Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by retailer Steve Bennett of Mary Alice Wilson's Dark Star Books in
I didn't mean to be away from this column this long, but you know how it is, one thing leads to another and the next thing you know you're wearing lederhosen. If anyone out there has been waiting breathlessly for another pulse pounding installment of the whole continuing 'Dark Star Book sells its new comic book business to a new start up comic shop called Super-Fly Comics,' hate to disappoint but so far it's so far, so good for both parties.
We're doing fine; they're doing fine and except for one of our old pull customers (who two months after the change came in to pick up his file and got all the way to the cash register without noticing that all the new comics were gone). All our customers are doing fine too. But things are definitely different.
For one thing Wednesdays are a lot quieter. Instead of rushing out entirely too early to pick up the Diamond shipment at the UPS hub in Springfield , Our Man In Brown drops it off in the early afternoon, and so far the deliveries have been fairly uneventful. While there's usually a couple of new manga and graphic novels and maybe a couple of special orders, mostly it's restock that goes straight to our shelves.
I'm still finding it difficult finding the time to get over to Super-Fly to read the pamphlets but a couple of items from last week managed to offend me...like the Marvel Zombie Variant Covers...on comics that have absolutely nothing to do with Marvel Zombies (I can't wait to see the one for Fantastic Four and Power Pack #4). Really? OK, if that's the kind of publisher you want to be Marvel, just don't go crying to me when the walking dead bubble bursts and you get stuck with thousands of unsellable Undead Aunt May bobble heads...
But mostly what caught my attention was All-Star Batman and Robin #7. I could write about the ridiculous dialogue (in the span of a couple of pages Batman addresses criminals he's trying to terrorize as 'suckers,' 'sweetheart' and my personal favorite, 'wads'), the fact that a pair of DC superheroes manage to have sex while still in their costumes or even the incredibly inappropriate inclusion of a DC Nation text page trumpeting the new titles being added to the publisher's Johnny DC line.
No, it wasn't the sex, it wasn't the violence; for me, it was the blasphemy.
In case you missed it he's not just 'The Batman' he's the 'G.D. Batman' who rides in the 'G.D. Batmobile'; the way he keeps dropping the G.D. bomb we'll be lucky if it doesn't become the character's new catch phrase in the upcoming Dark Knight Returns movie. Now, I'm not trying to be coy or cute by not writing that word in full; it may seem 'quaint' but I try very hard not to blaspheme. I was raised to believe it was wrong.
I understand that not everyone believes the same things I do, and I'm not asking that the word never be used in print, but make no mistake, its inclusion was offensive to me (and not just because its use somehow managed to be both unnecessarily repetitive and gratuitous), especially in the context of a superhero comics book, coming out of the mouth of a character who means a lot to a lot of people.
I don't plan on writing DC a letter (well, unless you consider this one) or trying to organize some kind of economic boycott against Time-Warner or even threaten to sic The 700 Club on them, nor am I going to malign writer Frank Miller--he has every right to use it, just like DC has every right to print it.
But I would like to remind all the parties involved that there are still quite a number of people of faith (of many faiths) who will take serious, grievous offense at its use. I know it's becoming increasingly easy to disparage beliefs as something no intelligent, educated person would take seriously (the whole sophomoric God = Flying Spaghetti Monster thing) and respond to their complaints with the equivalent of 'hey, there are lots of things that offend me, buddy, so put on your big boy pants and deal with it.'
Just don't be surprised when somebody does complain.
The opinions expressed in this Talk Back article are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
