This weekend is Wondercon, San Francisco's local version of Comic-Con, and I spent most of the day yesterday rubbing shoulders with comic book luminaries like Y the Last Man scribe Brian K. Vaughn and Top Shelf's head honcho Brett Warnock. Even better, I ran into most of the staff of the kickass comic book blog Newsarama, as well as the legendary Brian Hibbs, owner of Comix Experience. Graeme McMillan, fanboy extraordinaire, allowed me to tag along with him while he wandered around the booths in the vendor room. Among the herds of nerds, we spotted civil liberties lawyer Jennifer Granick (pictured at right with BSG's Richard Hatch!), CBS movie reviewer James Rocchi, and ZDTV's Roger Chang (looking unbelievably cute, as usual).
Though I have been to many science fiction conventions, this was my first time at a con devoted principly to comics. Seeing as I was surrounded by a zillion comic book geeks, I wanted to clear up a few mysteries. First of all, what do the creme de la creme of comic book geeks call themselves? Among hackers, the preferred term is "leet," from the word "elite" and often spelled 1337. Among SF nerds, there is SMOF, or the Secret Masters of Fandom. But comic book geeks, according to informal poll I conducted, have no equivalent phrase.
"We're too self-loathing to think that we're better than anyone else," Graeme McMillan said.
I asked if perhaps they just use the term "fanboy."
"No, fanboys are everybody here -- that's not elite," said Strangeways author Matt Maxwell.
Brian Hibbs strolled by, and seemed deeply confused by the idea of an elite comic book geek. "Um, how about just geek? Embrace that. Or fanboy. That's good too."
"But those aren't specialized terms," I protested.
"Collector?" suggested Charlie Anders.
"Gods?" Brian chimed in.
"Or assholes?" Graeme added, then mused: "Hey, that's a good name for a blog post: Gods and Assholes."
So there you have it, kiddies: there is no name for what you become if you ascend to the top of comic book fandom. If you have any ideas for what I should call the gods and assholes of comic book fandom, let me know.
