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One thing that really annoys me is when television shows do "comic book episodes." It's usually crime shows that do these kinds of episodes... In the episode, there is almost always a comic book fan who is either a murderer or a murder victim. It's not that that bothers me that much. Or even the fact that they almost always mock comic culture in the process. My beef is that they always get that culture wrong.

Whenever I see a show like that, it betrays the writers' woeful ignorance of comic book fans and the comic culture that we all are a part of. Take for instance a show I saw recently. The characters in the show went to great efforts to refer to the comics as "graphic novels." It was as if they were saying: "Look at us, comic fans! Look how hip we are, down with the lingo you people use!"

But still, they don't seem to have any idea that just because something has words and pictures it's not necessarily a graphic novel. No one outside of comics seems to have any idea what the difference is between a comic book, a trade paperback, and an honest-to-God graphic novel.

And yes, as I said before, there's always the obligatory mocking of comic fans. "Look at the geeks in their costumes! They so silly!" And yes, we often are. But I don't see how my comic book hobby is any different from, say, someone obsessed with football. But if someone gets murdered on a football field rather than a comic convention, the shows rarely see fit to poke fun of that fandom.

I guess we just need to get more comic fans (many of whom are aspiring writers) out there writing television. Get moving, people! Because I want to write prose...