Mavericks, Nebraskans, Americans! Lend me your eyes! We are living in the Year of the Nerd.
In recent years, nerd subculture has been moving closer and closer to center stage, helped along greatly by the ubiquity of the video game industry (even my outdoorsy, woodworking, physician father plays Fifa and Horizon: Zero Dawn to unwind) and the booming success of the comic book movie genre of film that Hollywood can't seem to get enough of. Thanks to Disney's risky Iron Man in 2008, and Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, what was once the ultimate niche hobby has become something you can see on every street corner. Captain America t-shirts, Darth Vader backpacks, Batman bumper stickers, the nerd culture that used to be relegated to mom's basement has now stolen the pop culture spotlight.
And it's all coming to a head this year. In cinema alone, nerds are reaching content overload. A new King Kong, a new Alien, yet another Transformers (give it a rest, Michael Bay), and of course the Power Rangers movie that debuted this past weekend are all filling theaters with nostalgia, not to mention the abundance of superhero movies coming at us in the coming months. Beginning with Logan, a movie that captured a serious side of comics better than any movie since the Dark Knight; we're receiving a sequel to the surprise hit Guardians of the Galaxy; a new Spider-Man movie (don't worry, we don't have to watch Uncle Ben get shot again); Wonder Woman, the first modern superhero blockbuster centered around a female protagonist; and DC Comic's Justice League's first foray into live action cinema in November.
But the amazing thing about it all is not just that it's happening, but that it's happening so openly. Most of us can remember a time when knowing about comics just wasn't cool. When I first started reading comics regularly back in my senior year of high school, I got a lot of weird looks and skeptical questions about why I was bringing picture books to AP Psychology. But now, a couple short years later, I can sit down with my mom and tell her about Wonder Woman and why she's awesome, not because she's my mother and she has to listen and be supportive, but because she was curious about a movie that was getting a lot of hype.
All this to say, we nerds have it good this year. Video games, movies, comics, everything seems to be coming together all at once. So what if the Superbowl ended with a dreadful run of unchallenged scoring? So what if one horrible lizard person beat the other horrible lizard person in the election? I get to watch Wonder Woman kick Nazi backside in a few short months.
Life is pretty good.
