Missing the Target

A second quicker, and the lady might well have slapped my hand.

I was over by electronics when the Blu-ray edition of The Dark Knight caught my eye. I don’t have a Blu-Ray player, but that fact has started to gnaw at the pettiest corners of me. I’m not mad with avarice and desire or anything, but when I pop in my Netflix and they’re just a little bit dark, just a little bit grainier than they could be, I can hear my Mastercard plaintively crying out to me like a siren from the other side of the house.

“They’re getting cheaper!” it says. “You’ll probably still have a job long enough to pay it off!”

I’m ignoring its song for now. I keep waiting for an irresistible disc to come along, though, a disc that will make a convert out of me. Looking back on the year in movies (that I actually saw, which reduces the list of competitors sig-nif-i-cant-ly) The Dark Knight might very well be that disc. I didn’t see any movie– I didn’t see any thing— that I enjoyed more in 2008. Sometimes, when I am in a bad mood, I think, “I could now sit down and watch The Dark Knight any time I wanted,” and I instantly feel a little better. I am cheered up by the potential to watch it.

That’s why, even with no chance of buying the movie, I wandered over towards the shelf to see what special features it had. If there were any deleted Joker scenes included, I might have gone home with a new gadget and some explaining to do. But obviously it had been a good week for The Dark Knight, because the store I was in had only one copy left on the shelf, and as I approached it a middle-aged woman who looked like she needed it as bait to lure children into her gingerbread house saw me eyeballing it and immediately dove for it. She took one look and me and jumped on it like it was the last canned good in the bunker before scuttling off down the Housewares aisle, possibly cradling it and muttering “my preciousssss.”

And I thought, “Ah, now! Now it feels like Christmas.”

While I’m sure it would bring a hot tear to the eye of every priest whose droning about the True Meaning of Christmas ever kept me from getting home to open my presents, I’ve come to realize in recent years that Christmas just doesn’t feel like Christmas for me without the shopping. I know, it’s about family and friends and gathering together in a spirit of kindness and brotherhood and blah blah blah yes fine absolutely but, BUT, if you’re anything like me (I feel bad for you, and) you’ve got to admit that the gathering is that much more special when you’ve found that perfect present for your friend or loved one and gotten to see the look on her face when she opens it, that look that says, “Thank God it’s not another KISS solo album this year.”

I had a stretch of recent years when Christmas never seemed to spark for me; I found myself on the 24th scrunching up my face like Hiro, saying, “Oops, it’s here already. Get in the Christmas spirit… now! Cram a month’s worth of childlike anticipation and warm feelings into the next half hour! Go! Here we go. Any… any minute now. Oh, hey, it’s over. Never mind.” I realized that I had married an organizational titan who planned all of the family gift buying online in October like a military campaign. She was the present-buying equivalent of Danny Ocean; by the time I was even at the point of starting to think, “What should we get Dad?” her second-story man and explosives expert had already absconded from the Bellagio with a tasteful watch or something for him. Nothing was forcing me to think about Christmas, so I didn’t think about it. Now, I always make a point of braving the department stores myself at least a couple of times to force myself to think about how much I love my family, or at least how much more I love them than those parking spot-stealing a-holes at the mall.

I was on one of those adventures in commerce at a Target the other day when the crone saved her kid’s Christmas by stealing The Dark Knight from a guy who didn’t want it. Seeing a twisted harridan clutching at Batman in the name of Baby Jesus made me smile in spite of myself. For one thing, it was yet another product I’d noticed that had a comic as its daddy. I can’t walk into a store like that without noticing; it’s like I have those little Terminator readouts in my eyes as I walk down the aisles. “BOY’S IRON MAN BATHROBE. ADI GRANOV ART…. SPIDER-MAN BACKPACK. MARK BAGLEY ART…. GREY HULK ACTION FIGURE. ARTIST UNKNOWN…. SUPERMAN LOGO BOXERS. SUPERMAN LOGO CAR AIR FRESHENER. SUPERMAN LOGO GARDENING SHEARS. SUPERMAN LOGO NONSTICK COOKWARE…..”

And that’s before you even get near the DVDs. Spend half an hour wandering the aisles in a Target, and it looks like comic book superheroes are the most dominant force driving the popular culture. As long as you don’t go down the Book aisle.

I can never resist a stroll past the action figures, and this time I noticed some Marvel figures that were created with more care than some of the children they were bought for. I don’t know if it’s a wonderful life, but I do know that if I were ten again right now it would be like Christmas every day. I saw a Union Jack action figure (!!!) with more points of articulation than my actual arm. When I was ten years old, I would have burned a Target down with the sun and a magnifying glass to get Marvel superhero figures like these. Just a decent Cyclops or Colossus would have blown my mind. Now, a ten year old could get a figure of the Silver Surfer as he appeared in one random Hulk comic in 2005… if any ten year old ever laid eyes on that comic.

Sometimes I worry about the future of the medium, and some years I have let that worry seep into my gift buying. Brian K. Vaughan has bought some nice gifts of his own with all the money I’ve sent his way trying to get people hooked on Y: The Last Man at Christmastime, but I don’t know how many of those people ever cracked the spines of those books. Any time you buy a book that isn’t on someone’s wish list, you run the risk of giving someone homework for Christmas. You walk a fine line when you do this kind of gift giving: “Merry Christmas! I got you what I’m into!” It could come off as a genuine attempt to introduce them to something you know they’d love. It could come off as an attempt to have one more thing in common, one more thing to share with a loved one. On the other hand, you could come across like one of those guys handing out the Baghvad-Gita at the airport. “Please accept this copy of the Astonishing X-Men hardcover. Won’t you join us? It’s the friendliest cult you’ll ever love. We have conventions! All the ladies dress like sexy Leia!”

Of course, it does sometimes pay off. Everyone I’ve ever given Scott Pilgrim to has ended up ravenously addicted to Scott Pilgrim. That doesn’t mean my Bush-voting mom is getting a copy of DMZ or Persepolis this year. If it’s not too late for your own shopping excursion (and I sort of hope it is; you’ve got three days!) you might want to take a moment to consider your audience. Maybe start with the Superman cookware and build from there.

Happy holidays!

Jim Mroczkowski is convinced, now that the DVD is out, that Warner Brothers Photoshopped those promotional stills to make Heath Ledger’s hair look green, and nothing you say will convince him otherwise. The undaunted may give it a try at Twitter or Jimski.com.