3 Geeks

How to Pick Up Girls If You’re a Comic Book Geek

3 Geeks 1-11

3 Geeks: Slab Madness 1-3

Talk about something that has not aged well.  Reading this again feels like watching The Big Bang Theory - It tries to portray the comic book geek in an affectionate light, but more often than not only succeeds in negatively magnifying the stereotypes.  It makes this an often painful read, while still managing to squeeze out a few laughs.

To be fair to writer/artist Rich Koslowski, I’m sure that much my displeasure has to do with the uncomfortable similarities that I see between my younger comic geek self and the kids depicted in these pages.  My inability to find a girlfriend, the passionate comic book discussions I had with my best friend, the way I scraped together every penny I could to afford New Comic Book Wednesdays - these were all too familiar to me.  There’s truth in those things that resonate with me, but I don’t find it funny to see them amped up to a humiliating degree. Koslowski’s depiction makes these well-intentioned kids look pathetic, not sympathetic.

Which isn’t to say that Koslowski doesn’t nail a ton of things.  He couldn’t be more accurate about the joys of attending your first comic con.  I’ve had plenty of similar all-night movie marathons with my friends (and imagine being a kid today with all the MCU and DC movies at your fingertips!  Age of the geek, indeed).

We're truly living in a golden age.

I chortled at his take on Superman’s non-Kryptonite weakness:

Heh.  Magic.

And I can’t help but love everything about this line delivery:

So hot.

Things get worse and more ridiculous as the series goes on.  Jim develops Batman-level stealth skills. Allen becomes the savior of the comic grading industry.  Koslowski introduces the stereotypical goth indy comic-reading female foil. It’s pretty bad.

I’m still keeping most of it, there’s too much truth buried underneath the mockery for me to completely dismiss it.  And I believe that Koslowski created this with the best of intentions. (As did the writers of BBT.) It just isn’t as successful as he probably hoped.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? No

Rating: Didn’t suck (Stupid for Slab Madness.  Cutting those.)