Fandoms Today

     I know that it’s been a very long while since I’ve sat down and managed a blog. I felt compelled tonight to write one after having seen ‘Godzilla’ last night. I had managed to get some tickets to a pre-screening event and ended up taking my mother to the showing since she is a HUGE Godzilla fan. She always has been, and I have a feeling that she will always be. But with that said, this is what I’d like to concentrate on tonight for tonight’s blog. I would like to talk about the Fandoms and the huge span of comic books, graphic novels, and television shows that have impacted us today as a society. I think that it is safe to say that back in school (at least when I was in school) that you didn’t really expose to everyone that you had a fascination with comics. Either A) A fascination with comics or B) Television shows that would be considered geeky, nerdy, or outlandish to watch. If the bullies or anyone for that matter anyone in your grade found out that you were watching these shows, or reading these kinds of comics it often resulted in a total blacklist of your friendship and isolation from the rest of the kids in your grade. Always looked at as the nerd and teased about.
     To be honest, I’d never been one of the kids in school that was really into comics. Sure, I knew the difference between Marvel and DC Comics but that was about the extent of my knowledge on either of these groups. We had kids that kind of stuck to themselves with the comics. X-men had been HUGE when I was in school, trading cards, games, etc. It wasn’t until a few years ago that Mrs. Michaels introduced me to DC Comics, and Batman in almost a unreal way. We’d bought the game ‘Arkham Asylum’ for one of our gaming consoles and we started playing through it. Again, I’d never really been on the whole comic book scene so as we played through the game you started learning about these complex characters, and stories that all kind of intertwined with each other. Instantly, I knew that I was hooked. I’d always been huge into stories and good plot. Batman’s world surely didn’t disappoint me as we played through the game. Batman to me was always two people: Adam West or Michael Keaton? But, as we played through this game we became completely immersed in Batman’s world and wanted to learn more. To be honest, I have a couple of friends that I knew I could approach and really talk about this complex world of this one particular Superhero. That there was much more to Gotham’s Universe and the Dark Knight. The complexity of the mental struggle within Bruce Wayne. It was amazing!
     Pretty soon, it was beginning to fan out, and as I got drawn more into the DC universe it became apparent to me on really…how many people out their enjoyed comic books anymore! That, it was ok to express now-a-days that “Hey! I’m an avid Spiderman reader”, or “Hey! I’m an avid Batman reader”. I’ve mentioned time and time again that I’m HUGE into ‘The Walking Dead’ which started out as a Graphic novel. I think that TWD really got me drawn into wanting to explore more worlds, that where drawn rather than written. But this is only my example that I could help relate to this blog and kind of explain where I was coming from. Another great example is the amount of ‘gamers’ that are open about it now. Again, when I was a kid growing up if you were a gamer regardless of the system (Nintendo, Playstation, Genesis, etc.) you were considered a nerd and an outcast. Not as bad as the comic book kids but you were still an outsider to the social groups of the school. Now? Being a gamer is cool and accepted. It’s one of the biggest ways people spend time together now is through over the internet playing games! It’s amazing on how accepting and open our society has become in the means of peoples interests and those being able to express their likes and people being able to find others with similar interests!