Barb Says:
It’s that time again.
Time to study phrenology?
Time to get your teeth cleaned?
Time to Spin the Wheel of Morality?
No! It’s time to interview my husband again!
Barb (to Park): Last time, I asked you about kids’ books. This time, it’s time to talk about other Geek culture subjects:
Barb: What were your favorite cartoons as a kid, and why?
Park: Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, because it actually was pretty well-written and acted dialogue-wise, and had lots of guest-stars from the rest of the Marvel Universe.
—Battle of the Planets, because anime and style.
–Warner Brothers cartoons, because hilarious.
Barb: I got you a “Battle of the Planets” action figure set (still in box) and a t-shirt you wore until it was just threads.
Barb: I love how we quote lines from “Looney Tune” cartoons to each other. I could not love a man who can’t speak Froynlaven. You speak Froynlaven fluently.
Barb: Favorite board games, and why?
Park: As a kid, or now?
–As a kid, Pente. Like Japanese Go but faster. I also liked chess, but since I didn’t have hardly anyone else to play against, I never got more than average or maybe slightly above-average.
–Now, Hidden Leaders and Carcassonne, because easy, simple, and fun and exciting– or soothing, respectively.
Barb: You beat the pants off me when I tried playing Pente with you. You always do great with strategy games. I always do best with word games.
Barb: Favorite movies as a kid, and why?
Park: I did kind of like the James Bond films, but I wanted less kissing and more cool gadgets.
Barb: I was exactly the same way.
Barb: Tron, because of its uniquely beautiful look.
Barb: I discovered Tron on TV. I thought, “I like Jeff Bridges and David Warner, so…” And it was astounding.
Park: Um… as a kid… see, when I was REALLY a kid, we didn’t quite have video rental places yet, so I had to just watch whatever was on… and they didn’t really show Disney movies on Sunday afternoons when I was watching TV (desperate for practically anything). So, uh… I guess I did like Herbie, the Love Bug– they’d show those at school and I found them to be harmless fun.
Barb: Favorite X-Men character, and why?
Park: Nightcrawler, because swashbuckling, because blue was already my favorite color. It was Nightcrawler who recommended watching Captain Blood…
Barb: I was so glad that you got into Captain Blood, as I love old Hollywood movies.
Barb: How’d you get into SF/Fantasy?
Park: Everything in my life steered me toward it. Star Wars and its action figures. The kids’ books I was reading. Magic and outer space and aliens and dragons… I just ate up everything in the library, and then one day I realized there were fantasy and sci-fi books in the adult section of the library, too…
Barb: Favorite SF novels when you first started reading SF?
Park: Hm. I got ahold of The Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffery… Humans land on a planet to colonize it. Great! But every couple’a hundred years, these weird plants from a nearby planet in a wonky orbit get near enough to somehow land on their new planet, and that stuff eats anything organic it touches– it’s like acidic poison ivy falling from the sky. Well, it burns, and the cute flying lizards native to the planet don’t like it, so they genetically engineer their new pets to be big enough to ride and breathe fire, and human dragon-riders burn the falling stuff out of the sky before it hurts anyone…
Barb: Favorite Fantasy novels when you first started reading fantasy?
Park: The Black Cauldron pentology from Lloyd Alexander. Disney didn’t do a great job of adapting it, though, so it’s kind of the secret too-dark Disney film no one likes to talk about.
Barb: I didn’t really realize that it was based on a series of books.
Barb: How’d you discover The Hobbit?
Park: Reading is fundamental, so one day when they were giving away free books, there was one with a wizard and a giant eagle and some dwarves or other little guys, and I was like “I think I’ve heard of this, right?” Boy, I tore through The Hobbit, and then Lord of the Rings… In hindsight, LotR was too slow and got slower the longer it went, but I powered through it, focusing all my willpower to push through the dense prose like with a machete…
Barb: You dragged me kicking and screaming into liking The Hobbit. First, the cartoon adaptations, then we saw LOTR.
Park: As much of it as we could take, anyway. Ralph Bakshi’s version is better.
Barb: Well, I liked the first twenty minutes of it, but then it was, “Walking, Joel, walking,” to paraphrase MST3K. But finally, you read me The Hobbit, and I really enjoyed it.
Barb: Remember when you read me LOTR? Spoiler alert: I said, “…So, they’re going to drop the ring in the volcano by the end of this book?” You just about fell over laughing!
Park: Yeah, because there were TWO MORE WHOLE LONG BOOKS before THAT happened…
Barb: How’d you discover Nine Princes in Amber?
Park: Nathan, from high school. His whole east wall of his room was books. His mother would take her sons to Waldenbooks or wherever now and then and hand them each one of those small baskets and say “fill ’em up.” When even thick paperbacks were barely $2.99, why not? I got my copy from the library, though. Boy, did I burn through those… Nathan was also the one who tried Anne Rice’s vampire novels first. I think he pushed me to read it just so he could have someone else to discuss vampires with. It worked, though.
Barb: On of the first books of yours that you showed me was The Visual Guide to Amber.
Barb: How’d you discover anime/manga?
Park: Well, TV gave me Speed Racer and, later, Battle of the Planets and Star Blazers just because the suits were desperate to hand kids anything that seemed Star-Wars-like. But then much later, two things happened–1. I found a website describing Oh My Goddess and said “my, these Japanese folks are creative, look at them just using World Mythology however they want,” and 2. I decided I liked the look of LUPIN III: THE CASTLE OF CAGLIOSTRO later, and that opened up a wholllllle new world.
Barb: LUPIN III: THE CASTLE OF CAGLIOSTRO was our first Studio Ghibli film.
Barb: You’re a “Star Wars” fan. What about those movies appealed to you?
Park: 1. Lightsabers are inherently awesome, full stop.
2. The Force. They took psychic powers and imbued them with the kind of mysticism you find in Hong Kong martial arts films.
3. Aliens and spaceships are pretty inherently awesome.
4. The special effects were absolutely next-level at the time.
Barb: Tell me all about the “Star Wars” toys you had when you were a kid.
Park: Many action figures. The B-Wing. The Millenium Falcon. The Death Star playset. When you have action figures and playsets (or maybe just action figures), you write and enact whole long stories.
Barb: You got into Marvel at least in part because older relatives had Marvel comics issue runs. What did they have and what did you like best?
Park: Aunt Mary’s boys were pretty specifically Spider-Man fans, with some X-Men. Uncle Bob’s sons were more far-ranging– Stuff including DC’s Arak, which was more world mythology stuff…
Barb: When did you start going to comic book stores?
Park: In Dallas, once I learned to drive. Then again in Lubbock, after I started college.
Barb: Back when we first started living together, we made it a quest to go to every comic book store in Ohio!
Barb: What comics did you start buying in comic book stores?
Park: Um. Mostly whatever Marvel and DC were putting out, heavy emphasis on Marvel. Some Image stuff when that started coming along… but mostly not. Mostly Marvel. X-Men, Avengers, Amazing Spider-Man. Uhhh… Green Lantern? Justice League? Ah… funny stuff, like Ambush Bug and Heckler. Stuff like that.
Barb: I still think Ambush Bug is hilarious, just the way it skewered the DCU and DC and the comics industry… highly subversive.
Park: Before that, though, I was buying comics weekly at the town’s 7-11. Which was where the Tiger Mart is now, down by the CVS. And for a little while, I had a Marvel Comics subscription. Mailed flat to my door in a brown wrapper. Except we had a post office box, so they had to bend them a little. Then I learned to drive.
Barb: What was the first comic book convention did you go to? What do you remember about that experience?
Park: Oh, my. Well, that depends on if the Dallas Fantasy Faire counts as a comic book convention. Possibly not. But I think all the real comic book conventions I attended were with you, really. I went to the Dallas Fantasy Faire with Nathan, spent the night there. There were role-playing games, as I recall. Roger Zelazny of the Amber books was there, did a reading of his latest book, which was basically if Poe was an action-adventure hero (in his own Poe universe). I got Zelazny’s autograph. Also L. Sprague DeCamp, who wrote The Compleat Complete Enchanter. While I was in line for that, the line next to me had a bunch of (thin, pale) dudes dressed in black. They all liked J.O.Barr’s The Crow, I think, but even more, they liked this newish comic Sandman, a storyline called “The Doll’s House.” I swear, I presumed it was some sort of adaptation of the Ibsen play, because that’s the sort of little baby lit geek I already was. There were back issue boxes of comic books to sort through… I met Image co-founder Jim Lee briefly– a very happy, smiling fellow– he was no one then, no one knew who he was, he was just some artist, Image didn’t happen yet… Also there were some anime rooms, though I didn’t go in… Nathan stayed up much later than me watching a fan-made version of the Dirty Pair (“that’s Lovely Angels!”).
Barb: How’d you get into Vertigo Comics?
Park: Hm. I guess a big part of it was college friend Lori Droemer liking Shade The Changing Man. Well, that led me to that Sandman comic, so I was like “I guess I’ll give this a try.” And then YOU got me into Doom Patrol and Hellblazer, in that order…
Barb: I’ll tell you a story that still pisses me off, after all these years. I went to a Neil Gaiman book signing, because I wanted to get you Neil’s autograph as a present. The line was long, so I had the reissue of Big Star’s Third on my Walkman, and was listening to it… So, as I finally got to the head of the line, the song “Dream Lover” came on the Walkman. I got the autograph, then told a comic book clerk– because the song coming on at that moment was clearly some Jungian-level shit going down– what had happened, and he acted like I had a crush on Neil! As if! I thought, “Man, you don’t get shit, do you? This is a trip down the synchroncity/serendipity highway and you think I’m a girl with a crush? Eye roll.”
Barb: As Grant Morrison said to me once about a mutual acquaintance, “Does this man have no soul???”
Barb: But soon after that, I had a dream where I met Morpheus [from the comic book Sandman] at a wedding, and he said, “You know, you’re going to have to marry Park someday.” I sighed and said, “Yeah, I know.”
Barb: Remember, honey, we were just friends at this point! But I woke up feeling, “I just got a look into my future. If the Lord of Dreams says I’m going to marry Park, I’m going to marry Park.”
Barb: Jung would have a field day with my dreams, let me tell you.