Comics Nourishment

The layman may not understand but my favorite local joint has always been a different kind of feast.

I have been a lucky man in many ways over the course of my life but probably the biggest way was being born to the parents I was. Smart, kind, loving. And obsessive world travelers. Oh, I ate it up. Experimented in world cuisine and enjoyed the local greasy spoons. All before I was old enough to shave. It was my mother who primarily inspired this activity, having graduated from Mount Holyoke with a double major in history and geography and memories of an adventurous mother of her own.

At each hotel, the local phone book in our hotel room's drawer (under-25 readers can just replace this with Yelp.com in your mind's eye) could afford me a chance at finding the local color: an LCS. A local comics shop. Ever since I was a child, there's been one kind of food for the mind and the eye that most excited and nourished me on that deeper level: comic-books.

Never could I tire of the beautiful creamy shade of the modern comic-book's glossy magazine-finish, bright and shiny like fondant carefully arranged in a master cake shop. Nor could I ever possibly stop enjoying the rich, nostalgic smell of a vintage newsprint comic-book browned with age like a perfect artisanal sourdough loaf. The work of the artist, like the vegetables of a fancy dish, colorful and tangible with the grain of the earth. The work of the writer, the meat of the story, something of solid protein to build something else for yourself with, nestled in between the extra fat.

Gorging myself on the short hors d'oeuvre of a one-shot like Simon Roy's "Jan's Atomic Heart" or the long, long main course of something like "The Amazing Spider-Man" (still running today in one unbroken storyline from 1962 and eight-hundred-sixty-three issues as of the time of this writing). That was my best spent evening. And still is. Eventually, as I grew up, I discovered plates full of more refined accents: Harvey Pekar's autobiographical comics in all their bare, raw, uncooked sadness, Craig Thompson's soulful holiday-sized meals of graphic novels, and the many wild series from the mad brain of master chef Alan Moore.

I can remember the wood paneling and deep mahogany shelves of a shop in Berlin. The chrome modernism of a shop in a multiple-story mall in Kuala Lumpur. The air-conditioned, open layout of a spot in Las Vegas. The friendly face and shocking American accent of an ex-pat store-owner in Paris. The dirty carpets and crowded shelves of Matt's Sports Plus, the store that carried comics around the corner from the house in which I grew up in Gloucester, Massachusetts in the Nineties.

My airplane-loving parents never much understood any of this. An economist and a government public health director with a son like me? The thought 'at least he's reading something!' must have often crossed their minds. I was allowed space to grow something of myself, for myself, by myself. The truth is I hated all the traveling and I couldn't be made to try the local food by any lengths of coercion. I remember a fight about bringing newly-acquired Batman comics to dinner in Hong Kong!

I don't mean to imply anything they did was wrong here. Dear reader, I was always fed and actually edible discoveries occurred as well. Rarely. Couscous in Morocco and red-bean rice-balls in Japan. Though my childish palette balked at chicken neck and begged for Pizza Hut. But they tried. There was also boy's literature for balance: Sherlock Holmes is the most prominent example I remember. There's been only one kind of fasting I endured and it was the drought between weekly new comic-book days. Some people, for reasons I will never understand, mistakenly grow-out of comics instead of growing-up with them. They listened to the siren song of the ivory tower and were convinced no adult flavor mixtures were available at their LCS and simply stopped coming to the banquet.

Eventually, I was extremely fortunate to open my own local spot where everybody knows your name: Carmine Street Comics in Manhattan historic West Village, our own home away from home for eight years as of next month. Something I never could have done without the support of those confused mother and father of mine.

The food tourism that has come to my shop by way of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and "The Big Bang Theory" is at turns exciting and revolting. Folks who've discovered Iron Man by way of Robert Downey Jr. instead of via the writing of David Michelinie and Matt Fraction are much like the young sous-chef who enjoys the food where he works but doesn't understand the master's history. Both you and we have come to share a beloved flavor but like the difference between the new fusion dish without an appreciation of the ethnic tradition it comes from. Both are wonderful and everyone is allowed their own tastes but one was the original template and the other an extremely creative adaptation.

One could be forgiven for assuming that in all these texturous metaphors I disdain digital comic-books or webcomics but nothing could be further from the truth. They are growing plentiful in the wild. Pick some and start reading. If you can string a series of images together in a deliberate sequence, you have made a comic and I am willing to taste it even if I can't smell it. Bring me more varied techniques, bring me more foreign flavors, bring me more gastronomic discoveries of the brush and the typewriter.

But. I implore you not to take this writer's word for it, Google the smorgasbord for yourself and see what you have been missing out on. Then look up your closest comic-book shop wherever it is and step in to learn more. Even if you've read comics? Double-check. You missed one you'll love.

And if you're put off by this extended, elaborate comics as food metaphor? Well, I promised myself I'd stop legitimizing sequential art by comparing it to the other narrative arts like film and literature a long time ago, so here's the next best thing I'm willing to give you. If you can't even imagine how sequential art, sometimes in four-color fun, sometimes in violent black and white, often in unique beauty can be worthy and fulfilling and good? I hope someday you may stop starving yourself and come in to the local comic shop. It's warm in here and there's something new and wonderful to try every week.