We have already covered the evolution of computer and video games and the direct relationship between them and the rise of the ‘nerd’ and ‘geek in society. This week I want to cover a much older topic: Comic books!

First, I begin with a disclaimer: I have never read a comic book. (Oh the horror! you say?) My two closest friends were raised on comic books, and thus have had them ingrained into their lives just like most comic book people. The closest to comic books that I got as a child was watching the old cartoon “Batman and Robin” with my dad on the occasional weekend afternoon. It was enjoyable sure, but keep in mind that I hadn’t realized I was a massive ‘nerd’ until I was thirteen. Everything in this post will be either from friends or the internet.

Comic movies are now some of the top-grossing films of all time. Why? The short answer is that when we nerds love something we LOVE something and are willing to pay the 9+ dollars to see our favorite characters on opening weekend. The long answer will be explained in this post.

The very first comic was created by a Swiss man named Rudolphe Töpffer in 1927. It was called “The Adventures of Obidiah Oldbuck” and had 40 pages all with several pictures captioned with words beneath each. Comic books were introduced to America in 1842 when “Obidiah Oldbuck” was published here. Over time they have evolved into important artifacts in cultural studies as well as art.

Comics often reflect the times in which they are written. The most obvious example of this is Captain America. First appearing in Marvels (then called Timely Comics) “Captain America Comics #1” in 1941, the Captain was a young man, then called Steve Rogers, born during the depression to poor parents who wished to join the military to fight the Nazis during WWII. However, his dreams were crushed when he was rejected by the military due to frailty. When Rogers pleads to be accepted to fight, a U.S. Army General informs him of a top secret program called Project: Rebirth. Rogers accepts and after a few tests is given the “super-soldier serum” and blasted with “vita-rays” emerging as a model of health and fitness. Rogers eventually adopts the name Captain America and goes to fight the Nazis, eventually committing many heroic acts and doing a ton of the good in the world. [1]

Today this reads like a great story, but in 1941 America WWII didn’t reach American shores until December that year with the attack on Pearl Harbor. To children over America picking up Captain America’s stories, they were reading current events. In fact, the Captain was practically American war propaganda. The picture of American blue eyed, blonde haired health, the Captain’s miraculous rebirth was enough to get any boy interested in the glories of war.

Today comics still reflect social and political turmoils.

Given that Spider-man is known to live in New York City the authors included 9-11 in one of their issues. They have also broached social topics such ranging from feminism to homosexuality.

When all the X-Men are paralyzed by Siren, Marvel Girl-Jean Grey is the only one available to stop Magneto’s plans.

The cover of an “Astonishing X-Men” issue in 2012 about the character Northstar who in the issue proposes to his boyfriend. Other well known gay characters include DC’s Batwoman (as of 2006) and Marvel’s Mystique (bisexual via her shape shifting abilities).

Comics are a very valid form of art as well as a cultural study. Comic books are an artform. combining both story telling and spectacular visual imagery. As seen below in the page from DC’s “Fury of Firestorm” you can see that there is a balance between text and artwork. This balance is important in showing the creators preferences and meaning. Some comics are heavy on art while others are heavy on text.

There are two important factors in the creation of a comic: the writer and the artist. The write is the person who creates the characters, the story line, and the plot. The artist, sometime divided up into penciller, inker, and colorist, supplies the vision. Both are equally important as their existence is what the advent of a comic depends upon. Very few comics have the perfect match of a great writer with a great artist.

(This is a sample page just to show layout. There is much more beautiful artwork and text work out there please look some up, some of it is soul moving)

This cultural and artistic importance in our society today can be related to the influx of superhero or comic book movies recently. I can only hope that these movies continue to be part of our pop culture because comics truly have a lot of good to say about our world.

[1] http://www.marveldirectory.com/individuals/c/captainamerica.htm

We ended last weeks post with the development of computers. Very similarly to the computer, another source of entertainment has developed rapidly.

VIDEO GAMES!

We all love those, right? He does:

We’ve all been there, right? (right? or is that just me?(guys? back me up)).

Video games come in many varieties from console, to computer, to hand held. I hope to keep this post a bit more personal than that massive history lesson I imposed on you all last week. That being said, I will give you a brief history of gaming.

The very first video game was offered to the patent office in 1947. (Yes, that’s not a typo. 1947!) It was called a “Cathode Ray-tube Amusement Device” and was issued the next year in December. It used an analog device to control a dot on the screen intended to simulate a missile being launched at various fixed points on the screen. From there the video game could only advance. Through the 50’s and 60’s various simple games came out including: “NIMROD”, “OXO” a tic-tac-toe simulator, and “Tennis for Two.”

It wasn’t until the 1970’s that things started to heat up. This was the advent of gaming and the names of many of these games should be known to most of us: “Pong” and “Space Invaders” to name two. However these games, much more sophisticated than their predecessors, were much larger and more expensive. Along comes the arcade in the 80’s. Video game arcades, something most of us don’t really think about while we play our PlayStation in our pajamas, were the hub of activity for anyone between the ages of 8 and 17 who had some pocket change.

Eventually with the coming of home video game systems began, the arcade slowly faded away, eventually reaching the almost non-existent point it is at today. While the very first widely known home console, the Magnavox Odyssey, came out in 1975, the market was still very small, and not many companies were willing to invest yet. The Odyssey was the first to run using a standard television which lead to its commercial success.

Companies Atari and Nintendo Entertainment are some of the better known builders of the console take-over. (no pun intended). From this moment on video games entered into the average home of any American. They were prominently featured in many movies of the 80’s and 90’s. Two very good ones that I recommend are “Tron”(1982) and “War Games”(1983).

Video games today are less of a nerdy thing to play than they ever have been. With the advent of many genres of games video game companies have seized the opportunity to spread the love of gaming to as many people as possible. For the jock their are games like FIFA and Madden, for the classicist there are still Legend of Zelda and Mario games. For the adventurer there are games like the Uncharted Series and Tomb Raider. For those with the lust for blood there are games like Grand Theft Auto and first-person shooters like Call of Duty and Halo. And for the intellectuals there are more plot driven games like Assassin’s Creed and the Mass Effect trilogy(for now, #4 come out in 2015!).

This immense variety by itself is evidence enough for how the gaming industry has contributed to the de-stigmatization of gaming and its nerdy connotations.

“Age of the geek, baby!” – Alec Hardison from TNT’s Leverage

So, here we are, step one of our journey exploring why ‘geek’ is so ‘chic’ in the 21st century. At this point I want to explore the effects of electronics on nerd culture. Electronics are essentially the base of modern nerd culture. They are constantly improving and evolving. Due to this we see a very quick turn over of electronics, making it difficult to make this a mastered field for anyone not dedicated to it.

In the 1980s and 90s computers were something that was still new, something that many people believed would die. From this, those that made a fuss over computers were not the general public. Those who dove into the world of computers were the typical ‘smart guy with glasses and a pocket protector’ types. To understand the development of computers we need to do a brief history lesson.

*clears throat* The first personal computer, or PC, was developed by John Blankenbaker and was called the Kenbak-1. This was in 1971 just prior to the invention of microprocessors, meaning that it had very little storage. It also had no screen so it was very far from what we, today, would consider a PC.

Blankenbaker’s company went under shortly after the invention of this product after selling only 40 Kenbak-1s.

The first PC that used a microprocessor was invented in France in 1973, and used an Intel 8008 processor. Almost ever computer I have ever owned has used and Intel processor and I’m sure that “Intel” is a common name to most people even if they don’t know what it is referencing. [1] The more commonly known “first PC” is the Altair 8800 in 1975.

From that point PC’s developed rapidly. With Microsoft’s founding in the April of 1975 and Apple’s in April of 1976 the market for PC’s was booming. The were still expense into the 80’s and many didn’t come with an operating system, but many schools and larger corporations were buying. Other notable companies in the 1980’s include Radio Shack, Hewlett Packard, Atari, and Commodore.

In July of 1985 Commodore released the Amiga 1000, a revolutionary computer. It came with a multitasking OS(operating system), 4096 color-palatte color screen, and stereo sound all for a whopping price of $1,790 with the monitor! With inflation taken into account that is $3815.57 in 2013. [2] Commodore was also the producer of the Commodore 64 one of the most popular computer of the 80’s due to its attractive price tag of $595.[3]

Around this same time (1977-1983) was what some call the “Computer Revolution” many expected the computer to advance society by the end of the decade. But this did not happen. In 1984 the hype of the PC was beginning to fall off. This was the advent of the negative connotations of the ‘nerd’ or ‘geek.’ People began to associate the computer with something that is less than desirable in the society of the 1980’s.

Let’s skip forward to the present day. Computers have evolved into something far greater than the clunky and small minded computers of the 80’s. A computer or two sits in almost everyone’s house these days. The internet has been utilized to its fullest with social media and news sites keeping the entire world plugged in. Everyone who owns a cell phone carries a computer with them everywhere they go. Computers are everywhere!

The commonality of computers seems to be nearly parallel with the commonality of ‘nerds’ or ‘geeks’ in the world.

 1.  http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/personal-computers/17/297

2. http://oldcomputers.net/amiga1000.html

3. http://eightiesclub.tripod.com/id325.htm

Hi, my name is Erin, and I’m a geek.

Twenty years ago most people would never have been comfortable enough, let alone proud enough, to utter that confession aloud. The terms ‘nerd’ and ‘geek’ (for the sake of this blog I will use these interchangeably, but in the nerd/geek word these two words refer to two different types of people) in the 1990’s and before were not something that you claimed for yourself, they were slurs forced upon you by the bullies that gave you “swirlies” between Spanish class and lunch. So when did we decide to reclaim these slurs and turn them into prideful monikers? Why did we decide this? I hope to explore such questions in this blog using my own experiences and photos as well as some information from some of my favorite people in the ‘nerdverse.’ I wish to chronicle the metamorphosis of the ‘nerd’ into the beautiful creature it is today.

My motivations are rooted deep in my childhood. Settle in, because you are all about to go back about 14 years in my life and be drowned in nostalgia. This my friends is the birth of a fairly typical geek. At four I read my first chapter book. It was a “Magic Tree House” book about two kids who go back and encounter dinosaurs. Of course I had perused the pages of the many books in this series before, but had never read one in it’s entirety. The euphoric release that reading gave was life changing.

Later that year I was introduced to a boy who would change my life forever. I’m sure almost everyone in my generation knows him as well. His name was Harry Potter and as my mother read J.K. Rowling’s accounts of his adventures in the “Philosopher’s Stone” my mind was introduced to deep fantasy. As I progressed through grade school I was introduced to other typically ‘nerdy’ things such as the “Star Wars” trilogy (the originals), “Pokemon” (the anime and the cards), Lord of the Rings (which my father quickly grew sick of hearing about or watching), and much more. At the behest of my mother we got our first gaming console when I was 8. It was a Playstation 2 and it was one of my favorite things on this Earth. We hadn’t had a console in the house since my sister and I had played “Rad Racer” on our parent’s old Nintendo. The only catch was that we were only allowed to have video games that were for more than one player. My sister and I couldn’t have cared less.

Aside from electronic sources the movies, books, and games that we played encouraged in my sister and I a healthy love for playing. Our Barbies often went on truly fantastic journeys (akin to full DnD campaigns), played quidditch, and were just generally in mortal peril 90% of the time. Our mother often sewed us elaborate costumes that allowed my sister and I to roleplay as our favorite characters. Most notably as Harry and Hermione, Arwen and Eowyn(Lord of the Rings), Elizabeth and Will Turner(Pirates of the Carribean), Padme and Anakin, and Leia and Luke(Star Wars). We often had sword fights with our plastic lightsabers and took journeys to Mt. Doom to destroy the One Ring.

In high school I blossomed into the nerd that I am today. Partially helped along by having been home schooled, I explored all manner of odd hobbies. From creative writing to archery on horseback I quickly began to dive deeper into things activities that the ‘normal’ person would find either boring or too avant-garde.

A huge factor in this part of my “nerd birth” was the discovery of Renaissance/Medieval Faires. A whole world filled with people that loved to dress up in costumes and talk about all manner of nerdy things from video games to tv-shows.

Oddly enough it wasn’t until I was thirteen that I began to identify as a ‘geek.’ Despite my love of all things nerdy, I didn’t realize until I connected with a friend over our mutual love of “Doctor Who,” a show much more widely known now then it was at the time. We bonded over our love and are still friends today. Since then, she has introduced me to countless things that I love and vice-verse.

My nerd-dom is who I am and I couldn’t be prouder of it. I’m truly glad of the opportunity to be loud and proud about it in today’s society. It may not be a culture widely accepted but we have come a long way since the 1990’s. Thank you for reading this massive wall of text! I hope that you come back to explore more of my cultural musings.