Ha ha, Kat beat me to everything I wanted to say. "Warning: while you were typing a new reply has been posted!" And while I was re-writing I thought of a jillion other things I wanted to say, so um... feel free to scroll past my rambling at any point.
Ewwwwww, Voyager!
That stuff isn't even a shadow of the goodness of the older series. (Just my opinion. My very strong opinion.)
Yes, I completely agree with Kat that the spirit of the show was lost when Gene Roddenberry passed away. He understood that the show was meant more like an utopic moral compass to examine ethical issues and stuff like that. Without him, it just turned into... hmm... a sci-fi soap opera.
Ha ha, yeah, my job is definitely a novelty... I got lucky and got this job in high school, and hung on to it since. It's been easy pocket money all through school.
Honestly, I would kind of do it for free, because I just read comics all day.
But yeah, I also get really tongue-tied when I confront people I admire. I just try to be honest. Mostly I just blurt out a long series of "thank you"s and get funny looks. But I remember one time I met two other comic writers who wrote some of my favourite books. I met Jimmy Palmiotti, and I was a fan of his from when he wrote
21 Down, although I didn't know at the time that he was more famous for inking and art. Everyone else had their stacks of
Catwoman comics or whatever, that they had taken down the line, to get it signed by the writer, the artist, and now the inker — probably just to increase their value, blah blah blah. But I brought him my copy of
21 Down #1. He saw it and was so happy, and declared, "Finally someone brought the good stuff!" I told him that I work in a comic shop and recommend
21 Down to all my customers (which was true). He told me that it meant a lot to him, and I really felt how pleased and touched he was. That made me really happy.
And then there was the time I met Bill Willingham, who writes
Fables, which is a really magnificent comic book... a lot of people bring in number ones or comics that will be worth more or whatever, but I always try to pick the issues that were the most meaningful to me, or that are conversation starters with the writer. I chose a fairly recent issue that had such an emotional ending that it nearly made me cry and I had to read it over and over right away. I told him that, and we were able to have a short conversation about how that part of the plotline was really emotional, and he seemed pleased that a fan had appreciated the craftsmanship he had put into the ending.
Oh boy, now I'm getting way too talkative...
I remember the time when I met J. Michael Straczynski, who is famous for many things, not least of which is creating
Babylon 5. I am by no means a fan of
Babylon 5 (in fact it looked pretty silly, from what I saw of it), but I was blown away by his issue of
Amazing Spider-man that was a response/tribute after 9/11. So I brought my copy of Amazing Spiderman #36 (which is quite rare now, and rather valuable — how I got my hands on a copy is a story in itself). It is often called the "Black Issue" because the cover is all black. I bought a silver Sharpie so that his autograph would show up.
Of course the line up was filled with, um, "very enthusiastic" Babylon 5 fans who had brought all sorts of crazy paraphernalia for him to sign, and I just had my one comic. The fans were quite possessed, jabbering away about obscure Babylon 5 trivia to me and to him, and he smiled patiently and signed their stuff. I brought him my comic and told him how amazing it is — I had actually used it in a presentation for a modern history course, and parts of it make me cry every single time I read it. He was impressed that I was prepared enough to bring a silver Sharpie
but still seemed a little distracted by the prospect of signing hordes of weird Babylon 5 stuff. So I reached out to take my marker back, and he stares at my hand and shakes it, and I'm like, "um, thank you, but I just wanted my Sharpie back", and he laughed and gave it to me. Luke (my boyfriend) was there and said that the look on his face was, "Oh no, I've definitely been hanging around with too many crazy people." It was a funny moment.
Oh phew, that was long-winded!
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