"My Issues With Comic-Con"

“My issues with Comic Con stem from my own mixed feelings about my nerd past, at once deeply ashamed of that chapter of my history while at the same time enormously resentful that I don’t get more credit for it. In the late 1970’s (yes, that was an actual time, not just a Instagram setting), when I would ride three buses once a month to the Ambassador Hotel for a monthly comic sellers convention, there was no glory awaiting my return; no crowds of cooing girls in nerd glasses waiting to applaud my astute purchase of four copies of Frank Miller’s Daredevil/Kingpin cycle. There were no women in sexy superhero costumes at the convention. There were no women at all, not one, except for the guy who put the thing on’s mother, who sold the tickets. In fact, there weren’t even any other teenagers there, just sweaty, overweight middle aged men, people who looked very much like I do now…