Comics and cultivating nerd children

Reihan waxes nostalgic about his happy childhood spent as a comic-book nerd. Ah, memories. Though it's pretty clear that Reihan's interest was more serious and certainly longer lasting than mine was, I was a voracious comics reader as a kid. I learned to read at an early age, and threw myself into comics with great abandon. My tastes were catholic: my favorites were the DC Comics (Superman, Batman, et al.), but interestingly, though I loved the Fantastic Four, I never got into the Marvel Comics universe. Something seemed not quite right there; I preferred the less ambiguous DC universe. I seem to recall at some point DC and Marvel put out some collector's issues involving their most popular characters in the same adventure. That struck me as dangerously weird and unsettling for some reason.

I also loved Dennis the Menace, and adored Archie comics, and spent way more time than I should have trying to figure out why Betty was better in every rational way, but I couldn't help approving of Archie's decision to date the bitchy Veronica. But I worried over whether I identified more with the hamburger-obsessed ironist Jughead, or the shrimpy intellectual Dilton Doily. The Harvey comics universe was also a happy place for Your Working Boy, especially Richie Rich, though I was put out with him for having his impoverished friends Freckles and Pee-wee continue to live in poverty, considering his riches. And boy, did I ever covet having a big friend like Cadbury! (And boy, did I ever wonder why nobody in my world ever said "Ahem" -- pronounced "ah-hem"; I thought we must be deficient in some way). Casper the Friendly Ghost, however, always was a wuss, though I enjoyed reading his stuff. I wasn't terribly discriminating. Hell, I even read Little Lotta.

The true love of my comics life, though, was Mad magazine. It's the only one of my childhood comics obsessions that I truly believe changed my life, and not just because it turned me into the sort of weirdo Southern child who would drop Yiddish words into everyday conversation for effect. Mad changed me, I think, because it cultivated a deep and lasting sense of irony. Mad was astonishingly subversive, and I ate it up. I didn't know why I loved the Mad view of the world, and why it was so different from what I was growing up with, but I just did. The best thing about being sick as a kid was getting to lie in bed all day with a stack full of Mads that I'd read a thousand times, and going through them once more. I was like a medieval monk with a Psalter, I was.

At some point, though, can't say when, the allure of comics wore off for me. My mom saw I wasn't interested, and threw most of them out (seriously, I can't think about this too much, or it grieves me). And that was that. Years later, when I was in college, I overheard a fat, socially awkward kid in one of my classes say, in all seriousness, "Batman's not a real superhero. He doesn't fight real villains, he just beats up people who rob gas stations." I thought, There but for the grace of God....

Now, though, I have a son of my own who is very much like I was. He reads constantly. But aside from some Tintins I bought not long after he was born, comics aren't part of Matthew's life. Until I read Reihan's post, I hadn't really noticed, nor had I wondered why that is. I think availability is the main reason. When I was a kid, you bought comics at the supermarket and the drugstore. They were sold from racks. You can't find those anymore. In fact, I don't know where you could buy comics, aside from the comic book store, and I don't know where we have one near us. I've seen manga books in the Borders, but that's about it. I shudder to think what time and fashion has done to my old comic heroes. They've probably got Richie Rich crusading against global warming, and Archie and the gang evangelizing for safe sex. But I don't really know, because it seems that finding comics requires a special trip, instead of running across them as part of everyday life. Too bad.

But now we come to the point of this post, and it's to ask advice: at what point in a nerd child's life is it wise to introduce them to Monty Python? I ask because I know that once I open that door to my 8-year-old, we'll have passed a milestone, and given how he is, we'll be talking about the Knights Who Say Ni for a year or longer. Which is fine with me: a properly cultivated nerd child should develop a healthy interest in all things Python, and I count it as a deprivation that I didn't hear about the Pythons until college. But what age is the proper age to start? I put that question to the room.