{"id":11610,"date":"2015-03-16T14:48:14","date_gmt":"2015-03-16T19:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/blog1\/?p=11610"},"modified":"2015-03-16T14:48:14","modified_gmt":"2015-03-16T19:48:14","slug":"a-boy-and-his-comics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/blog1\/?p=11610","title":{"rendered":"A Boy and His Comics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ugh, my right hand and wrist are killing me. I just spent hours scrolling through Amazon.com\u2019s comic and graphic novel sale and then their selection of DC comic graphic novels. My faux nephew Jacob\u2019s birthday is at the end of the month and along with the stuff I know he wants, Nerf guns and\/or Pokemon cards, I have my mind (or probably more accurately my heart) set on getting him a graphic novel. For those of you who don\u2019t know, a graphic novel is a collection of comics bound together into a book. It usually covers a story arc. <\/p>\n<p>Now the sticky wicket of course is that Jacob is still young and most of the comics I read are definitely adults only. It\u2019s on days like this that I miss my old comic book store. Both owners were insanely knowledgeable and I have no doubt they could have taken my taste in comics and cross referenced it with Jacob\u2019s age and the next thing I know there would be several graphic novels on order. With them out of business, I\u2019m left reading online reviews and making judgments based on cover art. If you have a good local comic book store, support them!<\/p>\n<p>There I am, scrolling through the DC comic category of the comics and graphic novels of Amazon.com. So many memories surface scanning through the titles. The first comic I read was the graphic novel \u201cSandman: Preludes &#038; Nocturnes\u201d and it\u2019s still available and came up in the search. \u201cWatchmen\u201d, which was the book Jim gave me to read while we were dating. I saw the first Batman graphics that I read. \u201cPreacher: Gone to Texas\u201d and \u201cV for Vendetta\u201d that a customer loaned to me when I worked in retail. The list goes on. I was surprised by how many emotions just remembering the books evoked.<\/p>\n<img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/BM-DETECTIVE-VOL2-195x300.jpg\" alt=\"But perhaps not this Batman for the boy.\" width=\"195\" height=\"300\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11612\" srcset=\"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/BM-DETECTIVE-VOL2-195x300.jpg 195w, https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/BM-DETECTIVE-VOL2-666x1024.jpg 666w, https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/BM-DETECTIVE-VOL2.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 195px) 100vw, 195px\" \/>\n<p>And eventually those are the feelings I want for Jacob. The DC universe is often criticized for being relentlessly dark. Sadly, in many ways, that is the real world that my faux nephew is growing up into. People are right, the DC universe is populated with crumbling utopias, corrupted paradises, and realities coming apart at the seams. Often the heroes in these worlds are mentally unstable billionaires, fallen angels, humans that court demons, animated vegetable matter, stage magicians, orphaned aliens, and fairy book characters on the run.<\/p>\n<p>Yet despite how messed up the world is, and how screwed up they are, they always find something worth saving in the world, and something worth saving in each other. There\u2019s a beauty in that. It\u2019s that kind of shit that helps a boy become a man. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The importance of comic books and the headaches of gift shopping.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,31,32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11610"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}