Happy belated Father’s day to all the dads out there! It’s been a few weeks since I’ve been able to sit down and type out some words for this blog (is that what this is?), but if you haven’t checked it out, please read the essay I shared on Memorial Day about my late friend and the Smashing Pumpkins. I’ll do my best to discover some more nuggets to share on here soon. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy these couple of clips with commentary:
Going down the VHS rabbit hole archiving clips is fun, especially when you uncover something personal to you. There’s clips that spark collective and personal memories, forgotten gems of the past, and unusual, undiscovered diamonds in the rough. Some of my favorite things to find, however, are ones that offered a connection and lifeline outside of my bedroom to assure me that maybe I wasn’t so weird.
Having moved from the suburbs of a booming metropolis like Chicago to the decidedly NOT booming suburb of Jackson, Mississippi as a 10-year old, I knew I was missing out on something, but I couldn’t put my finger on what. The cultural divide of being a “Yankee” who “talked funny” among my peers in the deep South was stark.
Not only did I have trouble understanding my classmates’ speech patterns, I also had trouble understanding their interests. Going to “deer camp” on the weekends to hunt? What was that? I had never even seen a gun in real life, let alone shot one…at an animal!
While there were some commonalities I shared with kids in my age group—most notably playing little league baseball—my inability to connect with the place drew me further inward. That’s why it was always so special catching a glimpse of yourself if the static glow of the TV.
Sure, there were TV shows that misfits and outcasts like me enjoyed which spoke to a broad audience, but what was thrilling was connecting to something on the screen that made you realize you weren’t the only one like you out there.
At a Full-Service Comic Shop Near You
Despite knowing comic books were a big part of popular culture, I didn’t know anyone else that collected them. Sure, I know most kids grew up wearing Spider-Man Underoos or watching Christopher Reeve as Superman, but I didn’t know a single kid that collected comic books. And though it’s almost passé to remind people of this now, before the Marvel Cinematic Universe took over the Hollywood box office and everyone’s Grandma became a fan of RDJ’s Iron Man, it was decidedly NOT COOL to be a comic book fan!
I wasn’t in the target geography for the particular clip I shared above, but I certainly remember the revelation of my favorite comic, The Uncanny X-Men, become a Saturday morning cartoon series. The tide was turning.
More than another comic book cartoon (We had Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends long before X-Men hit the screen), the bigger shock was seeing an ad for a comic book shop for the first time. Previously I had only bought comics from the grocery store, drug store, or Waldenbooks, but to learn there was an entire retail establishment devoted to nothing but comics was near Earth-shattering to this little geek. My first trip to my local comic shop, the Star Store, was like getting the keys to a kingdom of acceptance.
To Boldly Go…
While I was thrilled to finally have a comic shop, the only comic convention I attended growing up consisted of only five dealers in a small Holiday Inn—far from what we now think of when think of a comic con. To see a commercial, like the one above, for a convention focused solely on a shared common interest seemed impossible as a kid. Can you imagine the elation of someone discovering—for the first time—that they weren’t an ugly duckling, but rather a beautiful creature with others just like them waiting with open arms at a convention at their nearby civic center?
And though, in the ‘80s and ‘90s, the larger culture still considered comic, Sci-Fi, and fantasy conventions fodder for late night laughs (remember Shatner’s SNL sketch demeaning Trekkies?), discovering a collective group of fans to share your passions and joy outweighed any outside discomfort while you were there.
To so many like me, acceptance didn’t seem possible until we saw it on TV.
The triviality of comic books and sci-fi fandoms is not lost on me compared to what others in even more ostracized groups must have felt seeing themselves reflected on the small screen for the first time.
Recognizing yourself, sitting upright, and inching ever so closer to the TV is a feeling we can probably all identify with, but one that is always reassuring.
It wasn’t too often, but I’m glad I was able to catch a glimpse of myself in the shimmer of dancing pixels every now and then.
Thanks for reading! Be sure to check out my flagship publication for more nostalgic musings.