MARTHA THOMASES: I love my shirt
When I left DC Comics in 1999, I stopped traveling to comic book conventions. I’d still go to the Big Apple shows and MoCCA Art Festivals to see my friends, but these take place in New York City, which, coincidentally, is also where my closets are. Now, for the first time in this century, I’m going to shows again.
At DC, those of us in the marketing department were required to wear t-shirts promoting the company’s characters, or with one of the company’s logos. At ComicMix, we wear our logos as well while we’re on duty. When I go to local shows to see my friends, I figure they already like me, and I’m not particularly going to make any new pals.
This is the long way to say that I don’t especially worry about my appearance at comic book conventions. Either someone has made that decision for me, or I was going to see someone who already had formed an opinion about me.
None of this is not to say I didn’t obsess over my appearance. I do. I worry constantly that people look at me and think, “Who let that fat old woman out of the house? Aren’t there laws against such public displays of cellulite? Is it really possible for flesh to sag that much in so many different places?” However, when going to a comic book event, I didn’t worry about these questions any more than I do when going to get a newspaper, or mail a letter.
To me, comic book conventions were a professional obligation. I presented myself as my profession requires, just as I wear a suit to meetings with journalists or clients, and a sweater to the yarn store. When a comic book convention is a social occasion, I’ll dress as my peers dress, perhaps taking the occasion to wear some cute shoes my friends can admire.
I do not consider conventions to make new friends. In fact, I never went to one before I worked at DC (except to go to parties when I first started working in comics, but, as a freelancer, I needed the free hors d’oeuvres). Even though I’ve been reading comics since 1958, I never socialized around them. Comics were something I liked, like rock’n’roll music, or blueberries. My friends were more likely to come from my political activism or the swim team or, later, from jobs or parents with kids the same age as mine.
Until recently, I’d guess most women at comic book conventions also didn’t worry too much about their appearance. As Heidi MacDonald has observed, most women at comic events were “dragalongs,” women who were attending because their boyfriends, husbands or sons liked comics, not because they were fans themselves. The best thing about going to a show used to be that there were never any lines for the ladies room.
My husband really liked the column I did on Mothers’ Day (
This may come as something of a shock, but tomorrow night is the last episode of The Sopranos. 
When I was a teenager, the environment of my hometown became poisonous. To save me, my parents sent me to an alien environment that seemed to be a universe away, filled with people so different from me they might have been a different species altogether. No one knew anything about my home, nor about my people’s civilization and customs. Instead, I had to hide my true self until I understood how I fit in and what I had to offer the strangers with whom I lived.
Once a week, I volunteer in the pediatric department of a local hospital. I teach knitting to kids and caregivers. I’d like to say I do this because I’m a spiritual person, more evolved than you – better, in fact – but that’s not true. I do it because it’s the best part of my week, and whatever problems I might have in my adult life disappear when I spend a few hours with these kids. It gives me a chance to talk about color and texture and sheep instead of war and money and politics.
