The Fanboy Cliche

Sometimes I wonder if I am just a stock character in this novel called life.  I seem to fit a certain profile, or have the same interests as a large number of people with similar profiles.  Maybe any such thinking is a misperception in that I know we are all individuals, and that the combination of what interests us in particular is what makes us special; but I have to say sometimes I like feeling like I am part of a group while at other times I try to buck conventions and be outside of that same cliche.  Unavoidably, I am something of a Fanboy however, and I think I can try to defend why there are so many of us.

I use the term Fanboy, (there are Fangirls, props to the women), to describe males who are interested in comic books, science fiction, fantasy, Dungeons and Dragons, Star Wars, and cinema based on these iconic corporate entities.  Maybe you have noticed at the movies that there are a lot of us Fanboys around these days.  Some people gravitate to these public art forms because they see the crowd forming and come over to see what is so interesting.  As people we like to feel like we belong to something while still retaining our solitary existences and autonomy at the same time, and as popular culture embraces the Fanboy our numbers grow.  But what drives the Fanboy, the true fan who would, or did, love all of this stuff before it became a staple of modern popular culture?

That’s a little more complicated, but speaking only for myself: being a Fanboy has nothing to do with a feeling of inclusion.  I liked all of this stuff when it was tragically uncool to do so.  I hid my comic books in the closet when friends came over, then in a trunk when I was away at boarding school, and basically kept all of this Fanboy stuff very close to the vest until a girlfriend in college taught me I was okay, not worthy of ridicule, and most likely not going to lose all my friends if I told them I liked Tolkien and comics.

She was right, in a big way, but it was still something of a revelation to find out that the Lord of the Rings are up there with the Bible as the books printed in greatest volume, (to the tune of like 500 million copies of the four books combined), and while comic book characters garner tons of attention in the movies, it was actually in the nineties when comic books themselves experienced their heyday, some publishing to the tune of 1,200,000 copies of a single issue.  Throw in the phenomenon that was the Star Wars re-release and I started to talk openly about being a fan of these different genres and strange subcultures, and became a part of how what might have once been a subculture gradually are supplanting the dominant culture.

I don’t know how many modern painters you can name, or the names of your favorite paintings, but I bet you know a few comic book heroes on sight.  Yes I know I am mixing two very different marketing plans here, but ask Andy Warhol’s ghost and you will hear that most painters would love to be household names like Spider Man or Batman, they just can’t swing the backing of major corporations like Disney or Time Warner, although they might like to if they had their way (although probably not, painters are a very idealistic lot and seek popularity and obscurity at the same time, as only the idealistic can).  Occasionally a James Cameron or a George Lucas combine the dynamics of mass culture and visual genius into modern motion pictures, and deserve a lot of credit for being able to do so, but they are exceptions to the rule.  Right now, more people have heard of Wolverine then have heard of his creators (Len Wein and John Romita Sr.), and such is the nature of popular comic book culture.

Okay, tangent taken, back to the main idea: why am I such a cliche?  For one thing comic book art, movies, and mass market paperbacks, sometimes seem like the only art around.  If you live in New York, or DC, or Paris or something, sure, you can go see Modern Art whenever you like.  I live in Camden, Delaware.  The local art scene bites, I don’t know any local painters, and the sad fact is the comic book shop ten minutes down the road delivers paintings, drawings, and stories in mass quantities every Wednesday at noon.  New art, pictures and stories arrive weekly, and I like that.  Yes, I can go into the city and see some paintings from time to time, and I do, but the consistent exposure to popular artwork I experience has something to do with a superior distribution technique.

Fanboy genres are also very inclusive.  I like comic books, etc., because they are happening now, in my day and age.  This is a contemporary artistic movement if you will, and I prefer this at times to studying the murals of post colonial Indochina.  This is my culture in the sense that it reflects where I live and breathe, and you can see popular icons like the Beastie Boys and Harry Potter cycled through these art forms in a way that makes them seem like they speak my language, the language of these contemporary times in my United States.

Yes, I admit, there is an element of nostalgia to the whole affair.  But why would I want to remember being a hated and secretive comic book hoarder unless the art was so moving when I was younger that I am willing to relive the painful memories of friendless nerdiness every time I read a comic book or read a fantasy novel?  This artwork was worth social ostracization when I was younger, and if it keeps me from having luck with the ladies now, well then, it’s hard to argue that I am reliving better times.

If anything a fair complaint that I have arrested my development somehow with all the medications I am on might be made, but this doesn’t get at why I don’t watch television, or still listen to Bon Jovi.  I should be like most males, stuck in some James Bond, Donald Trump day dream of endless wealth and promiscuous sex, but I’m not.  Yes, there are a lot of Americans who identify with the loner and the outsider, but to identify oneself as a loner or outsider usually takes some development psychologically, not fixation in some earlier stage.  I know I am not cool, hell I’m 36, it’s cool to not be cool at my age, and all of this is confusing as hell, but it’s simplest to stay I’m not stuck, I chose this, I’m a Fanboy, and I read some weird stuff.  Deal with it.

Attack of the Book #1

While this sounds like a better title for a story about the Jehovah’s Witnesses who came to my door this weekend trying to save me from ditches, beer, fornicating, and other things generally agreed upon to be fun, it is actually a title for the first book review in a series of reviews of everything I read.  Yes, lucky you, you get to hear about a cool book this time, and yes you should read more.

And it is a cool book I’m beginning the series with; OMEN, a Fate of the Jedi book in the Star Wars series, written by the talented Christie Golden, while you might already want to debate this.  Sure I could write a review about As You Like It, or Finnegan’s Wake, or some of the nerdy stuff I have been reading the past few weeks, but I don’t expect to say anything that hasn’t already been said about those books while there’s a lot to say about Star Wars.

For instance:  there are Star Wars books.  Lots of them.  Hard to believe, I know, but they’ve been fleshing out the stories told in the movies with additional science fiction novels for a long time now.  I don’t know when exactly the first in the series came out, I could look it up and seem wiser, but it had to be back in the 80s because for as long as I can remember these titles have been piling up and piling up and piling up.  They are using the books to explore from 3500 years before the first movie, to about 35 years after the last movie - of course these movies were released out of order, so you are already confused - but if you’re with me, I don’t have to tell you, the Star Wars universe is big: bigger than future movies could possibly cover.  There have to be over 100 books in the series now, heck, the list takes three pages of fine print to list, and everyone from Timothy Zahn to Terry Brooks has written one, it’s a very big clubhouse.

The thing is, the books can be very good.  Sure, some of them are stinkers, aimed at young adults, or just fleshed out side notes on the Clone Wars that seem like strange footnotes in a long fictional history, but others are grown up, entertaining, page turners, that keep some of your favorite characters alive while illuminating aspects of the Force and the Dark Side for those infected by the story line and unable to get enough.

This review is specifically aimed at the uninitiated:  so I will throw out a SPOILER ALERT right here, if you don’t want to find out that Luke Skywalker got married, had a kid, and then his wife died, and now father and son have been banished and are looking for lost force techniques previously studied by Jacen Solo, son of, yes, Leia and Han, who was the emperor of the galaxy for a short while before turning Sith and going bad, then you missed this sentence.

The books can seem busy, or they can flow, it depends on how many of the old ones you have read to some degree.

I loved OMEN, the second book in the Fate of the Jedi series, because they are playing off a schizophrenic symptom to create psychological drama.  Specifically: certain Jedi are getting confused to the point where they think everyone around them has been replaced with fakes, replicas, or clones, while implying the Jedi are either infected, or insane.  This book doesn’t solve the mystery, but it does throw a few Jedi into total insanity and I love it.  Jedi need to go insane.  They are pretty tightly wound bunch of psuedo-buddhists trying to save the Universe from the dangers of darkness, (look it’s a moral relativistic term, they still love Lando Calrissian and talk about him all the time.  Darkness is dangerous not in a skin tone sense, but in a big black Darth Vader sense.  Yeah, it is a little confusing).  Before I get sued, let me say this: I love the books.  You should read them.  This is an advertisement for the Fate of the Jedi Series, (and I have no money if you are thinking of suing).

So: crazy Jedi, Sith, and it was short - I don’t think the book broke 300 pages - all made it an awesome page turner tour de force, ahem, and I think if you have not read anything in this series, and you think you love Star Wars, you are really missing out.  If you need assistance, go to the bookstore and find the Star Wars books, (this is not hard, it’s near science fiction), and open any of the books and look a few pages inside the front cover.  There you will find the massive chart of all eras, and get to decide where you want to start your exploration of a galaxy that is, without a doubt, one of the coolest.

For those who say, “hey, you’re just a crazy schizophrenic to like Star Wars, and what is going on in Joyce, and why didn’t you write about Shakespeare?”  Let me allay you literary fears, these Star Wars books won’t bite you.  Except perhaps in an infectious, vampiric, lust for the blood of these pulpy paperbacks, way.  It is an addiction, to get involved with these different fantasy universes, (see comic book posts for more), as I know they will be churning out more books in the series even long after I am dead and gone.  But that’s kind of the point: the Star Wars Universe is strong like the Force, it has been expanded, and there are a lot of us out here addicted so back off literary person!  Read what you like, I say.  And I do....

The End of Writing

No, I’m not done blogging, that’s not what this is about.  After a break for a week I return with a lot of excitement for this medium.  I guess I could call this blog “what end writing?” but that’s pretty heavy and philosophical and not really what I’m after.  I am reconsidering the role writing plays in my life and thought I would let you in on what I’ve decided.

After five years I have too small an audience to sustain the work of writing.  Writing is work.  Calling writing your job I think entails getting paid for it, but whether or not you get paid it is still work.  If the work justifies the expenditure of time and effort with commensurate healing or entertainment as the end result I guess it could be called a volunteer job.  If you are writing to no audience, for no money, and accomplishing little healing, I think you have to consider whether you are only in it for the entertainment you get out of it yourself.

I wrote for a long time with the full intention of eventually getting paid for the effort.  These dreams have largely faded.  Let’s be clear, I’m not after money for money’s sake, but as an indicator that the work is valued.  I might give away all the money I make to charities, but I can use dollar amounts to talk about one sense of value of my writing.  This career is a tough one to break into, and even when one has some success it is very difficult to pay all your bills as a writer.  Serious writers tend to teach or do some other career to make ends meet, and commercial writers can find a lot of success but also a lot of competition in the established genres.  It is wonderful hearing about success stories, but long term success requires a lot of luck, talent, and understanding of the writing marketplace; I have learned about the marketplace but I can’t do much about my luck or talent levels, so it looks like I won’t get paid for my efforts.

I don’t think you can make an argument that you are contributing if you have no audience.  Writing in a vacuum, to be saved digitally on-line for eternity, might please the writer, but I don’t think it’s much of a contribution. I believe in art for art’s sake, but you can’t call that a job, volunteer or otherwise; art for art’s sake is instead a philosophy to beautify your life and the life of others, and it has to be integrated into a full life, including work.

Writing works better as a clear cut entertainment with me designated as the entertained.  As such it is exciting and fun, and I find it more stimulating than the television I don’t watch.  But this process of writing, without any audience, is just me entertaining myself; it is not morally or ethically much different than television, comic books, listening to music, or whatever it is one enjoys.  That may seem harsh, but I think it’s the truth.

Maybe it could be argued that by occasionally sharing my work, as I do, with friends and family, the art is justified.  This is still a type of play however, a part of an incomplete life without making a contribution.  Unless I am reaching the numbers of people where my writing could be considered a job or career, I am just enriching other’s experience of my self.  Not a bad plan, and I’ll keep at it, but only on a part-part-time basis.

I thought for a brief moment that if I blogged every day about everything important in the universe I could justify this habit as work, but no.  This is just me entertaining myself, and as such, blogging is important but not very disciplined.

This is all a very long way of saying that I think I have found a job.  I hope I will soon start working as a peer advocate in the mental health profession here in Dover, Delaware.  This is a job not in the sense that I will earn money (although I will, and there is a sense of value there), but I consider it a job in that I will be contributing and helping others lead happier healthier lives.  If I could say the same about my writing I’d be torn as to whether or not to pursue it, if I thought I could make a contribution, as indicated by having an audience.

For those of the persuasion that one should toil in obscurity for all of one’s life to make great art and never look back, I have to ask if they are over valuing their work or the work of their loved ones.  This is not Van Gogh’s time, very few artists can slip through the cracks here in America.  We live in an age where there is no shortage of books and written material, mostly a shortage of interested readers when television, movies, video games, music, and all the varied entertainments of modernity compete in the same marketplace.  If you compete and are a success, more power to you, you’re probably a lot more talented than I am.  If you are one of the many who labor at your art with no audience, like I did, I don’t know what to tell you.  This isn’t advice for others, just me hearing myself talk, and that’s my point.

While true persistence is necessary to eventual success and no one makes it without some effort, perhaps a good rule of thumb is five years of trying to be an artist without an audience.  Working on your art beyond five years is important too, but doing so full time might be a waste of your potential to create positive change in your world and your community.

I’m dropping the pretension that I work at writing, if you can believe it, I do this kind of stuff for fun...