LUDIC LOG

Some 1980s-vintage comics came into the shop today, and I spent altogether too much time paging through the credits boxes looking for familiar names. Aside from the pathetic so-it's-come-to-this sensation of having the high point of my work day -- indeed, of my professional career -- be some Lincoln Park matron donating her kid's old issues of "Micronauts", I once again contemplated how my mind is polluted with useless trivia about Filipino inkers of the 1970s. In my dotage, when I am 114 years old and can't remember my name, where I live, or how to crap with my pants off, I will almost certainly remember that Night Girl went out with Cosmic Boy, or that the Badger's real name was Norbert Sykes, or that the only person who sucked worse than Al Milgrom at drawing the Hulk was Herb Trimpe.

Is this a modern affliction? Merely a manifestation of our media-saturated society, of the sort that Marshall McLuhan wrote a lot of dull, overrated books about? The image of a medieval scholar ignoring big stacks of illuminated memos from Jehovah so he can read issue #344 of "Ye Adventures of the Lord's Temporal Justice Squadronne" is mightily appealing, but I just don't see it happening. Those people had what princes of dorkitude like myself lacked: an agonizing childhood, a lot of pressure to make something of themselves, and a noticeable dearth of sugary treats and junk culture to blow their parents' disposable income on. Lucky Renaissance fuckers. Still, nursing the fantasy that I, too, could have written "The City of God" or systematized a method of biological classification were it not for my childhood proximity to a 7-11 with a well-stocked "Hey Kids, Comics" rack and a stellar weekly rotation of Slurpee flavors is a great comfort in these wasted times.