This Epic Doesn't Need Any Hard Sell

I try not to write about anything other than literary-related things on this blog, but I wanted to mention something in hopes of possibly finding someone who might be in a similar situation.  When I read a really great novel or collection of stories or poems, I have lots of people I can call or email to talk about it.  Just a few days ago, I called a friend to read them the first paragraph of April Wilder's new story in Zoetrope.  

But last week, I used a hundred bucks I got for x-mas and purchased Daredevil #7 and Fantastic Four #46 on Ebay (The Daredevil issue is the first time he ever wore his red costume, with art by one of my favorite artists, Wally Wood, and features an underwater battle with the Sub-Mariner; the Fantastic Four issue is the first appearance of Black Bolt, with art by Jack Kirby).  And I am going crazy over finally possessing these issues.  And I have nobody to talk to who cares in the least little bit.  I showed my wife the cover of the Fantastic Four issue and she wondered why The Invisible Woman looked like a transvestite.

I love comic books and have since I was a kid.  I spend around 80-100 bucks a month on buying new comic books, money that I should not be spending.  And I don't know anyone else who reads comic books.  People like comic book movies.  They like the comic books they read as kids and haven't read since.  They like Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns and Sandman and all the comics that Time magazine tells you to read.  But they don't read monthly super hero comics.  Nobody I know is reading Guardians of the Galaxy and talking about why, in a comic book that features "the most dangerous woman in the universe", a guy who shoots an "element gun", a woman who is mourning the loss of her giant dragon girlfriend and possesses the Quantum Bands, and Groot, basically a giant tree, the coolest character in the book is a smack-talking raccoon who is a crack shot with his laser pistols.  Talk about this stuff, and people get really embarrassed.

So, I am wondering if there is anybody out there who reads Marvel comics (The only DC comics I read are Batman and House of Mystery) and wants to talk about it over email every once in a while.  Like when Secret Invasion ended and sucked almost as much as Civil War.  Or why Amazing Spider-Man, using a rotating group of writers and artists so that it can come out three times a month, is as good as its been in years.  Or why Jack Kirby draws all women so that they look like really run-down transvestites and why, despite this, he is still the greatest comic book artist of all time.  If you are coming to AWP in a few weeks, come by the Sewanee Writers' Conference/Sewanee Review booth at the bookfair and we'll talk.