HowToKillPeople.com|

Ladies and gentlemen this is the month of March and there is a very important event that takes place this month. It’s a day that everyone should be aware of and I’m not talking about the holiday for drunken Irishmen. No boys and girls within this month lies one of the greatest days on the calendar: My Birthday!!!! Now my birthday is not a celebration of typical fare. It is grand. It is epic. Hell, in my opinion, it’s the most important day of the year. There’s actually an event that takes place surrounding my birthday that has come to be known as “Trav-a-palooza” - which is actually a term my fiancé coined, proving that she thinks my birthday is just as important as I do.

Jimmy “Mouth of the South” Hart, guest of honor at Trav-A-Palooza

Trav-a-palooza is an event that takes place on the weekend of, or immediately following, my birthday. It’s a three day extravaganza of booze, wrestling, airsoft and any form of shenanigans that I find entertaining. This year the inaugural event will be seeing the most ass kickingest movie ever made: 300…in IMAX. If there’s a better way to spend your birthday than watching a bunch of foreigners getting their shit ruined - on a four billion foot high screen - I don’t want to know about it. But with the idea of starting my birthday watching a comic book turned movie I came to a conclusion: My birthday, my month, my website – it’s time to talk about one of my favorite subjects of all time: COMIC BOOKS!

This month is hereby christened Comic Book Month on Howtokillpeople.com and I’m virtually shooting my load on the subject. Now all of you weirdos can stop right there and take your hands out of your fucking pants because there is no way in hell I’m discussing that psychotic Japanese Manga shit. Its fucking ass backwards and the Japanese’ obsession with little girls is just plain fucking wrong.

But before we get into the meat of the article I want you to understand that in reading this we are going to be diving deep into the murky waters of personal dorkiness. Reading along with this, much like my pro-wrestling article is an acceptance of your own geekiness and is, quite possibly a personal statement that you didn’t get laid until your late twenties…possibly later. Except for me, that is. I was banging Penthouse Pets by the handful during nap-time in kindergarten. I guess I just rule that much. So we’ll take pause right now so that you can go talk your girlfriend/wife into letting you touch her boobies before we continue. Trust me; it will make you feel better. If you’re a girl and you’re reading this: go find another girl and touch her boobies…YES, THAT’S FANTASTIC. Maybe you girls should shower? You’re awfully dirty…shit, sorry about that, I disappeared into the library of Lesbians in Jail Porno Theater that plays in my head.

Did you touch a tittie? Ladies if you touched another ladies’ boobies, send me a picture. Have you assuaged your inner dork? Good, let’s move on.

Ever since the dawn of time man has had a need to tell stories but before the written language all he had was pictures. Pictures were used to tell historical accounts of adventures and hunts of the tribe. They told harrowing stories of far off lands and exotic creatures. These stories were used to enlighten, entertain and educate each passing generation

Apparently ancient man hunted Rosie O’Donnell in the wilds of an untamed earth.

With words man was able to tell great stories and elucidate his points and opinions like never before.

My first foray into comic books was when I was a young boy. I was an only child and my parents had recently discarded my homemade napalm kit so I was searching for a new way to kill time without causing mortal harm to stray cats and the homeless. I was out with my grandmother one Saturday morning as she was shopping at garage sales, long before craigslist, and sitting there on a card table was a stack of comics and in each was a new world to explore all at ten cents a piece. It wasn’t until years later that I learned that the comics which whetted my appetite were actually some of the worst ones ever made, but we’ll get into that later in the month.

Comic books aren’t just for kids anymore. Sure there’s Archie and shit like that but the comic book industry recognized a trend a few years ago and made a change. The people who were reading and buying comic books were growing up and likewise their content needed to mature as well. Batman is no longer the perennial father figure but a jaded, hard-assed doom bringer to the criminal class of Gotham. Peter Parker’s not a teenager, he’s a grown man, so now Spiderman has to deal with grown up shit like marriage, kids and how much of his piddly little freelance salary he can blow on lapdances. Hell, just take a look at Marvel’s Civil War saga and you can see just how far the story telling has come. Not to mention the art. Every aspect of the comic book industry has matured and diversified and the readership has benefited.

But the real question is this: why does a 27 year old guy like comic books enough to talk about them for an entire month on his website and what in the hell is he going to say?

This is really a two part question and damn you for trying to confuse me.

Some of you are probably saying, “Travis; you’ve talked about some weird shit in your time but this is by far the dorkiest thing that you’ve ever put out. What in the hell are you thinking?” And if we were having that conversation face to face I’d sucker punch you right in your genitals and call your mother a whore while you were wheezing on the ground. I’ve never hidden the fact that I am childish and geeky, as a matter of fact I hold on to those facts like a lifeline as I become ensconced by bills, school, insurance and other things that come with growing up. Comic books are like watching a movie. Each panel is like a piece of film snipped out of the reel and placed on the page. They’re hyper-realistic parts of a greater artistic masterpiece and each one could stand on its own. I’m a sucker for art and a well told story and to get that each month for two bucks an issue makes every trip to the comic shop like Christmas.

Secondly: How can I talk about comics for an entire month? Truthfully I could talk about them almost every day, much to the chagrin of my fiancé. I could cover so many different aspects of comics and the comic book industry that I could, quite literally devote this site to just that topic. But there are other people who have done it already. But here’s the list of things I’ll be covering this month:

The Greatest Comic Book Movies Ever Made
The 50 Best Comic book characters
The 50 Worst Comic book characters
Artists, writers & titles you should check out
And lastly: what type of superhero I would be.

Not to mention the fact that I’ll be covering other various aspects at My Blog, and in my weekly column titled: Your Parents Hate You, over at Faster Than The World. (My articles go online every Thursday). So for all of you geeks out there, and you closet geeks who don’t want to admit that this is right up your alley, this is for you. Sit down, strap in and no matter how excited you get by the sheer fact that this is going to overload all of your geek receptors… for god’s sake…put your boners away – no one wants to see that shit.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 6th, 2007 at 3:03 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.