The Astonishing Elf Girl's Tales from the Comic Shop (of Horror!)
Today I will regale you with tales of the dark and mysterious comic shop; strange tales to chill your bones, scare little kids and...
Ah, frak it. On with the stories.
Tale #7 ~ Return of the Living Geek Girl
One thing I like about Jake's Saturdays is that he often catches up on work in the back room while I spend most of the day in the main part by myself. This means the customers have to ask me questions rather than going to whichever of the guys happens to be there. And it's really nice to be the one person they go to, even if it is just every other Saturday.
This past Saturday a man was in with his son. The man had been into comics when he was younger and was now looking to get his kids into comics as well. Obviously, quite a bit had changed since he read comics, so I got to fill him in on quite a bit. Including stuff in relation to the Comics Code Authority, The Seduction of the Innocent, and current rating system on some major publishers (or lack thereof. I'm looking at you, DC). While explaining it, another man, about the same age as the first tuned into the conversation and during a pause, commented "Wow...you really know your stuff!" and asked me a question (to which he knew the answer) about the whole Harry Osborne drug addiction story that was asked for by the anti-drug part of the government and rejected by the CCA part. I answered it and he was more surprised.
More after the jump!
The two men talked about other things for awhile, like current comics and how things had changed. As the second man was leaving he came up to me and said "I have to say, I'm really impressed. Did you know this before you worked here, or did you have to learn it?" I told him I knew it before I got the job.
"I'm just surprised, you're the only...well..."
"You're the only woman I know that reads comics, let alone knows all this history." Chimed in the first man.
"Yes, that's it exactly!"
So there it was. I definitely got the impression from their reactions before that they were impressed because a woman knew all of this stuff, so I wasn't too surprised when they actually told me. And considering their generation and being out of comics for awhile, I can't fault them too much on their perceptions. During the time when they were into comics, there were very few girls and women who were into comics and even less who would publicly admit it (they're a few decades too young to remember the female audience comics had pre CCA). And neither of the men were condescending when talking with me, they were just surprised.
sdrawkcaB ekopS ohW lriG ehT ~ 8# elaT
A father and his daughter were in the shop a few weeks ago. The father bought his stack, and while they waited for me to ring them up, they were looking at the Countdown poster that was taped on the side of the counter. The daughter started naming off as many characters as she could with her father encouraging her along the way. She was able to name probably a third of the characters, but then, they were both Marvel fans, so it wasn't much of a surprise. It was nice, especially after a lot of recent events to see that not all parents "gender" things, making them "inappropriate" to another gender.
What was kind of amusing was she got stuck on Zatanna. She knew the character, but was totally blanking on her name.
"Annataz", I said.
She looked at me somewhat confused and said "Annataz?"
"Annataz", I said again.
Bill figured it out immediately and said "she's a magician who casts spells by saying words backwards."
Suddenly, she got it and said "Zatanna!"
Fun!
Elf Girl
Posted to Hot Stuff on 3 September 2008
· Comments (3)
¿sɹǝʇɔɐɹɐɥɔ ʞooq ɔıɯoɔ uʍop ǝpısdn ʎuɐ ʇǝƃ ɹǝʌǝ noʎ op ʇnq
heheh that was cute :-)
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