There is an old couple of friends talking about the old days on the radio. One speaks of a time when their sole spires of income as a young whippersnapper consisted of the role as the local paper boy. Employment within the realm of the news agency gave you special privileges. For some is was access to the men’s magazines with ladies in their skimpy, but for one of such a young and slightly naive age it was the access to one thing in particular that made it all worthwhile. The comics.
Fantasy characters that played out tales one could never hope to experience first hand were illustrated with enough intensity for the young mind to build heroes and the like. While the stories themselves may have influential to the boy’s upbringing, there was one thing particular that never left his memories – the smell.
Comic books, when printed as cheaply as those found in many news agencies, are of such a poor quality that they can deteriate rather quickly. Their techniques are often only one or two steps above that of newspapers, with which one is to use yesterday’s to line their bird cage as today’s lands on their doorstep. The ink qualities have certain components that give to the reader much more than their eyes could ever know. These comic books rub off on you literally. The paper wares quickly, the ink stains your sweaty palms and nostrils. This is part of the reading experience, with which one builds their sensory emotional inventory from an early age.
Today one does away with contact. Comic books can be purchased from within digital devices and controlled with the tap of a screen. No longer are their pages to ware and fold. No longer is their colored ink to fade and stain and fill the nasal cavity with possible memories and inventory. No longer can one look ahead or flip through before reading in depth. The view is controlled, a forced focus much like that brought about with the invention of the camera for stills and motion pictures. We are forced to watch through someone else’s eyes, and all the while we no longer have the other senses at play. Our fingers on touch the strangely warm surface of the screen, our nostrils left to wallow in our own body odors with no means of escape.
