Coming in alone

One of comic's greatest dickheads once had a regular column called Come In Alone, and because even dickheads can still make some good points, I still think a lot about how the column's run finished with an explanation of its title, and how comics can be a weird solitary experience happening in our head as you read a page - that we all come into comics on our own. 

I've read comics since before I could read, and through them I've felt connected to entire universes, but it's always been a weirdly solitary experience.  The process of reading comics are always so internalised - something to do with the way the brain processes the art - but it was more than that.

(It's a similar thing with my weird relationship with the Rocky Horror Picture Show, something that is famed for its communal joy, and for bringing so many wonderful freaks out of their shells, but is just a thing I want to luxuriate in on my own.) 

And I've always felt a little alone in my comic obsessions, separated from any real kind of comic community. A lot of this was because I was always literally so far away, in a country where somewhere like New York might have been on the moon. I never had any chance of meeting the creators of all the comics I devoured, and while I could easily find out what Steve Englehart's favourite movies are, I usually had no idea what any of these people looked like. 

I'm still shocked to see some of them for the first time in places like Back Issue Magazine. They're both a lot hairier and a lot balder than I ever imagined.

I still feel it when the comic convention circuit kicks off every year, and everybody I follow online is catching up with mates at the bar or on the trading floor, or they're asking their favourite creators where they get their influences from, and I can't even imagine such access. 

The idea of meeting my comic heroes was absolutely terrifying as a kid, and these glorious nerds are still demi-gods in my head. I'm still worshiping the geek kids from Connecticut and sharply witty Scottish legends who wrote my comics.

As a late-period Generation X kid, I was part of the last non-internet adolescence, when  it was so hard to find fellow nerds. Never mind finding somebody who likes Carlos Ezquerra as much as you do, it was shocking enough when you find somebody who liked Monty Python ,(and you end up holding onto them forever).

There was literally one other kid in town who gave a damn about 2000ad and X-Men as much as I did, when we stumbled across each other in Mrs Green's class in 1985. (Still, those friendships forged decades ago are fuckin' tight, I was just on the phone for 45 minutes with that one kid in Ms Green's class about how he just bought X-Men #3 from the 1960s, the forthcoming schedule of Doctor Who programmes and why Marvel Comics Presents comics are so easy to get rid of. Kyle never changes.)

It's so much easier now with online lives, and in this connected age I have slipped into several comic-loving communities, but have met the tiniest fraction of these people outside a screen. I have made loads of mates as an adult in the real world, but can count the number who care about Judge Dredd as much as I do on one hand.

And still, sometimes, when I'm at a tasteful dinner party or something, I wish I was off somewhere quiet with a pile of new comics again. Even after all the despair, alone with all those wonderful universes still doesn't feel like a bad place to be.