Here's a hint for the weary internaut: Reading Wikipedia's soggy prose is a lot more entertaining if you imagine it being read in the voice of Comic Book Guy.
The trick is to master his perfect pedantry, lecturing with the utmost seriousness on facts of the utmost inconsequence. Strive for the tone of an aggrieved intellectual speaking to idiots, as if the only place in the world you can get proper respect is when lording your encyclopedic knowledge over pre-teens in the comic book store you own.
Now, in a tone that's primed to pass judgment, read out the beginning of his Wikipedia profile: "Jeff Albertson, better known as Comic Book Guy, is a fictional character in the animated series The Simpsons. He is the proprietor of the comic book shop, The Android's Dungeon & Baseball Card Shop."
"His catchphrase," continues the article, now warming to its topic, "is the declaration 'Worst. (Noun). Ever.', which is usually delivered with slight pauses between each word, or variants with slightly different wording (such as "Worst. Theme Park. Ever.")."
Notice the attention to detail, the patient instructions on how the catchphrase is to be articulated. Notice the loving fleshing-out of the obvious. The brushstrokes are unmistakable: Comic Book Guy was here.
Indeed he was. You'd be forgiven for thinking that the "Worst episode ever" construction was the character's great gift to the world. But it turns out that that phrase was in fact the Internet's gift to the character, before he made it great. Let me explain.
Comic Book Guy arrived on The Simpsons 21 episodes after the show's 1989 debut. Balding, overweight, obsessive and demeaning, he dispenses insults within his comic book store, and absorbs them everywhere else. He's a nerd for all seasons. Of course, The Simpsons is brimming with avatars of insecurity; one of its many small geniuses was to realize that there's more than one kind of nerd. What sets the Comic Book Guy apart from tormented Milhouse, or poor Ralphie Wiggum, or Professor Frink with the glasses and the haircut and the backwards speaking, is that he was the original nerd of the Internet.
It helps to remember that the show predates the Net as we know it; the Web didn't even emerge from computer labs until 1993. In those pre-Web days, conversations were held on text-only forums, where page after page of inflamed, semi-informed commentary would scroll by. (How things change.) One such forum, called alt.tv.simpsons, became a hub for Simpsons discussion, commentary, and - increasingly - complaint. The perennial gripe, that the show isn't what it used to be, isn't new. Throughout the nineties, users would log into alt.tv.simpsons, kvetch about continuity errors, complain about declining standards, and make a routine of declaring the show's latest outing to be the "worst episode ever."
This didn't go unnoticed by the show's producers, who in the early days would even exchange friendly e-mails with fan groups. But by 1995, the Comic Book Guy was seen checking a newsgroup called "alt.nerd.obsessive." And in 1997, the coup de grace: In an episode about "Itchy and Scratchy," the cartoon-within-a-cartoon that The Simpsons uses to meditate on its own existence, Comic Book Guy unloads on Bart.
"Last night's "Itchy & Scratchy" was, without a doubt, the worst episode ever," he says. "Rest assured that I was on the Internet within minutes, registering my disgust throughout the world."
Bart asks what right he has to complain.
"As a loyal viewer, I feel they owe me," replies the Comic Book Guy.
"What?" says Bart, "They're giving you thousands of hours of entertainment for free. What could they possibly owe you? If anything, you owe them."
The Comic Book Guy pauses, then says, "Worst. Episode. Ever."
And with that, the Simpsons bequeathed unto Western culture another catchphrase, and at the same moment cemented the Comic Book Guy's totemic status as the embodiment of everything that's wrong with the Internet: the Star Trek-obsessed, detail-mad collector, the amasser of useless arcana, the really annoying guy who pontificates on his chosen subject when not downloading naked pictures of Captain Janeway.
But that was a decade ago, a spoof on an Internet in its infancy. It's true that there was a time when the whole place seemed populated by people who just wanted to quote Star Trek and Monty Python. Now that more or less everyone's online, surely he's an anachronism?
I think not. In fact, I'd argue that just the opposite has occurred. Instead of fading into irrelevance, the Comic Book Guy metastasized. Online, obsessive collecting and pedant browbeating is the rule, not the exception. If you can think of a topic, it's almost a given that there's an online community dedicated to obsessing and browbeating in its name. You don't need to watch Star Trek to be a nerd. This is the great lesson of the Internet.
So, on the eve of the release of the Simpsons Movie, as we take a moment to reflect on everything the series got right, take a moment to consider the small victory of Comic Book Guy, a caricature so apt, he should be named the patron saint of Wikipedia. Then you can get back to bemoaning last week's episode, which really wasn't funny at all.
Obsess with the best
What became of all the obsessive collecting of the alt.tv.simpsons group? It went to the strangely named SNPP.com, the Simpsons Archive. It contains episode guides for at least 330 of the show's 400 entries (a bit out of date, but who's complaining?), complete with extended commentaries and nuggets of trivia. Better still, character profiles detail every single appearance of each character in each episode. Want to know how many times Professor Frink appeared in Season 6? Fine, but aren't you glad someone took the time to count, just in case someone else does?
And as for the rest…
Not that there's any shortage of Simpsons fansites offering the standard array of news, quotes, and screen-captures of dubious legality. The Simpsons Channel sports a well-maintained blog, while the Simpsons Gallery has an image gallery organised by episode. Finally, for the sake of the title alone, I should mention "alt.nerd.obsessive," the tribute site set up in the Comic Book Guy's honour at cbg.nohomers.net ( nohomers.net is, itself, another fan site). There's not a whole lot there, but it's good to see the man get his due.