It was embarrassing back when zits were common. But only a little. Zits were worse, and there was no way to hide the little bastards. They always returned for encore performances. Comic books could be hidden, in mere seconds if nee
d be. That way chicks would only see the Black Sabbath posters. There would be no question to the coolness.
It’s not like comic books are that lame. They’re only a little lame and monumentally amazing. And I was reading them, Marvel titles mostly, for a very long time, longer than the zit parade stuck around – and that juvenile time might have been better spent chasing budding young girls, but that’s debatable and not the point. Maybe the time would have been better spent reading Lovecraft and Tolstoy, as some of my friends did, or Anne McAffrey and Kurt Vonnegut, as other friends did. Instead of reading classic Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, pouring over John Byrne and Steve Ditko, Ann Nocenti, Chris Claremont and Todd McFarlane, I should have been sucking in the crap found on the horny, learned trails blazed by America’s Road Scholars.
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Patrick Whitehurst 