Went to a comic shop in Denver and overheard a guy arguing that reading comics on a tablet 'doesn't count'

I was just browsing the back issues and this dude was going off at the register for like 10 minutes about how digital readers aren't real fans. He kept saying if you can't smell the paper you're missing the whole point. I read on my iPad half the time because my apartment is tiny and I ran out of shelf space after issue 200. The cashier just nodded and rang him up. It got me thinking, do people actually care how others read comics or is it just gatekeeping nonsense? Has anyone else run into this kind of attitude at a shop?

2 comments

2 Comments

anderson.jason9d agoTop Commenter

My buddy Jake tried to pull that same "you can't smell the paper" nonsense on me last month. I told him I can still smell my paper just fine except it's the 50 longboxes I have stacked in my storage unit that I can barely walk through. Dude was reading his floppy in one of those thick plastic bags with the cardboard backing still on it so he couldn't even touch the damn pages. I read on my tablet during my lunch break at work because hauling a stack of books to the office looks weird and takes up my whole bag.

the_blair9d agoMost Upvoted

Yeah no kidding @anderson.jason, the bagged and boarded thing cracks me up. I switched to a Fire HD 10 a couple years back and never looked back. Throw it in my bag with a cheap stylus and I can read a whole run of X-Men without worrying about spine creases or my greasy lunch fingers ruining a $5 book. The only paper I keep now is my Absolute editions and a few signed books, everything else is digital.