My “Sexist Superhero Costumes” piece recently came up on Cracked Classic, meaning  a new wave of retaliatory comments telling me I was enjoying comics wrong. Just like a wave, because they were exactly the same as all the ones before, and are completely unaware that their tide is going out. The funniest are a few people demanding to know if I actually read any of these comics I write about. To which the only possible response is no,  I write tens of thousands of words about loving comics because my cats read them and purr their thoughts into my skull at night, cursing a world which left them incapable of typing up their own opinions.

Worst. Primate psychic transducer between feline neurons and global internet communication system. Ever.

But I must be writing in the right direction because I realized: the assholes are making me an honorary fake geek girl. They’re pulling the “prove yourself” bullshit, the laziest of exclusionary tactics. The question automatically elevates the asker to the position of authority, judge, gatekeeper, and person whose opinion you give a dead Gelth’s ass about. (Note: Gelth are gaseous and thus tragically assless.)

Making the mistake of responding to these self-styled comiscstapo quickly devolves into minutiae based on the ridiculous fiction that a true comics fan is a walking database. No, a true comics fan being someone who likes comics. That’s it and all. Memorizing issue numbers has always been bullshit, but in an age of wikis it’s outright embarrassing.

The question is a decoy designed to prevent you from getting on with enjoying yourself, and any response automatically implies subservience and wasted time. Lucklily you can reverse its polarity to save your time: anyone who asks it isn’t worth it.

Other responses to “Do you even read the comics?”

• “Yes, my favorite issue is fuck you. That’s the one where you go get fucked. It’s a fiction.”
• “Yes, but because I’m not a boy I have to keep harvesting fresh testicles to open the magical male-only pages. Hey, come over here a minute.”
• “Do you even talk to humans?”
• “No, I’ve been faking, I’m actually an infinite number of monkeys controlling a giant robot suit from the Micro-World.”
• “Oh no, I’ve been found out!” Start collapsing to the ground, desperately flailing and grabbing at them. “Look what you’ve done! What a world! I’m melting! MELTIIIIIIING!”
• “Do YOU even read the comics?”
• Laugh directly in their faces. Laugh not because they’re weak, because what they’re doing does have effects (they really are damaging the industry), but laugh anyway because laughter is stronger.

Of course the assholes are wrong. Assholes usually are. I’m not an honorary fake geek girl, because I don’t have to put up with one tenth of a percent of the bullshit the real geek girls get. So I call out these assholes who think you can only be a true fan if you have a little testicular handbag. Because every man does hand that bag, but it’s no excuse for being a dick.