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Column:
Comic Book Junkie
"Moving"
By Matt Yocum
Published: 2006-06-29
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I write this on the eve of leaving the United States. In less than
a week, my wife and I will be boarding a plane bound for overseas,
heading to the Middle East for three years to work in a U.S. embassy.
I type this now on a laptop in a hotel, living out of a suitcase while
on vacation prior to our move. There are stacks of comics in thick,
plastic Free Comic Book Day bags scattered around our small room.
Even though I will remain writing with ComicCritique.com, even knowing
I’ll be receiving my comics every other week from an internet
retailer, even knowing I can hop online and join the melee of comic
cussing and discussing whenever I want, as I sit here I find myself a
bit sad that I have to leave behind the world of comics we have in the
U.S.
There will be no more conventions I can hit, wandering the
alleyways of the weird and wild where I find myself home. I made it
to the Wizard World L.A. convention two years in a row, the Baltimore
ComicCon last summer, and the Wizard World Philadelphia convention
just over a week ago. Baltimore is coming up again, and I’m sad
I can’t shoot up there from Washington, D.C. to join CCdC
collaborators as they walk the con.
There will be no more comic shops I can enter, slowly browsing the
shelves for titles that might have missed my eye. Even when I go on a
business trip for work, I find myself scouting out the local comic
shop, checking out what they have to offer. Just over a week ago I
visited family in Colorado and made it a point to hit the shop in the
mall, not so much to buy anything as to be surrounded for a short bit
by comics and regain my sanity after too much time in the real world.
I will no longer have the regular meetings where I join a
preponderance of the ComicCritique.com collaborators at a pizza joint,
spilling soda and stories of our love of comics, sometimes agreeing,
sometimes arguing over life, politics, and most of all comics and
loving every minute of it.
I already miss all of it. The cons, the shops, the community. And
I haven’t even left yet. Maybe I’m just sad because,
having lived overseas before and acquired my comics out of a box for
two years, I know that it’ll be a dry time away from the ocean
of comics heaven found in the U.S. Each box I open will certainly be
a slice of home, like opening a Christmas present every two weeks.
But that can’t beat walking into a shop and pulling them off the
rack, surrounded by titles that you will never read but certainly
admire just for having made it to the shelf.
I’ll continue to be into comics. I’ll continue to try
and break into the industry myself as a writer, no matter how busy my
day job gets. I’ll even continue to write for ComicCritique,
perhaps bringing a new and unique perspective as I see what it’s
like on the other side of the world. But I will certainly miss home.
Home for me is not a particular city nor a particular state. Home for
me is the United States, inside a comic shop.
Feel free to email me at myocum@comiccritique.com
and if you’d like to learn more about me, go to
www.mattyocum.com.
—CCdC—
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