Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  This week, Bennett makes some observations on the coverage of New York Comic Con.

There were still a couple of stories from New York Comic Con that I wanted to mention.  Starting with, it actually rated a joke on last week's Saturday Night Live Weekend Update segment (after showing a pudgy guy in a Batman suit Seth Meyer quipped NYCC was "a great place to see what Batman would look like if he ate his feelings").  The Wall Street Journal had a piece by Scott Cacciola titled "The NBA's Comic-Book Nerd," subtitled "Brooklyn Nets Center Brook Lopez Fuels His Biggest Passion at Comic Con."  In it the 7-foot Lopez was declared an "unabashed comic-book fanatic" and quoted him as saying "This is one of the few places where I blend in."  The story claimed about 95% of NYCC attendees had absolutely no idea who he was, something I can readily believe.  It also had this:

"Carleton Scott, a forward, said he was upset that Lopez didn't invite him to come along.  Like Lopez, Scott is a huge comic-book fan.  "We have a lot of closet nerds on this team," Scott said.

It was an interesting piece for a couple of reasons.  One, according to the WSJ anyway we've supposed to have been hyphenating "comic-book" all these years, and two, perhaps the insurmountable distance separating jocks and nerds isn't quite so insurmountable after all.  But that's not where the smart money would bet.

I'm frequently surprised when I discover that there's somebody out there even remotely interested in the same things I am, and this week I'm really putting that to the test.  Here's a real confession for you; I was a fan of the short-lived 70's TV series Man from Atlantis.  I had all four of the novelizations, I got the Marvel comic (which ended with a cliffhanger, much to my frustration).  And decades later I still fondly remember the series' recurring villain Mr. Schubert, played by Victor Buono, a kindly Captain Nemo type who showed that you could be an effective supervillain without raising your voice.

It seems to have gone wholly unnoticed but in the TV Guide for Oct. 15-21 there was a piece titled "Back to Atlantis."  It announced that Patrick Duffy, the star of the short-lived 70's series Man From Atlantis, had "secured the rights to the story" and had completed the first draft of a novel.  According to Duffy it "picks up 15 years after the series and explains the never-before-known origins of... Mark Harris." 

There was also a photo insert of Duffy next to series co-star Belinda Montgomery who "were reunited at L.A.'s Paley Center for the first time in 34 years".  The name of that actress will undoubtedly mean nothing for members of the all important male 18-34 demographic but men of a certain age will fondly remember Montgomery for her many appearances in episodic television during the 60's and 70's.

And if it helps to justify writing about this, Duffy is one of us.  It took some searching but I finally found that the story about Duffy's Man From Atlantis novel was actually first announced on the i09 back in July, something I missed.  In it Duffy said he had been obsessed with comic books growing up and was thrilled when Marvel published a Man From Atlantis comic Duffy has no idea who's going to actually publish his novel, so might I suggest he walk it over to Dynamite Entertainment and have them turn it into a comic?  I mean, the publisher has certainly proven there's money to be made in 70's nostalgia with their Bionic Man and Bionic Woman comics.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.