I officially joined the ranks of the nerds today - I purchased a graphic novel.Actually, I joined the ranks of the nerds a few years ago while working at the Earle in Ann Arbor. One of our line cooks, Curtis Sullivan, happened to be the owner of Vault of Midnight, the comic book store downtown. My day job at the time was at the Ann Arbor News, and sometimes on my lunch hour I would get bored and go hang out at the comic book store.
Curtis was the one who introduced me to the Sin City graphic novels. Since I had thought the movie was incredibly cool, it wasn't a hard sell. I collected three of them, all of which I lost in my breakup with Randy.
Anyway, I hadn't really given graphic novels much thought since then. Sure, I see all the comic book movies and would even go as far as to say that some of them (the first two Spiderman movies, Iron Man, and the recent Batman movies come to mind) have a ton more plot and character development than a lot of other source material. But I didn't really think about reading any more graphic novels until we went to see Dark Knight and saw the trailer for something called Watchmen.
I have to admit, I was baffled by trailer. I could tell it was supposed to be big, and important, and I thought I saw Denny from Grey's Anatomy in there. But I didn't get it, and I didn't really care - I was 100% invested in the Batman hype.
But later on when I was looking up Twilight coverage from Comic-Con (I told you I was already a nerd), "Watchmen" tidbits kept popping up.
It took being bored at work - I mean, bored on my LUNCH HOUR - to really investigate. I Googled "watchmen" to see what I could come up with and found out that it is apparently the most important graphic novel of all time. Amazon gave me a brief and totally unsatisfying synopsis, so I turned to Wikipedia. I knew comic fans wouldn't let me down on a medium like Wikipedia, and they didn't. I not only found incredibly detailed plot synopsis, but all kinds of character information and back story. (Main "Watchmen" Wikipedia page here.)
By the time I had Wikipedia'd each of the main characters, I pretty much knew I was going to end up buying the book. Curiosity got the best of me. So I ordered a used copy from Amazon and it should be here in a few days.
I'll keep you updated as I descend into nerdiness.
(And I don't really think that there's anything wrong with reading graphic novels - I just needed a catchy opening line.)
3 comments:
It's really funny, because the trailer for The Watchmen hit the internet on July 17th, and sales of the graphic novel doubled overnight. No joke. We were seeing spikes like we never imagined. I tried to watch the trailer and all 7 sites I tried were crashed due to so many people trying to get to them. Insanity. I flipped through the graphic novel when I worked at Waldenbooks, but I never read it. I think I might get a copy now though, because it looks really interesting.
Glad I was not the only one watching Comic Con coverage.
I saw Twilight at the bookstore (yes, I went after reading your book list) and wondered if it was the book you had talked about before. I will have to add it to my list.
You are definitely cool with the hipster crowd if you shop at Vault of Midnight.
Did you see "300?" I think that was the best theatrical interpretation of a graphic novel I've ever seen. It was awesome.
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