Used to be hard to get nerd stuff.

Whenever I check one of the pop culture sites I'm overwhelmed by the amount of nerd stuff that is offered. Amazing. Toys, games, comics, books...tchotchkes and random knick-knacks.

What I remember is 39 years ago at Pegasus Books when we had to search high and low for anything nerdy. Even D & D was new and rudimentary. Comics were way off the mainstream. Science Fiction and Fantasy were still inching their way toward the respectability.

Right now, I can go onto a book liquidation site and finds dozens of Star Wars books at discounts. Four decades ago any and all Star Wars product was instantly snapped up.

I'm not sure why it took so long for the commercial culture to catch up. It's like they fought it every step of the way--or simply didn't believe it was real. It's hard to remember now the doubt I encountered when the first Spider-man movie was announced. I mean, I remember thinking if I had any money I'd buy up all the Marvel stock I could afford. (I had no money...dammit.)

I had a hard time finding book distributors who would deal with us. Toy distributors wouldn't even answer the phone. Game distributors were available, but difficult to work with. We had the comic distributors--but they carried only comics. Few toys or games and no graphic novels.

I don't think people today understand how this avalanche of nerd stuff wasn't inevitable--and has gathered steam as time goes on. When I first bought the store I was on the constant look out for anything nerdy that was available to me.

Now the job is to try to pick the stuff that meets my store the best. When I see pictures of other comic stores, they have cool nerd stuff that makes me wonder why I didn't get it. One comic retailer just announced that his Funko toys were outselling his new comics. To which I say, "Wow!" (Maybe I should be getting more Funko...)

When I hear complaints from nerd culture I always want to shout--"This is amazing! Cool movies, cool toys, cool books, cool games! Be grateful you ingrates!!!

Hey, when I was a kid, the only SF movies around were giant killer bugs. Batman was a joke. Star Wars was a wet dream.

It all looks "cool" in hindsight, but at the time it was a big disappointment to read a Heinlein novel and then see some low budget science fiction movie that more likely than not was a parody.

Just saying, that nerd culture has taken over--and that would have been impossible to predict.

And I think it's wonderful.

(Oh, and we had to walk five miles to school...up hill both ways.)