For the boys

I have these friends, right, these two different sets of friends who, if they but knew each other, would become one larger mass of friends, because really, they're quite similar.

The main similarity is comic books. Videogames too, but right now we're talking about comic books.

Now then. I have addressed this issue in the past, but since then it's grown and mutated (ha, ha) and on the whole become confusing, difficult to explain, and not a little tiresome. The problem, then, was simple: I didn't read comic books. I had very little interest in reading comic books. However, because certain of my friends like to argue and talk and explain, I knew something about a few comic characters, which led certain of my other friends to believe that I was simply in denial.

Well, I'm not in denial anymore. I'm out. The closet door of comic fandom has been flung open, and look who was hiding in there--it's me! I have decided to embrace this, nerdiest of all fandoms barring Farscape. Well, and Star Trek (that's just a classic). I have decided to become, if not a hardcore comic fan, at least an admitted one. And I would like to thank Tamora Pierce, because it's mostly her fault.

Yes. Tamora Pierce. Not Stan Lee, not Frank Miller, not Neil Gaiman or even Michael Chabon--Tamora Pierce, that lovely authoress of young adult fiction generally skewed toward teenage girls. I love her. I love Tamora Pierce with an eternal passion, because she wrote some of my favorite books and birthed some of my very favorite characters and as soon as I have a black cat again I will name it Faithful and gauge potential friends by whether or not they know why the cat is so named (people who are friends with me already, no fear; you'll be grandfathered in). And now, Ms Pierce has been given her very own Marvel miniseries, White Tiger, which makes me love Marvel even more than I already did (which is to say, not very much).

Obviously, Marvel is cool because it's home to people like Deadpool and Wanda Maximoff. DC can hardly compare--they have Batman and Green Arrow and the Birds of Prey, and that's about it for me, and with Ms Pierce on board for White Tiger, DC is going to have to really hop to get my attention. They're going to have to revive George Orwell and let him write a new Batman or something. Anyway, the new White Tiger is cool. Very cool. It gets my stamp of not-very-knowledgeable approval, mostly because of its writer, but also because the characters are fun. I'd never even heard of Angela del Toro before a fellow Pierceaholic tipped me off to the series, but she's a ball of fire--and folks like Daredevil (and some other guy wearing the Daredevil suit), the Black Widow, and Spider-Man turn up too. What's not to love? A butt-kicking heroine, a shadowy criminal organization, and famous masks all over the place, all coupled with the author to whom I have already given more money than anyone else in the literary world.

Thanks, Marvel. Way to be a pal. Maybe I'll branch out. Maybe I'll delve. Maybe, someday, I'll be a REAL comic fan.