Geeking-Out, Nerd Culture, and Oral History Methodology: An Interview with See You at San Diego’s Mathew Klickstein (Part Two)

See Part One of “Geeking-Out, Nerd Culture, and Oral History Methodology: An Interview with See You at San Diego’s Mathew Klickstein”.

One of the things that struck me reading the book is that it felt like I was walking through the aisles of Comic-Con and eavesdropping on either group conversations or just individual people talking. I thought the way you edited it was really interesting because you put people in conversation with each other who weren’t necessarily having a real conversation together, right?

Yeah absolutely. I think one of the times it worked out really well was when Stan Sakai and Kevin Eastman are talking, and I really had a lot of fun with that one bouncing them back and forth and having them completing each other’s sentences. I’ve gotten adept at that over the years. I love watching documentaries, I love oral histories, I love reading them, so I think I have a knack for that. A lawyer from Penguin had actually said [for the Nickelodeon book] that we needed to maybe put something in the beginning that made it clear that this was not some round table panel, because it seemed too much like everybody was having a conversation with each other. And I told my editor, first of all, please explain to him what an oral history is. Second of all, tell him that's probably the best compliment I ever received. Thank you for saying it is that seamless that legally we might have to tell people this wasn’t all done at the same time. 

If you notice, [for See You at San Diego] I was also very intentional on how I did the photos and art as well. It's not always exactly what people are talking about. I love the fact that you are turning pages, and there are a lot of people - you might not know who they are. But then every now and then it's like “what the heck! Arnold Schwarzenegger?!” I love that celebrities kind of pop-up out of nowhere instead of having them all in one place. I wanted it to be like a little bit of a surprise. Like, you have to flip back and be like “did I just miss John Landis?” Because, again, that’s what it's like at Comic-Con. You’re walking, you’re talking to friends, you’re looking at your phone, looking at some books, you bump into someone, you keep walking, then you go “wait a minute that was -”

That was Patton Oswald! Which is exactly what happened to me this past year at Comic-Con.

Yeah! Exactly, exactly. 

And I wanted [the story] to digress. I wanted it to go on some side tangents. I like thinking of it in terms of calculus rather than arithmetic. It's three dimensional and it puts you in it more. It's similar to something like a Mad Magazine or Far Side or Addams Family comic strip. There are things you might not have seen the first time, there are comical Easter eggs for those who I know are going to read every word, and every caption. I want it to be fun, to be a scavenger hunt; I want it to be an adventure because that's what Comic-Con is and that's what geek culture is. That’s why I like doing oral histories because it's an unconventional literary form. 

costumed attendees, comic-con 1982

Focusing on the last phrases of the book’s subtitle - “fandom and the triumph of geek culture.” A significant portion of Fandom Studies’ foundational work focuses on this geek culture as a subculture. As Erin Hanna states in the book, “fan studies comes out of Cultural Studies.” This nerd and geek culture was an avenue for outcasts and misfits to find community, make meaning and interact with texts and narratives that were not part of the mainstream. Now these texts seem to be part of the mainstream. And to oversimplify it - geek culture has indeed triumphed. Paul M. Sammon discusses in the book, “did geek culture take over the mainstream or did the mainstream take over the geek culture? Definitely the latter.” What are your thoughts on this, and how did others interviewed in the book respond to this shift?

It is interesting you bring that up, because it very much goes back to the origin of all this - to 2014 again. This is so much of what I wanted to accomplish with that project. In fact, a couple of my good friends, when they heard that I was doing this project, one of them said, “oh my God, you are finally getting to do your nerd and geek culture book, aren’t you?” And I was like, “shhh, yes, but under the lens of Comic-Con.” So that’s been an obsession of mine for many years and ultimately why the nerd book failed, because the new editor was like “hey, nerds are cool now, Big Bang Theory.” I was like, “well yes, but also no.” And it’s like - what two things at once!? And I’m like “yeah, nuance.”

Yeah, nuance!

And the editor was like, no we aren’t going to do this anymore- bye - no footnotes for you!

But this was an opportunity for me to explore it like a huge case study of exactly what you just said. And it goes back to why I was glad it was an oral history, because a lot of what you just said, people would agree with and some people would not agree with. Including Mark Evanier. He doesn’t like referring to this group as outcasts or misfits - he didn’t think that they were. He was one of the people I had to have in this. He would disagree that it is a group of misfits and outsiders. 

Well, I agree with Mark and disagree. In early Fandom Studies, fans are discussed in those terms. I have this debate with my husband, who is 5 years older than me and had to hide his Star Wars posters and comic books from peers in High School. He’ll say to me “oh you're such a nerd” and I’m like “yeah, you mean - cool.” Right? Because it’s cool to be a nerd. 

But Mark is saying even back then. Obviously now, and that's the thesis that is hard to avoid, now it is cool to be a “nerd” or a “geek,” which is why there is a lot of discussion about real “nerds” or “geeks” who feel like their culture has been appropriated. 

Of course!

That was always the big question with The Big Bang Theory. Is this pushing nerd and geek culture and getting more people to know who Stan Lee is, getting more people to know about Comic-Con, getting more people to know about free comic book day on Wednesday? Or is it kind of making fun of them? Also, some of those people are very attractive. There was a lot of that discussion even when I was working on the nerd book. There were a lot of videos on what does it mean to be a real nerd versus a fake nerd? I even talked to Diablo Cody about it; she refers to it as “hard nerds” versus “soft nerds.” I’ve written and talked about this, but I go with Douglas Coupland, who wrote in his 1995 novel Microserfs, that “a geek is a nerd who knows he is one.” And I agree with that. I’ve actually talked to some of The Simpsons people [about the terms] nerd, geek, and dork. Comic Book Guy is a geek, Lisa is a nerd, and Milhouse is a dork. Lisa doesn’t necessarily want to be a nerd, she doesn’t really like being called a nerd, she doesn’t even really think of herself as a nerd. She really just wants to be left alone to read, and be into jazz, and play her jazz music. Comic Book Guy is a geek - brightly colored, loud, overt - a geek is a nerd who knows he is one. It’s an opt in - “I’m a geek and proud.” And Milhouse can’t help but be a dork. In fact, I had Mike Reiss tell me tell me the reasons they had Milhouse’s father as a loser because they wanted to show that Milhouse is genetically predisposed to being a loser. He is a dork, he is not even a nerd and good at things, and he is not necessarily a geek. The point is, I think there is a lot of this [discussion in the book]. Like a lot of people I interchange nerd and geek. But philosophically, existentially, and scholastically, the taxonomy of all this, I believe they are two different things. I bring it to the archetype of Stan Lee is the geek and Jack Kirby is the nerd. You can kind of play that game. 

So which one are you? Are you the geek or the nerd? 

Haha! Good question! No one has ever asked me that before - uh oh - dun dun dun! I’m a dork actually, I kind of suck. I don’t know, I go back and forth a bit. I think there are some things I'm nerdy about and some things I’m geeky about. Well let’s just say, today I was wearing a Ghost Dog beanie, and a My Pet Monster shirt, and a Twilight Zone jacket. So, I’m pretty geeky about that. And of course, like everything else, I think everyone is a little bit of everything. 

I agree! I was going to say, I think I’m a geek about Disney and a nerd about Shakespeare. 

Right, but then here’s a fun one. Then, you are not a nerd about Shakespeare, you are a geek. 

Indeed? Why?

Because if you were a real nerd about Shakespeare you wouldn’t say you're a nerd about Shakespeare. Remember, a geek is a nerd who knows he is one. 

I guess I am a geek about everything then. I’m pretty open about my fandoms. I embrace them and talk about them. 

If you say you're a nerd about Shakespeare then you are a geek about Shakespeare. That’s the trick - the existential trick. If we want to get technical about it, with my formula that no one else thinks about or knows about except for me and my friends who’ve heard my podcast, as soon as you say it you become a geek. Because a nerd doesn’t care about external perception. A nerd is just doing what a nerd does. 

I am definitely geeky then. 

You are geeky. You can say you are “geeking-out” about it. When you nerd-out, nerds go in. When you are nerding-out about something you are on the couch by yourself watching ten hours of whatever. When you geek-out on something, it's like “hey everybody! Look what I’m doing! I’m live tweeting it and with a bunch of friends.” Geeking-out is the explosion. 

I feel like, if you look at Fan Studies and think about what it means to be a “fan” - there is that community aspect that is heavy in the literature. So if you are a fan, you have to be a geek, because you are looking for the community and the group to participate in. There is outreach. It could be up for debate, but it’s heavy in the literature that fans are a part of participatory culture. 

That’s like Stan Lee with Kirby. Kirby just wants to sit there with his family and draw all day long. And leave him the hell alone. Stan is like, let’s do a lot with this, let’s make movies! Stan wanted to be Errol Flynn his whole life; Stan wanted to be a superstar. Stan’s hero was Errol Flynn. But you need that, you need both sides. 

But going back to what you said about [the Paul Sammon quote], I love that you brought that up. Paul really talks about [geek culture and the mainstream]. 

Well, it felt to me like the quote of the book, personally. It was the one that I latched onto. 

It was the stuff that I really wanted in the book and that’s really what it became. I talk a lot with [Erin Hanna] about it too. Was it that the geeks who took over or were the geeks taken over? One of my favorite books of all time is Animal Farm. And it is Animal Farm. I mean it really is - the revolution happens and then the revolutionaries become the establishment. And that happened here too. And frankly, here we go, time to get in some trouble, but I think there is a lot of that in the Comic-Con administration. But there are people from the administration that runs it now in a way that upsets some of the older people - some of the logistical and practical ways Comic-Con is done now. Patrick Reed, one of the curators for the Comic-Con museum, (and I’m saying this because he is putting it out there) he has been working with New York Comic-Con and trying to do a thing on hip-hop and comics, and they refuse to do anything with it. So, he has been putting out some information about why he thinks that's a bad thing. So, I think even in the way some of these conventions are run now is ultimately - if you will - the corporate elements of fandom. They are the people running the gatherings; there is an element of “the revolutionary has become the conservative” - the counterculture has become the establishment. 

I wanted to be able to talk about these things without coming off as too lofty. And I was like, the way I’ll do it is through the angle of that is who [Erin Hanna] is. She is a professor; she is supposed to do that. I’m going to get academic because I am talking to academics. And she is the person who actually introduced me to Henry’s work. He was named-dropped a couple times in the podcast and came up in this book (so I would have found him anyways), but she is the one who told me about his work with fan studies.

Yes, amazing! So in wrapping up, what is your hope for this book? What role do you see it playing in fan culture and the greater tradition of Comic-Con? 

Like anyone else, given the time and energy and resources I put into it, how passionate I am about the subject matter, how much I very much want the people who are discussed in the book - especially the ones who maybe haven’t gotten the credit that they deserve (or any at all) to get as much [credit] as possible. I would like this to be taught. I would like this to be part of curriculum. It is important to me to have academics and professors aware of this book. Plus, let's be honest, professors are easier to get a hold of than Kevin Smith!

Ha yes! We are responding to our own emails, so that helps.

One of the things that’s been hardest about getting the word out about [the book] is A) it’s not just about San Diego Comic-Con, B) it is not just about comic conventions, C) it is not just about comics. Like, just getting through those three hoops alone has been very difficult. It’s really about pop culture nostalgia of the last century through the lens of the prehistory/ history and expansion of Comic-Con simply because it's the biggest. 

I want people to take this seriously and I want people to be teaching this. You know, I’ve never really been into comics. I am into the comics world. I am the Margaret Mead of this (barring all the kind of negative stuff). But I would still hang out at comic book shops as a kid, because it was where you went to hang out with other kids who were into movies and TV shows. It’s sharing, it’s community. So, I hope… it would be great if this [book] got turned into a movie or a documentary. Some of this might be coming together. We did the podcast, we did the book, we did the audio book - there is literally only one more thing left. 

Well, there is always the musical!

Yeah, exactly, we’ll do the Broadway version! The point of all this being I hope [See You at San Diego] becomes part of that continuum and part of the cannon of people like you and Henry. Because this is the information. This is the source. And I want to make sure that we get the information right. When Rolling Stone Magazine, just a couple years ago, could have such an egregious error as saying New York Comic-Con and San Diego Comic-Con are the same thing in the first sentence on an origin story, it's really a danger. And when the Comic-Con people I interviewed in my book, hit them up and told [Rolling Stones], they didn’t fix it. It’s still up. 

I’m putting everything I have into this book. And look, even with the small advance I got from Fantagraphics, I probably would have done it for free. I really just wanted to do this project so bad, and I wanted it to be the best it could be. I would not be able to rest easy if I didn’t think I was doing every possible thing I could do to make sure it’s talked about, to make sure people know about it. And if it comes up as a clue on Jeopardy in 10 years that’s fantastic, but let’s hope it doesn’t take so long! 

Los Angeles launch event via Skylight Books and American Cinematheque: (l-r) moderator Allen Salkin, Scott Shaw!, Wendy All, Gus Krueger (son of Ken), Clayton Moore, Mike Towry, Phil Yeh; Scott Shaw!'s artwork made exclusively for the event projected behind them.

Lauren Alexandra Sowa is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Communication at Pepperdine University. She recently received her Ph.D. from the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on intersectional feminism and representation within production cultures, television, and popular culture. These interests stem from her several-decade career in the entertainment industry as member of SAG/AFTRA and AEA. Lauren is a proud Disneyland Magic Key holder and enthusiast of many fandoms.