Recently in the Marvel Select thread, Fwoosher and Diamond liaison MSWord made a casual joke about a Disney exclusive Dr. Bong for Marvel Select. This set off a brief flurry of feigned excitement among other regulars. I use the word feigned because, as was immediately obvious, there is no way Marvel Select will be making a Dr. Bong when they have to make money selling to a large common denominator. It was an obvious joke, but it was fun to pretend.
Being a fan of Dr. Bong and of quirkier characters in general, I was intending to use this article as yet another enthusiastic ode to a character that should be made but never will be. But the more I thought about it, the less that appealed to me. I started thinking too hard, I suppose, and I realized rather fatalistically that it wouldn’t do any good. Sure, I could go on about Dr. Bong and how awesome and how perfectly “comic book” the idea of an evil dude with a bell for a head is. And I’m a man who loves comic books. It’s very possible I gave my mom’s womb a papercut because I’d swear I was born with one in my hand (ouchie). There is simply no room out there for a character like Dr. Bong to make it into a 6-inch action figure line — not even in the Marvel Universe line. That’s just a fact of the marketplace.
There is a resignation there, but there’s also anger. It’s an unfocused anger that is as harmless as the word itself suggests because there’s no real point in getting angry over fictional characters. Anybody that actually does needs to re-examine their priorities. But there is an irritation. I have no qualms about making customs of the figures I want to see. In fact, that resignation steels my resolve to bring those oddballs to life in my own way, and that makes them even more personal and loved because they weren’t churned out of an Asian factory somewhere.
But it does make me wonder what it is I’m seeing in these that the majority aren’t.
I start wondering if it’s really just my fault for adoring a niche that most don’t care about. I mean, sure, there are others like me who would buy some of the odder characters like Dr. Bong, but it’s a minority. Or at least, that’s what we’re all led to believe. It must be true because the toy companies seem adamant about ignoring a healthy quotient of the character pool. I can’t expect everyone to love a character with maybe fewer than 20 appearances.
But… they should.
I can’t dislodge that thought from my head. Because a toy fan more often than not is a comic fan. And even if he’s not a comic fan, a toy fan is a fan of plastic representations of ideals that are cool. I can’t speak for everyone, and I won’t try, but is there something “uncool” about a dude with a bell for a head?
More so than a dude wrapped in a flag? Or a dude who walks on walls and wears colors no spider has ever worn? Or a big green muscly guy? Or a Man in a colorful suit of armor?
Where does the separation begin and where does it end? How do things with a common genesis — imagination — end up getting neatly cataloged as either viable and worthwhile or ridiculous and shunned?
The answer I can come up with — the only answer I can come up with — is that adults are ruining comics and toys. Because we churn through life with college and debt and weddings and frustrations and breeding and those things wear away at us. Our imagination withers. The real world becomes too much with us, and soon the only things that are acceptable are the things that are acceptable.
We forget to imagine. We forget to dream.
We forget how big the world is when you’ve got a blank piece of paper and a pencil and an imagination.
We forget how to be kids. We force a “childish” hobby into the adult world. We strap buckles on things, and we put them in black, and we take away everything that is unique about comics and the plastic representations of those things. We start ranking things in terms of A list and B list and Z list because that’s what makes sense to us. Adult toy collectors try to make the fact of being a minority — adults who collect toys — and turn it into a constant chase for the majority rule. More Wolverines! More Spider-Men! They sell, while the other lesser-knowns don’t, because who are they, what do they do, I don’t want to have to learn about things I don’t already know about!!
So our world shrinks and our hobby shrinks and now we live and die by the movie because we’ve allowed ignorance to dictate the terms. “I don’t know who that is, so I won’t buy him.” “He looks goofy.” “This character is too silly looking.”
Those statements are the death of childhood. Being an adult isn’t killing the child within. Being an adult is building on that child, and expanding on him. He doesn’t have to die so you can live. It’s a symbiosis of ideals, or thoughts, of imagination. Without him, you wouldn’t exist.
They’re comics. They’re toys. Nothing is lame in comics and toys.
Dr. Bong has a bell for a head.
That… is awesome.