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Got into a 20 minute argument at Empire's Comics in Fresno over whether Watchmen is 'gatekeeping'
I was flipping through back issues when a guy half my age told me nobody under 30 reads Watchmen anymore and it's just old heads being snobs. I pulled out my phone, showed him the 2019 sales numbers still moving thousands of copies a year, and he just shrugged and walked off. Do younger readers really skip the classics now, or was this one guy just messing with me?
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hall.joel1d ago
Those 2019 sales numbers are exactly the problem, showing a phone to win an argument kind of proves his point. Watchmen sells because it's assigned in high school lit classes and every 40 year old buys the same deluxe edition, not because new readers are finding it on their own. The kid in Fresno probably reads comics on Webtoon and manga, and honestly the gatekeeping complaint has some truth. Telling people they have to read a 1986 book before they can talk about comics is like saying you can't enjoy movies until you've seen Citizen Kane. Most of the people I see in comic shops buying Watchmen are closer to my age than his, and that tells you something.
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