Outside Copley Place subway station last night a little old man sold Conan The Barbarian comic books on the street. White-haired and somewhat bedraggled, he must have been in his late sixties, the comic books arranged in a grid pattern beside him on a concrete bench.
"Conan's are here!" he announced to no one in particular. A typical salesman's pitch, but delivered with a strange, quietly strangled shout. "Conan's are here!", as if they had finally arrived after years of frustrating delay, freshly printed, hot off the press featuring the latest news that everybody craved.
Do people read comic books anymore? With the exception of the terminally adolescent it is hard to believe there is a market for them. I imagine that children must limit their reading material to either MacWeek, Nintendo News or Gangsta Rapper Monthly.
And that is a shame, really. As a young boy, I remember reading Dracula Lives and Dr Strange quite frequently. In many respects these illustrated stories were the instigating agent behind what became my passion for reading proper books. The same process must be true for many other of today's avid readers, and therefore the comic book has undoubted value beyond mere entertainment.
Nostalgia being what it is, had the old man been selling Dr Strange he would have made a sale, but since rippling muscles and swords never appealed to me, I strolled by without a second glance, hoping that someone with nostalgic Conan The Barbarian memories would stop.
