Edit: I wrote this post almost two years ago… and never hit “publish.”
I fancy myself a rapacious consumer of stories. Movies, television, books, podcasts… I am constantly expanding my repertoire.
When I was younger it was easy: I read constantly. I would sit at the kitchen table for hours, eating meals in between chapters. I would read on the swings at summer camp, and curl up in the mauve, checker-patterned chair in my room, escaping into books for hours at a time. I frequented the stacks of my local library – an imposing, beautiful red brick building that still makes my heart squeeze every time I see it. I knew the librarians by name, checked out several books each week, and irrevocably cemented a love of stories as part of my personality.
Then I moved across the country and went to college. Suddenly reading for pleasure was replaced by slogging through textbooks, and in my free time I wasn’t interested in extra reading. I was watching plenty of movies, and took classes to learn how to analyze and interpret them.
Once I had my degree in hand and could choose what I wanted to read again? Well, by then I was out of practice at picking out a good story. Shit.
I started haunting local book stores and soaking up memoirs like sunshine. I reread a few of the novels that I’d loved so much as a teen, and they still felt magical. I sought out recommendations online from bloggers I liked, and started asking friends who enjoyed reading what I should explore next. Just like that, I was on a quest to read more. I was buying books faster than I could read them. (I still am).
In spite of this book-buying frenzy, I didn’t “discover” comic books until 2017. Sure, I had read a comic or two in my life – who hasn’t? But I wasn’t actively seeking them out.
That all changed on a soggy day in spring. My roommate and I were out and about in Union Square, and she suggested we stop in at The Strand. If you’ve never been and book stores are your thing, I cannot recommend spending a few hours in The Strand enough. It’s easily the coolest book store that I’ve ever visited. Old and multi-storied, it is cramped with books and thronged with customers. I poked around the stacks for a while, searching for something different and exciting, and eventually a few comics caught my eye. I thumbed through them hesitantly, unsure of what to buy or how to judge what was “good.”
My roommate summarily dragged me out of The Strand, down the street to Forbidden Planet. We combed through their shelves and took advice from the clerks. We bargained with each other about who should get what, and purchased several comics between the two of us. Voila! An infatuation was born.