culture I obviously had no potential for what with my iced wine in plastic cups and Ramen noodles.

The inevitable counterpoint of this was that everyone sought to identify with a character. Girls do this a lot. In junior high each of us was a specific Spice Girl. I had a friend who sought rabidly to be a Samantha. And another who identified herself as the fashionable Carrie (in her defense, she was very fashion forward). I was eighteen or nineteen, and I thought I wanted to be a Carrie with oddly fashionable fanny packs, super charged sex life, and bullshit stay at home writing career. But as I watched more of the show one of my more astute room mates came to the realization that I was a Charlotte.

Her reasons: I am a romantic, with bad dating luck. I can be a little uptight with my studious over-preparedness and just-in-case planning and crying about bad test grades. I am always trying to workouts and health foods, and often dragged my room mates into it.

We also had a lot of differences as well, something I was quick to point out: I am not rich, I do not care about the whole marriage and kids package, I am not religious, I would never own a show dog, etc. Essentially: I couldn’t see myself at all in Charlotte.

But my friends needed me fill the void in their Samantha and Carrie lives. If I was Charlotte, all they needed was a Miranda and we could find a booth at the local bar to gossip in. I was resistant, much to their chagrin I’m sure.

If I was to be compared to anyone I wanted it to be Jane Austen.

It was a really weird moment when, in the midst of this social phenomenon, I realized I couldn’t identify with it. Maybe my friends could, maybe millions of viewers could. But I couldn’t. I felt like an island in a sea of Cosmopolitans.

So now, I’m just me. I’m not glamorous. I live in the real world with real problems, real people, real failures, and real successes. I shop at Ross over Barneys and wear my worn out Toms over designer shoes. I don’t have a lot of girlfriends who gossip about all the sex they are having (in fact, I very rarely talk about sex at all). My post-divorce life does not compare at all to Charlotte’s.

I haven’t watched Sex in the City in years. I did not watch the movies either. But there was a very strange period in my life where it affected who I was to some degree, and I am glad that time is over

Take a step away from TV, forget your dream-self, and just enjoy being you.

Alternatively, have you ever been influenced by a TV character or show?

xx, @abby_cake

#nerdsunite

Want more from Abby?? Check out her blog over yonder - and don't forget to drop her a follow on twitter!!

#GeekSpeak: The sometimes random misadventures of @Abby_Cake

<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy Abby. I met her in Chicago at the #20SBSummit, and this chick is raaaddddd!! She considers herself more of a nerd than a geek - but I think she's just all shades of random and awesome. Oh and FTR, the TNTML stance on nerds versus geeks are that nerds are products of a genetic predisposition, and geeks are raised. BOOH-YAH!!! I only have one more thing left to say ... HIT IT ABBY!!!</editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @Abby_Cake

When I was in junior high and high school, I spent my evenings in chat rooms, forums, ICQ, or AIM conversations. I would talk to my classmates, but oftentimes I would talk to people I didn’t know. I made some great friends, some of whom I still talk to, during that time. I was never alone, because I was always talking to someone. Always sharing a nerdy laugh or surfing the internet together. However, we referred to what we were doing offline as IRL activities and our offline friends as IRL friends.

Some people found this to be offensive, especially on forums, because IRL we are sitting at a computer exchanging words with other human beings. How is that not real? It denigrated our friendships and hobbies. Many a 2AM squabble erupted in the chat box while we discussed the parameters required to dictate what IRL truly meant. And although online we were highlighting the key points of our arguments, offline we were eating cheetos in our underwear.

IRL, for those who don’t know, means “in real life.” In real life, I was a student, I played video games, I hung out with my friends, I read books. Online I participated in forums, met new people, created and discussed digital art, and was most often represented by an anonymous avatar.

Now, things are different ...

A meme, IRL. The internet is escaping.

We use our own pictures as avatars, putting our faces out there for everyone to see. Even in our Gmail inboxes we see the faces of the people contacting us. There is no anonymity. Social networks are no longer underground rooms on the Palace Chat. They are mainstream, things like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter. We are a digitally connected world.

The idea of separating your digital life from your offline life is nonexistent. IRL no longer exists.

The people we know on the internet are simply our friends, just like the people we know from work. Online shopping is not any different than IRL shopping (aside from the necessitation of pants), it’s all just shopping.

With the IRL distinction no longer being necessary, we must accept a full integration of online and offline. We are our online personas whether we are walking down the street or posting on a forum. We are searchable. We are defined by the amount of information we share over the world wide web. We are our Facebook profiles. We are our feelings in 150 words or less.

We are all through the looking glass.

xx, @abby_cake

#nerdsunite

Want more from Abby?? Check out her blog over yonder - and don't forget to drop her a follow on twitter!!