John Riley of Grasshopper's Comics in Williston Park, New York has a great story about his chosen profession of comic retailing:

For Free Comic Book Day this year we were honored to have none other than Joe Kelly here at our store to do an incredibly well received signing.  Joe spoke with everyone over the course of the day and it was always a very interesting conversation regardless of who he was talking with.  One of the things I found most interesting was a discussion he had with a friend of mine concerning how people are still embarrassed about their interest in comics.  And he meant everyone: fans, publishers, creators, everyone.

Now I know that this is something that's pretty prevalent at the fan level, this feeling that the rest of the world looks down on us for reading comics.  But I couldn't believe a well-respected creator was talking about feeling this way as well!  I think we all know that in the 50s, 60s and 70s many of the legendary creators of the time worked under pen names.  In fact, if my history doesn't fail me, both Stan Lee and Jack Kirby both worked under 'pen names'.  They did this because they were afraid that their comic work would actually prevent them from getting 'real work' in other media.

With this in mind I thought I'd share a story that happened to my wife and me last year.   It was my wife's high school reunion and the first one that we had been to.  I had only met one or two of my wife's high school friends, so except for two people I would be dealing with potentially hundreds of my wife's old friends that I had never met before.  Naturally I wanted to be on my best behavior and do my best to not embarrass my wife in front of her old friends.  With this in mind I kept having one thought pop into my head.  What am I going to tell people that I do?  I could be a bookseller?  I could sell graphic novels?  I could own an e-commerce site?  I could just say that I'm self-employed?  After a lot of thinking I decided that I'd just be straightforward and deal with it as it came.

The reunion was held in a beautiful waterfront resort on the Connecticut shoreline.  The room was incredible with a cocktail hour at sunset overlooking the Long Island Sound.  We met a few people and mingled as my wife hunted down her old group of friends and at that point the 'What do you do with your life?' questions that I had dreaded for so long finally started.   All her friends' husbands began to answer:

'I'm an investment banker.'

'I'm a lawyer.'

'I'm a doctor.'

And, swear to god....

'I'm a professor of quantum physics.'

And then it came to me.  Yup, here I was with the doctors, lawyers, bankers, and the quantum physics dude (who was actually really, really interesting to talk to) and they were all looking to me...

'I sell comic books.'

And that's when it got strange.  You see, they all wanted to talk to me!!  It was like I said, 'I'm a rock star'.  Everyone thought that selling comic books had to be the coolest thing in the world.  I'm expecting them all to be thinking about the Comic Book Guy on the Simpsons, but instead they just thought that here I was a guy who spent his days doing something that he loved.  And they were right. Every one of them had a story about something that they would have loved to do if they had the nerve to ever quit their job.  They talked about their passions, which really never had anything to do with what they had done with their lives.  And every single one of them had a story about their past love affair with comics, or their current interest in comic based movies, etc.

I left there feeling very good about myself and the decisions I had made with my life.  And I felt a whole lot less embarrassed about my passion for the comic book art form.  I think that for the overwhelming majority of the population, comic books are a love affair that they felt pressured into ending.  I see it every day when someone comes into the store and picks up a comic that they 'loved to read as a kid, but didn't know they were still around.'