Comic Books--Focus Groups for Blockbuster Movies

Once more I'm going to share my thoughts on a well known loaf of Nerd Bread: comic books. Comic books are making a huge resurgence in popularity and cultural relevance these days. For the last year or two, some of the biggest movies (and even one really successful television show) have been comic book adaptations. The Avengers movie stands head-and-Hulk-trapezoids over the rest, but Spider-Man, X-men, Batman, and The Walking Dead all got a huge amount of audience keisters and dollars. Iron Man 3 (assisted by Avengers' awesomeness, if we're honest) is currently beating its way past $1 billion in global ticket sales. And with Man of Steel set to come out in June and another round of Marvel awesomeness hitting us in the fall (note I'm ignoring The Wolverine with that timeframe), the fact is that we've got another year with television and cinema dominated by comic books' huge appeal.

But comic books themselves are still considered a little bit niche. Ask the average non-nerd what Spider-Man's secret identity is, and they will almost certainly say Peter Parker. But if you ask them about the Superior Spider-Man, Superman: Red Son, or the New 52, they will shrug and answer "Peter Parker?" "Isn't that what makes Krypton special?" and "Are they the people trying to get Washington DC and Puerto Rico recognized as states?" respectively. Even though comic books are powerful cultural troves, they still are themselves fringe texts--still Nerd Bread.

But why are comics still considered nerdy when their characters are so well-known and popular? Well, I think a large part of it goes into my definition of a nerd--enthusiasm. Comic books are full of art and intricate plots and involved stories. They have vibrant, distinct characters that sometimes come off as offensive and over-the-top to the uninitiated reader. One issue of a comic is, by design, generally never enough to satisfy a reader, and so those of the right persuasion find themselves digging in for more and more while others sniff and back away.

And--a little critically--there's the issue of comic book marketing. As a monthly storytelling medium, comic books are a constantly shifting and reacclimatizing landscape. Being out of the loop for just a couple of years can yield a lot of surprising new changes, as I know first-hand. This leads to comic books appealing to younger readers more readily, as they're more often eager to join the cult of the new and are less offended by changes to established characters, teams, and plots. Older comic book readers exist, but it means that it takes a bit more effort and therefore makes adult comic book fans even more peculiar and nerdy in contrast to their peers.

"Even though comic books are powerful cultural troves, they still are themselves fringe texts--still Nerd Bread."

So why are comic books' stories and characters so relevant to the culture at large when the actual reading and ingesting, the true fandom, is still considered the province of nerds? Part of it has to be the appeal of an entire genre that is so visually attuned to tell its own stories. You can read a comic book and get pictures that bear composition as beautiful, evocative, and meaning-packed as any Oscar-winning cinematography. The visuals and style of heroes are often done with painstaking and self-conscious awareness of its fan preferences, meaning that the very best and longest-lasting heroes often have an almost symbiotic appeal to their fans. These elements mean that when transferring that appeal to the screen, directors already have a firm idea of the mass reaction they can expect from their choices--especially as they maintain fidelity to the original text.

Comic books also have some of the best economy of story-telling, which is an important factor in television and film. They might have meta-plots that span over months or years of publication, but at the same time every comic book issue needs to tell its own contained story in less than 30 pages. You need to fit drama, intrigue, and action into those 30 pages to qualify as the best of comic books today, and to be something really special you need to integrate the artistic vision and small story into something eminently relatable to the audience. These are key points that any movie-maker can appreciate, and a lot of them could gain an invaluable education from reading comic books for its own sake.

And finally, comic book fans are in it for the long haul. When you make a movie about X superhero--even if it's bad or disappointing--you can count on just about any pre-established fan of X's comics going to see the movie. I mean, why wouldn't they? They've probably already shelled out hundreds of dollars over years to read about X, now they just need to spend a little more to see him on the big screen. Of course they go. And if it's even reasonably good, every self-respecting comic book nerd will be evangelizing the movie to their friends--to see the movie, certainly, but also and more importantly in a clever attempt to coerce their buddies into becoming comic book aficionados as well. A well-done comic book movie has legs that no marketing budget can duplicate--the enthusiasm of nerds.

"Older comic book readers exist, but it means that it takes a bit more effort and therefore makes adult comic book fans even more peculiar and nerdy in contrast to their peers."

As a totally free add-on, I'm going to share with you a new discovery I made thanks to C2E2 this year that puts decades of comic books within your reach without bankrupting you, making you a pirate, or putting you at the mercy of your local library's selection.



Marvel Unlimited: The Netflix of Marvel Comic Books

Capture of the Marvel Unlimited web-reader of Ultimates #1's cover

Marvel Unlimited is an online app-and-browser-based service for reading comic books. For either a $10 monthly subscription or a $60 annual one, you get access to a digital library that you can read online that contains 13,000 issues of Marvel comics that range from decades-old to published just a couple months ago. It's a great service, and thanks to it I've been reading at least two new comics a day for the past two weeks.

I've been out of comic books for a while, and even when I was a regular reader my selections were pretty careful--I buy graphic novels (multiple issues bound as one), and the thought of putting something unsatisfying on my bookshelf always made me cautious. So there were a lot of comic books I always wanted to get into that I never did because I wasn't sure if I'd love them or because their graphic novel collections were hard to find, and so on. And that was before I'd fallen out of comics altogether for five years or so.

But at C2E2 I heard about Marvel Unlimited, and let me tell you: it's a great deal. I've been able to backtrack on my favorite series to 2008 and start catching up from there, or even further back for those series I always wanted to read but never bothered. And if there's a particular hero you like to follow who appears in different comic book series, like Ant-Man or Captain Marvel, you can browse for them specifically and follow their appearances throughout different series over the years. It's a great resource.

Ultimates #1
Allied soldiers assaulting the Nazi superweapon

And if you're curious about it, they have sample issues you can browse and see how you like it. Once you're hooked I recommend you start with one of my favorite Marvel comic book series: Ultimates, written by Mark Millar and illustrated by Bryan Hitch. As part of Marvel's Ultimate universe, it's a great place to launch into comics. You see, the Ultimate universe is a fresh take on Marvel's most popular comics that started about the same time Bryan Singer's first X-Men movie hit theaters. Starting from the ground up, the Ultimate universe tries to be as friendly to newcomers as possible while also taking the chance to take well-known characters into fresh directions. Ultimates is the Ultimate universe version of the Avengers, and it has some of the very finest art and storytelling. Some of the plot will be familiar to fans of last year's movie--the Chitauri do come out of the woodwork, and party conflict revolves around the Hulk. Some of the creative decisions of the movies were also lifted directly from Ultimates. Millar specifically cast Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury by having Hitch base his visualization on the actor, for instance, and Captain America's World War Two uniform in the first issue of Ultimates inspired the outfit Cap wears to raid the prison camp in The First Avenger. But it is by far a different, darker story than the one in Joss Whedon's movie, too.

Ultimates #1
Why aren't you reading this book by now?!

Ultimates is also a little richer than the movie in that it features a slightly larger roster of the Avengers, too. Hank Pym, or Ant-Man, and his wife Janet, the Wasp, are main characters alongside the ones you'll recognize from the movie. The art itself is very gritty and realistically proportioned, with fabulous use of shadow and color that keeps everything distinct and diverse in the classic four-color composition, while also evoking deep shadows and moral shades of gray with its meticulous realization of lighting. Inker Andrew Currie really lends a lot to the visual impact of this book, drawing sharp lines and highlighting fantastic expressions without overpowering Hitch's characters.



So give Marvel Unlimited a try, and if you've never read Ultimates I strongly recommend you start your online library there.

Nerd Bread: Board Games

Nerd Bread: There are a lot of things that go into making a nerd. Nerd bread describes things that are absolutely necessary to qualify for the title. The corollary, nerd butter, deepens the nerd experience to something much more profound, much like butter does to bread.

Today I'm going to touch on a piece of Nerd Bread that is near and dear to my heart: board games. Board games are a huge part of the Nerdery's relatively amicable home. They're a weekly staple in our house, we play them regularly with friends, and it's one of those things that's a great way to spend an afternoon with family over the holidays. We have board games that work for one or two people, or games that we only pull out when we have five to eight savvy players with at least six hours to burn. Some of these games are quick, party-oriented affairs with equal parts chit-chat, joking, and gaming, and others are more strict shut-up-and-take-your-turn board games.

Board games are great.

But, if you're like a lot of people I know, you're about to give me the old eye-roll and make a comment about Monopoly, Risk, Scrabble, or Life.

"You still like board games?" is the common refrain.

Yeah, that's right. I play board games. And not even in a trendy or ironic way, without drinking involved. And board games are alive and well these days, despite the mass public perception otherwise. There are more companies, bigger games, expensive franchises represented by an international variety of board games than have ever existed before. That's why it's Nerd Bread. And to help give you an idea of why board games are Nerd Bread, here are the rules of board games:

The first rule is...you don't need to make a Fight Club reference every time you start a list of rules.

The second rule is that virtually everyone likes some kind of board game. When anti-nerds say they don't like board games, they almost always are thinking of the big ones--Monopoly, Risk, or Life. And, despite being successful and long-standing traditions in board gaming, they are terrible. Monopoly is a pointless, luck-grind that takes hours to play and only minutes to sap your energy worse than a double helping of Thanksgiving turkey. Risk is a geographic tug-of-war that constantly frustrates the concept of having the lead in the game with unbalanced mechanics that are designed to extend play time without adding depth, strategy, or fun. And Life is just a procedural, going-through-the-motions version of Candy Land for non-grown-ups. No, people who hate board games just hate the particular board games they were forced to play as a kid, and most of those games deserve the ill-will. But there are so many different games out there that anyone with an open mind and willingness to experiment should be able to find one that suits them.

"Some of these games are quick, party-oriented affairs with equal parts chit-chat, joking, and gaming, and others are more strict shut-up-and-take-your-turn board games."

The third rule of board games is that different board games fit different occasions. There is no one-size-fits-all board game, and sometimes the game you're most enthusiastic about is the least appropriate game for a particular setting. I love Twilight Imperium. It is absolute Nerd Butter, featuring complex rules, deep strategy and like six decks of cards with special rules and effects. It can be played by up to eight people if you're willing to blow most of a day on it and have a six-by-four-foot play area. In short, I never get to play Twilight Imperium, because it is tremendously prohibitive to ordinary schedules and get-togethers. And that's ok, because we have other games that are perfectly suited to impromptu play sessions, or for playing when our latest RPG session gets canceled, or when the kids are asleep and we just need to get our Marvel on quietly. Board game variety is a great investment.

Fourthly, board games are not about being over-competitive dorks. The hackneyed board gamer image is of a near-sighted nerd straining over whether his friend is allowed to move one square or two, and arguing about it shrilly over spilled Mountain Dew. This isn't necessarily true, although being competitive and rules-lawyering can have its place in board games, and I generally recommend you always keep soda on a different surface from your favorite board game. And no one--NO ONE--is allowed to try to open a can of soda one-handed while inside the game's splash zone. That is serious business. But board games themselves are all about having fun, and there are a lot of games that offer light-hearted competition or even a fully cooperative experience. Picking out a game with the right objective--whether it's fun cooperation or cut-throat strategy and humiliation--is all apart of the game night experience.

"No, people who hate board games just hate the particular board games they were forced to play as a kid, and most of those games deserve the ill-will."

Fifthly and finally, the recommended age system for board games is a mess. There is no standardized system for age recommendations for board games, so always treat them as fuzzy, beer-goggled impressions of whether they'd make a good date. Some companies seem to pick their age recommendation as the age at which a person could read, internalize, and comprehend the rules. That's a good rule of thumb if a kid is wanting to pick up and play the game, but most of the time younger kids are going to pick up a game at the table and therefore be relying on a friend's or parent's understanding of the rules and ability to explain them. Poorly written rules can seem to inflate the age recommendation for a game that could otherwise be more friendly for casual players. Games with violent or suggestive art might have age recommendations that have nothing to do with the accessibility of the game's mechanics. When it comes down to it, nothing beats having a sit-down with the game and its components to evaluate if it'll be a fit for you. Second to that option, pull a nerd out of line at your local store and ask him to explain it to you quickly. Labels are a poor substitute to the impressions of players and how excited they do or don't get over the experience of playing that specific board game.

So those are the essential elements for understanding board games as a keystone of being a nerd. In the future, I'll highlight some of my favorite board games with full Nerdview reviews complete with odor, beef, gravy, and cheese. Until then, keep gaming.

Nerd Bread and Butter: Conventions

Nerd Bread and Butter: There are a lot of things that go into making a nerd. Nerd bread describes things that are absolutely necessary to qualify for the title. The corollary, nerd butter, deepens the nerd experience to something much more profound, much like butter does to bread.

So today marks another "should've blogged this a long time ago" entry in my current sprint of posts: conventions. Now, a convention (or "con" as they are invariably known) straddles the dividing line between Nerd Bread and Nerd Butter. On the one hand, cons are still an alien and intimidating thing to a lot of long-standing nerds. I myself didn't go to my first (sorta) con until 2005, and after that it was years until I went to another (which ended up being my trip to Fire and Ice last year). But cons are definitely an integral part of any nerd experience, and there are such a wealth of them in America (and elsewhere) today that you can find a con catering to just about any particular interest--many without traveling that far, either.

But there is an element of Nerd Butter, to be sure. Cons are still seen as a niche or elite event for a particular classification of nerd. For instance, I can have a Sideshow Collectibles Smeagol statue on my desk flanked by 3D printed ODSTs at three different scales, but once I mention I'm going to a convention over the weekend, I get the raised eyebrows and chin-nod:

"Oh, you're one of those guys."

"That's right, I'm that kind of nerd. I'll wear it on my work badge until I can get it tattooed on my forehead."

A large part of this is probably the slanted coverage of conventions in popular media. To most people, cons are places for nerd-kinky cosplay (because that's practically the only kind that gets shown) and insanely awkward over-enthused smelly fanboys gushing over genre celebrities. As you might guess, this isn't particularly accurate, and it doesn't even come close to capturing the spirit of a lot of cons out there.

What are Conventions?

Conventions at their core are about social interactions. There are a number of shows and/or conferences out there that masquerade as conventions and vice versa, but for the purpose of this article a con is an event where a minority tries to pool resources and interests into one event at a singular time so that they can be the majority in one small sphere. If a con is more about mere commercial previews, sales, and formal showmanship than it is about connecting nerds together, it might as well be a show. Or a Games Day--ouch! burn heretic, burn! And if a con is more about events and panels, it might as well be a school workshop. No, the core and highest aspiration of a true con is to be a distillery of local nerds, letting them ferment just long enough to make a truly lasting impact on each other through networking and shared enthusiasm.

Did that last metaphor circle around to the stinky fanboys stereotype?

Types of Conventions:

There are several types of conventions. There are commercially organized ones that revolve around the products of the organizers. Some of the big hobby game companies are starting to do this a lot more. Mantic Games, Games Workshop, and Fantasy Flight Games all have several conventions a year focused on their products' demos and tournaments. Now, since these commercially-run conventions are about getting more players buying more of their stuff, I considered these sorts of conventions the most watered-down experience for cons. And, for me, the only con of this sort I ever went to I found to be the most unsatisfying. Then again that was Games Day and so it might have just been the start of my anti-Games Workshop roots finding their soil.

There are also commercially sponsored conventions, and since this is what San Diego Comic Con falls under, it's probably the most recognizable category of con. These ones are organized and run independently, but with a good number of sponsors behind various panels, events, and guests they bring to the con. Other cons I'd put in this category are C2E2 (Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo) and Gen Con. Any one of these cons offer a large array of activities and opportunities to explore different hobbies. There's also a large commercial presence at any con like this, but the diversity usually means that you don't have to notice it unless you want to.

Finally, there are the hobby-scale conventions. These are conventions without any high-profile sponsors, often organized as much as a community event as anything else, and they normally feature groups from the scores to hundreds rather than the big commercial cons' which often have thousands of guests. This sort of con really lends itself towards open gaming sorts of conventions--such as Fire and Ice, or dozens of other small cons going on all across the country every month. They usually sport a few local vendors for sponsors, and since they are more localized events you're a lot more likely to meet people in your immediate sphere than the larger cons which tend to pull people from all over.

Conventions I've been to...

As I said earlier, conventions are a relatively new part of the nerdery. Way back in the day I took my future wife to Games Workshop's Games Day, and while I enjoyed it quite a bit, I didn't feel compelled to attend any of their future events. This was kind of nailed to the ground for me by the fact that Games Workshop has pretty consistently ground my bag the wrong way with nearly every decision they've made for the past ten years, but I digress. If you're into only one or two of Games Workshop's products, I imagine that Games Day could easily be a let down. But if, like I was, you're into multiple games and love seeing new models and have lots of available product thrown in your face like a bad alley in Las Vegas, then by all means, it is a blast.

Then last year I began attending Fire and Ice, and with my family attending Fire and Ice 2013 this year as well it is officially an annual family tradition. It's small compared to what you expect from cons based on popular representation--filling up a warehouse-sized room with tables of specific games, open game tables, and local hobby shop vendors. But in a con of that size it's still amazingly easy to find yourself lost in all the options if you've got an appetite for playing a large variety of games (board games, miniature games, role-playing games, and even the occasional video game gets brought in). For a lot of people who enjoy playing epic, involved board games like Twilight Imperium, it's probably one of the only places you'll get a chance to play a full eight-player game.

This past month I attended C2E2 for the first time. I've long been out of the active comic-reading loop (a long and heart-rending story I'm sure I'll blog about eventually), but my wife won two weekend passes and, though reticent, I couldn't pass up the chance when I found out Ron Perlman would be a celebrity guest for the weekend. Now, while saving a few details for my upcoming Con Roundup of C2E2 2013, let me just say that it was awesome. Like a cross between New Year's Eve and a good first date, there's lots of elation, awkwardness, pledges to do more, and at least a little willful denial regarding embarrassing moments that totally never happened. I'm going to make C2E2 an annual thing.

Conventions I'm going to (someday)...

At the top of my list of conventions I need to attend is SDCC, the San Diego Comic Convention. It is the closest thing to prestigious when it comes to this topic, and if every half-baked Youtube channel and television network in the country is going to cover it in some degree, then I need to go to there to vet it myself. Wow, that sounds pathetically pliant and puerile, doesn't it? Oh well, hopefully my frakkin' awesome alliteration will ameliorate that assertion. Alright, seriously, I'm done now.

Gen Con is another one I've been meaning to go to for some time now, and with it being so close to where I've lived the past quarter-century, I really have no excuse to have not gone already. Other than being a homebody. And cheap. Okay, so I've had some excuses in the past, but these days they're starting to thin out in the face of getting old. Old, I say. Old. But yeah, it sounds like a lot of gaming fun that might be too much for the kids, which means that if I go in the next year or two I can make the wife stay at home sitting on the nest while I nerd-it-up in Indiana. Hmmm, I really am running out of excuses not to go...

There are others, but the long and short of it is that I lean towards the cons that promise more chances to dive into hobbies that I find it difficult to indulge in on a week-to-week basis. Video game heavy conventions appeal to me, since I am a big video game fan, but they don't seduce me the way a chance to play four role-playing games in one weekend does. Or the glittering opportunity to meet Ron Perlman and totally make a jackanape of myself. That kind of stuff I can't resist. And, with a new hobby of mine on the horizon, I foresee a whole new level of nerdiness drawing me out to more conventions in the future. Filmatleven.

Nerd Bread: Role-playing Games

Nerd Bread: There are a lot of things that go into making a nerd. Nerd bread describes things that are absolutely necessary to qualify for the title. The corollary, nerd butter, deepens the nerd experience to something much more profound, much like butter does to bread.

Roleplaying. Games.

Hell yes.

If you're a nerd, you know what I'm talking about. If you're an uber-nerd, like me, you might be salivating a bit right now. I'm salivating as I'm writing this, and I have no clue what's coming next.

A lot of 'nerd bread' is shameful to society at large. Role-playing games, to them, are not a hobby, but a punch-line. Screw 'em. Role-playing games are awesome. They're just threatened by the fact that a nerd can have fun without shutting off their brain, throwing back Jägerbombs and junk-punching their drunk buddies. Not that I can't see the appeal of spending an inebriated night with friends doing so. I might incorporate that as a mini-wager on the next war-game night--loser gets junk-punched. That should add some tension to diplomatic relations in Twilight Imperium...

Where was I?

Oh yes, role-playing games. Some of the uninitiated might be wondering what a role-playing game(RPG for the rest of us) actually is. An RPG is an imaginative type of game dedicated to replicating your favorite moments from television shows, movies, and books, where the players use some sort of abstraction to make the story challenging and fun to craft at the same time. That's it, at it's core.

What, you were expecting something kitschy? ROLL INTELLIGENCE! 12 after modifiers? OH NO, FAIL! Just like the train job all over again, hehehe!

That more what you were expecting, jock?

Actually, there's a lot of that, too. But that's not the core. The core of a good RPG is making the kind of story you always wanted to read or watch, and inflicting that on your friends, who are trying to do likewise. To keep things fair, each player controls one character, over whom they have almost total control. That's their player character(PC), and it's the player's job to flesh out that PC as much as possible. Although, to be fair, that's usually not that much--vicarious violence through a fictitious avatar is distracting, after all.

All the other story elements are controlled by one of the players, who calls himself the game-master(GM), because nerds want to have position titles, too. (A jock strap shouldn't be a requisite for position titles and peculiar exhuberance for arbitrary goals, after all.) The GM is usually the most jaded and imaginitively well-endowed of the players--he's also usually the most anal, detail-oriented one in charge of remembering the lion's share of the rules. I'm usually the GM amongst my friends. The GM runs the bad guys and other non-player characters(NPCs) the PCs interact with, but he is not necessarily opposed to the PCs' goals. In fact, the GM has the same goal as the players: to make a fun, interesting story. Sometimes an interesting story arises when the PCs succeed against terrific odds. Sometimes an interesting story arises when the PCs fail and die terrible deaths. Most RPGs fall somewhere in between.

So, that explains what an RPG is, but why are they so awesome?

1. You get to kill stuff in exotic locales. This is the biggest single draw to most RPG players, though it isn't a prerequisite to the experience. For most of us, though, there's tremendous satisfaction to be had from pitting yourself against violent, extreme circumstances and prevailing. And then you can rub it in the GM's face, too.
2. You get a sense of progress. A lot of hobbies exist to occupy kids and adults of all ages, but few of them give you the sense of progress an RPG does. When's the last time your football league made an alliance with another league after a sudden victory? Some RPGs can last for years, during which time the players might become as attached to the game as any soap opera aficionado.
3. You exercise your mind. RPGs are nerd bread for a reason. Constantly thinking about what a fictitious character would do in a hypothetical situation is the core of role-playing, and so it has elements of philosophy, critical thinking, and improvisational acting.
4. You escape your concerns. The best way to eliminate worry is to replace it. And being worried about whether Laanor the farmboy is going to recover from his wounds is a lot more entertaining than wondering whether things are going to get better at work.

So, if you're curious about RPGs now, embrace the nerdery and get into it. And if you call yourself a nerd and yet scoff at RPGs, get over yourself and eat your nerd bread.

*fist-shakes* Eat it!


Nerd bread articles are all about the essentials of being a nerd. Feel free to offer suggestions of what you consider essential to the nerd identity.