TL;DR
I should have been a comic book geek and have no friends.
***
I remember the first time that I came into contact with comics, not the usual comic strips that are on the newspapers or the occasional Sunday comic strips that are in full colour. I'm talking about those that you need to have a strong devotion to go out to the bookshop to buy the latest issue to get your fix, so to say. Those kind of comics have a serious content to it and that there is no way that all of that can fit in a comic strip or even the Sunday comics section.
My uncle was an avid comic collector of various sorts. One his most extensive comic collections was a series called Commando. This is a series of World War 2 (fictional) stories in different situations, everything from the one man commando hit team to the collective might of the army against the Nazis. That was my first contact with the world of comics. Though everything was in black and white but I was immediately intrigued by the stories that came with each and every issue. The only problem was that my uncle lived in Penang and the only time that I went to Penang was during the Chinese New Year holidays. That was one of the things that I looked forward to when I head up to Penang, to see what are the other comics that he has collected.
Comics also showed me a character that I first loved with a great passion. Back home, I try really hard to stay in a bookstore to read the Archie comic series. Those comics cost a bomb to own for a 7 year old's pocket money. Most bookstore owners don't really mind but you always feel bad about it. When I started to pick up the Archie comics, there was one person that I really stood out and love. One whose set of characteristics formed most of my attractions till today.
Her name was Betty Cooper.
The intelligent, humble, active, very able, understated, gorgeous and very blond girl-next-door Betty captivated me for a long time. Often I always wondered why on Earth Archie still tries to be a player between Betty and Veronica (with a slight inclination towards Veronica), when clearly Betty was the better choice (in my opinion). I also wondered why does Betty bother to entertain Archie's player mode between the both of them. That just angers me on occasion when reading the comics. And even today for Free Comic Book Day when I picked up an Archie comic as one of the free comics going out, I still have the same nostalgia reading them and of course why Betty is still my favourite.
Great stories and great characters in comics have always made me want to read and collect comics since the first time I was exposed to it, though my parents were quick to dismiss them as a wasteful hobby. And so I never got to do it. To think that there are so many comic fans out there and the things that they do or know about makes me think that I could have been one of those comic geeks and have zero social interaction (that is still largely true today). It also made me think what else would I have come out of the closet, so to speak, had I had the opportunity to be properly exposed to it.
Man, was the list long. Musicals, film, fictional books, TV series and the list goes on. It turns out that, with no surprise whatsoever, I live a pretty boring life. No real thing for me to say this is something that I want to do in my free time. My free time constitutes doing nothing and exploring the narrow world that is my reading list in my Feeds that has largely remained unchanged for years now. I've seen some of my friends and colleagues spend lots of time doing the things that they would love to do on the side but sadly I have no such thing to call my own. Not only have I lost feelings in my extremities (it's getting cold here) but I have also lost a lot of feeling for anything.
I have often told people that I am going through quarter life crisis #3, wondering what am I going to do now that I'm here. Lots of questions about what am I going to be and what am I going to do. And strangely enough, reading a comic, started all those questions flooding into my head. Unlike Archie, who despite his player attitude sometimes is still pretty interesting on his own, there is really nothing that I have to offer to people. If anything, I offer stories to anyone with the grace and the ears to hear. I really hope that the long one month holiday/Apple Developer Conference awesomeness might give some answers to the crisis.
Who would I be in the Archie comic universe? Jughead. I just need a hat and a dog. All in due time.
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