It’s All Relative
Filed under: Comics
The Polite-Nephews are in town this week. Like all of the Polite-Wife’s family, they hail from Nevada. They’ve never seen a cornfield or a herd of cows. The Midwest has been quite a change of pace for them. I think their favorite activity so far has been catching fireflies at night.
The older nephew, at age 12, has just started to appreciate comic books. From movies and TV, he was aware of Spider-Man, the Hulk and a few others. He spent the first several days here paging through my collection of trade paperbacks.
As a treat, when we went to Springfield today (to visit the Lincoln historic sites), we swung by one of the comic book shops there and let him pick out a few issues of his own. He was a little miffed when the Polite-Wife checked out the ratings on each book he wanted to make sure they were age appropriate. It was the first time that I had shopped for comics with a child, and the ratings did help us purchase appropriate titles. Ultimately, we ended up with several issues of Justice League Adventures, Spider-Girl, and Shonen Jump. (As for myself, I ended up finding complete runs of How Loathsome and Pirate Club.)
Now he wants to stop at comic shops when we visit St Louis next week. I think we’ve created a new comic book fan. Christmas shopping just got easier.
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July 18th, 2004 at 8:00 am
My 10-year-old niece quite suddenly became interested in comics a few weeks ago (in part, I think, because she’s convinced I’m “famous” after having a comics story published). I soon realized I don’t have much in my collection that would appeal to a 10-year-old girl or, more importantly, would be age-appropriate. So, I grabbed a few “all-ages” titles at FCBD, grabbed a LIZZY MAGUIRE Cine-manga, and ordered the first AMELIA RULES! trade. Of course, she’s also started creating her *own* comics, which tend to be stories about giant, soldier-eating spiders and haunted houses, so I may have no clue what 10-year-old girls like.
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