Old vs new.  Modern vs. traditional.  This idea kept going through my mind yesterday as I sorted out my comic book collection.

In the old days all of us geeks would take pen to paper and write out the  list of comics  that we owned in order to keep them organized.  We would take care to sort the books in to various plies that only made sense in our minds.  I remember that back in the day the only sorting that I did was to put Marvel in to one pile and DC in the other.

Now we enter our books in to a database and have excel spread sheets.  We keep our books in mylars and had a ready supply of bags and boards that we order online.  We get Previews and listen to podcasts to figure out what are the good books to order.  Heck, we even have Sype conference calls to discuss the merits of ordering our books and then post what we are getting three months from now.

This is the modern age of the geek.  We have tech to do the work for us.  I say that this is good but what about the old days?  What about the hunt for the treasured comic book? What about the camping out for two weeks to get the tickets to the latest sci-fi movie?  What about the beloved talks that kept us in the LCS for hours after we got our books?  These are the questions that are on my mind.  Let’s discuss this shall we?

Comic Book Treasure Hunt

Do you remember the days of quarter bin diving?  I am taking about the days when you went hunting every single weekend to not one but ten shops find your holy grail.  I did this and it was the thrill of hunt that got my geek on.

I would call every shop that I could find the the wilds of central Illinois looking for missing issues of Thor and Iron Man.  I spent days trying to set up deals and trades to get the holes in my collection filled.  I was on a mission and I just had the best time of my life doing this.

Now days I go to Ebay and find the book in question , place a bid and if I am lucky get the book in about  a week.  If not, I go to one of the many online comic stores and find the book in question. If I like the price, I order and it appears at my doorstep in about two weeks.

This is not the good old days.  I like the ease of modern comic book hunting, but I miss the hunt.

Camping Out for Movie Tickets

I remember that  once I talked my grandfather into letting me camp out  with friends to see a certain sci-fi movie two days early.  The name of the movie is not important, but the thrill of camping out under the stars waiting to get tickets was amazing.

I got to talk geek with my friends and we had a shared experience of intense joy that we would be the first to see the movie and that we proved our geek-hood by our actions.  The sleeping bags, the bad coffee (this is before Starbucks, I know – the horror), the smelly security guard who really wanted to kick us out of the parking lot, but was told not to due to the power of the movie theater manager.  The cold air sapping our spirits as we talked and debated the merits of possible plot points and who would be the actor in the film.

Now, I pre-order the movie tickets,click print and go back to reading Final Crisis.  Not the same joy that I felt twenty years ago.

Comic Shop Comradery

The local comic shop was the forum of our past.  We would go to get our books and talk about everything under the sun.   The local shop that I went to was really great.  It  had bad lighting, rude employees and everyone was a prototype  of the geek nation poster boy.  I LOVED IT!

I learned how to play D&D while waiting for my books to get put into my pull box.  I got to “work” for credit by helping to sort out the new books and weeding out the back stock.  I learned how to properly debate in the truest geek fashion: never give up your point and wear your opponent down.

Now we post on forums and PM when we really have a point to get across.  Geeks are now all across the country, talking and making friends with people we only see  at cons and consider to be our best friends.  Face to face interaction is gone.

I like the new way, but boy, do I miss the old one.  The bonds that were formed led to many a geek to find that one friend they could relate on a sub-atomic level for life.

The old ways formed who we are now.  The new ways keep us together in a higher level of geek.  I can talk to my friends all across the world and be content.  But I have a idea or two about the new ways.

One, can being a geek of the new ways be better for all of us as a whole?  Can we ever get back the old feeling of spending four hours debating if Batman could take down Superman and how would he do it?  (See New Frontier for reference).

Two, can the younger geeks ever get the same feeling of solidarity that we had back in the day?  To them being a geek is easy. For us, it was made the hard way and we liked it.

So, old vs new.  Is one way better than the other?  In the end… not really.

I just wanted to sit back and remember a time when becoming a geek was more physical and a challenge.  I miss the old days with a passion, but the new ways are not to bad.