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 explains why comic stores need "No Sheldons" signs, and more.
 
Super-Fly Comics & Games owner Tony Barry often tells me of the many ways clueless civilians who wander into his store have made his life a living hell by making The Big Bang Theory references.  My favorite being the time a group of Chinese tourists headed straight for the back issues, said "Got it, got, got it, need it" in unaccented English, laughed uproariously, then walked out without buying anything.
 
Now while this might seem highly unlikely, tiny Yellow Springs, home to both Super-Fly and my alma mater Antioch College (which after being closed for several years is once again open, meaning that I can now legally peel the * off my diploma) is actually something of a tourist mecca.  Its reputation for being a crunchy hippie haven has made it a destination location for Southeast Ohio day trippers, so on my given Saturday the streets are filled with tourists checking out our adorable little shops.
 
This includes Super-Fly, which may sound ideal (seeing as how one of the major problems for a lot of comic book shops is a serious lack of foot traffic), but unfortunately these touristas are almost always the embodiment of the lookie lou.  They gawk incredulously at our very existence and while they sure do look (and touch) they generally don't buy.  Basically it's the scenario played out in last Sunday's Funky Winkerbean.  Except it happens to us over and over again.
 
So while I took him seriously, I've never been privileged to witness one of these moments.  But last Saturday I was able to watch a family enter the store, gape in wide wonder at being in an actual comic shop, then go straight up to Tony and ask "So, does Sheldon come in very often?  Har! Har! Har!," then leave without buying anything.  Okay, I added the "hars" for emphasis but otherwise this actually happened as described.  Having experienced it first hand, I now can fully understand the "No Sheldons" (a photo of the face of actor Jim Parsons as Sheldon Lee Cooper Ph.D with the international "no" circle-backslash symbol imposed over it) sign he has prominently posted at Super-Fly.  Not that it's done him any good so far.
 
As I've recently indicated (see "Confessions of a Comic Book Guy--Ready, Set, Squee") you really cannot predict by gender what people are going to be into; guys these days are into My Little Pony, women love The Venture Bros.  And a great big he-man (well, great big) like me, someone who for most of his life has been a hardcore superhero fan, has a secret passion for Anne of Green Gables.  I first discovered Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery's redheaded orphan via the 1985 television movie starring Megan Follows back when it was a staple of PBS pledge drives.  I've since gone on to read and love the books and have long wondered when someone would get around to adapting it into comic book form in America.
 
I always kind of assumed that Marvel would eventually get a clue and do it as a series a la their great series of Oz adaptations.  But I never could have imagined that Bluewater Productions would have done it, though I probably should have, given how cost conscious the publisher is and the fact the first book is in the public domain. And I definitely couldn't have imagined that their adaptation would be this good; Italian artist Giancarlo Malagutti does a fine job of bringing both the characters and the Avonlea setting alive.  I certainly enjoyed it but I can only hope that it finds its way to its intended audience of younger readers, girls especially.
 
I finally got around to reading Marvel's Infinity* and it's quite good (not that I didn't expect it not to be), however it does kind of underscore the fact that these days every superhero "event" is by definition extinction level.  Again, I'm an old school comic book fan so it's not like I'm a newcomer to superhero comics' perpetual state of crisis.  However the ante has been upped so far and so often they've become the literary equivalent of movies' "annihilation porn," and there's nothing wrong with that, I suppose.  Except by making every threat an Existential Threat you not only risk readership burnout from those who've seen it (and seen it and seen it), you ignore the very real possibility that there might be a potential audience who doesn’t actively relish this sort of thing as entertainment.
 
* Not that they need me to tell them anything but it seems like having Disney's Infinity crossover with Marvel's Infinity would be an obvious cross promotion for both franchises.  If nothing else I'm hoping Marvel is planning on doing a Disney's Infinity comic.
 
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.